fouten over westerse martial arts

Many myths concerning medieval martial arts that were popularly held as truth by the academic community as well as the general public are now in fact known to be incorrect.

In spite of this, many of these myths persist at a terrifyingly consistent rate, so much so that at times, when I used to attempt to explain them to individuals who were "sold" on the hype, I would feel as If I were suddenly immersed in my own bad 1950's Sci-fi Horror film. Most often this "film" played about the grossly exaggerated capabilities of the Japanese sword, or the supposed "absence" of skill or intelligence in swordsmanship until the 17th century, or the assertion that Medieval arms and armor "weighed a ton". But whether I was starring in "Attack of the 50-foot Katanaphile" or "Fencers Ate My Brain", the "trailer" always contained the same 50's sci-fi lines. "THRILL as he shows you his evidence from the back of an RPG book! MARVEL as he plods through paragraphs of historical evidence unscathed! LAUGH as he fails to cite a single reliable source!".


The worst part of these experiences was that in nearly every case, it was not the person's fault for being misinformed. In many cases they would read and/or hear these things from authors or educational television shows.

Authors and educational television shows that OUGHT to know better.

Now, granted, knowledge improves with the times, and what we laugh at now would have been "cutting edge" research a century past. Case in point: Much of the modern fencing idea that earlier Medieval/Renaissance swordplay was somehow crude or inferior to the modern sport has its origin in the work "Schools and Masters of Fence", written in 1892 by one Egerton Castle, where he compares the modern sport to the "rough, untutored fighting of the Middle Ages" and whose confidence in his work allowed him to feel he could state that "the theory of fencing has reached all but absolute perfection in our days…"

But that book was written over a century ago, when Darwin was all the rage, fencing was dying off as a serious martial art meant for battle, and in the spirit of the time, fencing scholars sought to apply what was then the new, "trendy" idea of evolution to weaponry, necessarily positioning themselves at the "pinnacle" of that "evolution."

Now, whether or not I believe that to be arrogance of the highest magnitude is not important at this time. What IS important is that this illustrates to you the main point of this article: when new evidence arises, one cannot in good conscience ignore it in favor of the old, and to engage in such a practice is highly questionable at best, and academic fraud at worst.

And therein lies my beef.

Now that new info concerning Western Martial Arts is becoming more and more widespread, certain authors and TV programs are insisting on repeating old dogma that denigrates them and quite frankly, there is no longer any excuse for this sloppy (and, I contend, fraudulent) practice.

One such example is a comment from "Secrets of the Samurai: The Martial Arts of Feudal Japan" by Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook. In one irritating paragraph, Ratti/Westbrook write:

"Comparative studies of the materials employed by European and Japanese armor makers during the Middle Ages, and of the ways devised to forge and adapt them to protect the warrior, have shown the Europeans tended to put more emphasis upon size and weight, while the Japanese concentrated on mobility and lightness. In tactics, in fact, the European knight used both his own and his horse's heavy armor to strike the enemy, employing their full weight and momentum for this purpose. His lances were frequently broken upon contact, forcing him to resort to axes, maces, or cumbersome swords when battling an armored foe..."

Ok. Going line by line:

"Comparative studies of the materials employed by European and Japanese armor makers during the Middle Ages, and of the ways devised to forge and adapt them to protect the warrior,.."

I want to know which of the authors made the studies, and exactly what the "studies" consisted of.

"have shown the Europeans tended to put more emphasis upon size and weight, while the Japanese concentrated on mobility and lightness."

mmmmm-HM. I guess that's why there's only about 10 pounds difference in weight between the two, and why Edward I and Henry V used to entertain guests in their courtyards by turning somersaults and cartwheels in their armor(Oakeshott, "Knight And His Armor, pp.16, 30-31).But I don't understand; Ratti/Westbrook must have known all that when they researched both armor types by putting them on and trying them out, right? I want to know what made them think they had any right whatsoever talking about Western arms and armor when they obviously had not done the work. Furthermore I want to hear some justification as to why in a book purportedly about "the Martial Arts of Feudal Japan", it is apparently now academically acceptable to attempt to make Eastern arms appear more favorable by artificially denigrating Western cultures who, in a book about "secrets of the Samurai" should not even BE in the book in the first place.

"In tactics, in fact, the European knight used both his own and his horse's heavy armor to strike the enemy, employing their full weight and momentum for this purpose.

"His lances were frequently broken upon contact,"

Actually, they just stated a fact, albeit apparently purely by accident....

"forcing him to resort to axes, maces, or cumbersome swords when battling an armored foe..."

That these were common sidearms is certainly true. That the knight was somehow "forced" to use "cumbersome" weapons is just as ignorant as Ratti/Westbrook's armor statements.

Blanket statements of this kind are only uttered by people who have not bothered to pick up,, much less handle, never mind train with accurate weapons.




Of all the times I have encountered this unfortunate situation, perhaps the most significant was when I spoke with, or rather attempted to speak with, the good Dr. Stephen Turnbull of no small renown in the field of Japanese arms and armor. I had taken exception to a quote he had made in his work "The Samurai Sourcebook", which reads thus:

"By comparison with the samurai sword, a European knight's sword was
dull and clumsy. A downward stroke from a crusader's blade might be
expected to stun an opponent sufficiently to allow the knight to finish
him off with a straight thrust. A samurai sword would do far more damage
on the initial contact."

After thinking on it for a while, I spent approximately five hours composing and sending the following email to the good doctor:

"Subject: European Arms and Armor(Greetings from SPATHA)
Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2002 15:28:53 -0500
From: (my email)
Reply-To: (my email)
To: (Stephen Turnbull's email)

Greetings, Dr. Turnbull;

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Please allow me to take a moment to explain who i am and what i do. My
name is Andy Moynihan and I am the Director of the Society to Promote
Authenticity in the Teaching of Historical Arms (SPATHA).SPATHA is a
research team dedicated to promoting historical authenticity in the
study and teaching of historical arms. The goal of SPATHA is to pave the
way for the worldwide reclamation of these historically and culturally
significant arts by providing information and pointing the way towards
organizations providing information/instruction on topics within this
subject which, though they may be held as truth by the general public,
may in fact be inaccurate.



Having read much of your work I would like to extend my deep respect to
you for your work concerning Japanese arms and armor. I sincerely admire
it. However, I must admit I was surprised, and more than a little
concerned, to see someone who is well so respected amongst military
historians repeating a commonly held but now disproven statement about
European arms and armor. Follows is a quote from "The Samurai
Sourcebook" as pointed out to me on an online sword related forum I
frequent:

"By comparison with the samurai sword, a European knight's sword was
dull and clumsy. A downward stroke from a crusader's blade might be
expected to stun an opponent sufficiently to allow the knight to finish
him off with a straight thrust. A samurai sword would do far more damage
on the initial contact."

I don't in any way want this to sound like an attack, because it isn't
meant that way, but I'm not sure this is a fair statement given the
subject matter of the book: Given that Europe's Middle Ages had given
way to the Renaissance by the time the West had contact with Japan, I'm
confused as to what your intentions were when you compared the knight
and the samurai, as neither warrior had ever had a chance to meet and
never can? I could be entirely off base but it appears to me that such
comparisons are used only to paint the picture of a samurai somehow
being automatically superior to his western brother-in-arms for some
inherent reason, and i wish you would help me to understand why you
chose to do this in a book totally about Japanese arms/armor?

This is unfortunately a situation I have encountered before, and have
had to address quite often, however it would constitute extremely poor
form on my part ,both academically and in terms of manners,if all I did
was to email you about it, and then do nothing to support my case by
aiding you in finding more information.

To this end, I would like to go over each line in the quote, not because
i wish to "beat a dead horse" but so that I have a clear picture of the
key points I want to discuss.

Going line by line:


"By comparison with the samurai sword, a European knight's sword was
dull and clumsy."

What this sentence communicates to me is that you view European swords
to be somehow always inferior to their Japanese counterparts.

"A downward stroke from a crusader's blade might be expected to stun an
opponent sufficiently to allow the knight to finish him off with a
straight thrust."

What this sentence communicates to me is that you view European fighting
skill to basically amount to a brutish, unskilled affair, and by this
point I am seeing a very familiar and very unfortunate pattern
developing which is no fault of yours.

"A samurai sword would do far more damage on the initial contact."
Again, I wish you would help me to understand why you felt it was
necessary to say this in a book totally about Japanese arms and armor.

I feel that there is information now available concerning Western arms
and armor that you would find pleasantly surprising, and would like to
provide you with a small amount pertaining to the above Sourcebook
passage, if I may.

Unfortunately, much of the misinformaton concerning Medieval Arms and
armor is the combined result of certain authors of modern fencing
treatises during the 19th century having unknowingly denigrated earlier
methods of swordplay due at the time to lack of available resources on
older methods(which in this last decade in particular have made an
amazing resurgence and are being carefully interpreted to reconstruct
their methods), a craze during this century to apply the "new" trendy
idea of evolution to weaponry, and, sadly, a kind of elitism--any such
books that I have read from this century, including in particular
Egerton Castle's "Schools and Masters of
Fence"(London, George Bell and Sons, 1892, out of print), have a
disturbingly
dismissive attitude over weapons they had never even picked up. There
seems to
be a pervading atmosphere in works during this time that "….Since * I *
am
somehow the inheritor of all western swordplay, and * I * don't know
what these
older skills were, then they just must not have existed.."

Unfortunately, this
was picked up on by Hollywood towards the beginning of the 20th century,
and has
resulted in many of these myths becoming something that "everyone
knows"-whether it is true or not.

Over the last 30 or so years, and especially over this last decade or
so, an amazing resurgence has been made in the study of arms and armor
of this time, as well as over 75 surviving written manuals of arms from
the Middle Ages and Renaissance have been discovered and are in the
process of not only translation but interpretation through experimental
archaeology--you can walk into a very few schools RIGHT NOW and see a
15th century German or Italian long sword style being reconstructed and
practiced, for example.(more on this in a bit). In this
environment(still somewhat in its infancy and not quite yet mainstream)
many things are being discovered that shatter previously existing
conceptions of the arms and martial arts(yes-martial arts) of this time.

On the subject of "crude, heavy and/or clumsy arms/armor":
Recent research into Medieval weaponry has in fact shown that they are
in fact
quite light and extremely sharp. Case in point: If you contact the
Wallace
Collection in London (http://www.the-wallace-collection.org.uk) it
should not
be difficult nor too expensive to obtain a copy of their item catalog,
which
includes an excellent Medieval/Renaissance arms and armor display.
Included in
the items' descriptions are weights of each weapon.(Also if you contact
Arms and Armor(www.armor.com) they still may have some left for
sale(yes,I just looked: http://www.armor.com/2000/catalog/item960.html .
This company also makes one-off functional replicas of existing museum
pieces right from museum specs-looking at their products may give you
ideas of weight(and maybe have you drooling for hours over their work-I
know I do) These bear out what we
already know in general about these arms and armor: most full suits of
plate
armor intended for battle would rarely exceed between fifty and sixty
pounds(also borne out by Ewart Oakeshott's "A Knight and his Armor,
pp.16, 30-31).
That is a fair amount of weight, but when you consider that the average
infantryman in today's military forces has to carry nearly double this
amount on
his back alone, whereas the plate armor has the advantage of being
equally
distributed over the wearer's body, it becomes easy to see why the
accounts of
someone in plate armor being "barely able to walk", or of being knocked
down and
unable to get up, or the story of knights having to be lifted onto their
horses
with cranes are nonsense.(the sole and singular time this myth has ANY
historical counterpart whatsoever is in the case of Henry VIII, who in
his
later, and more, ahem, corpulent years, did require mechanical
assistance to
mount, however a specially designed armor for a very fat king cannot be
held
representative for all fighters of this time and earlier, and is further

disproved by contemporary medieval accounts such as those described in
Ewart
Oakeshott's "A Knight and his Armor" (Dufour Editions, 1999 reprint)
where a
knight would be jeered at if he could not leap into his saddle fully
armed,
without using his stirrups, and accounts of Henry V entertaining guests
in his
courtyard by turning somersaults and cartwheels in his armor, which can
be seen
duplicated in "The Medieval Soldier" by Embleton and Howe on page 34
with a
person in full plate doing just such a cartwheel) The same holds true
for the
weaponry of the time. Average weight of single handed Medieval swords is
between
two and three pounds (Oakeshott, "A Knight and his Weapons", pp. 58-61,
Clements,
"Medieval Swordsmanship"pp.37-41, Rector, "Medieval Combat", p. 12) and
the Wallace Collection
catalog contains a medieval sword at one pound eleven ounces.
In regard to a commonly held
assertion that it was not until the 1400s that fencing manuals and thus
martial techniques came into
existence please examine a manuscript kept at the Royal Armouries in
Leeds
titled "Manuscript I.33"(tentatively to be titled the Walpurgis
Fechtbuch after a character in its pages), which details several
sword-and-buckler
techniques(many of them thrusts) and is dated approximately A.D. 1280.
Also if
you are interested the New Dawn Duellists
Society(http://world.conk.com/world/ndds/index.html) has a list
of every sword manual from then until present, most notably from the
Middle Ages the surviving texts of Liechtenhauer(c. 1389), Dei Liberi(c.
1410), Anonymous Manuscript I.33(c.1280), Ringeck(c. 1440), Studer(c.
1429), Manuscript 3542(c. approx. 1450),
Von Danzig(c. 1452), Talhoffer(four books between c. 1443 and c.
1467),Lebkommer(c. 1482), stand out as representative of the period of
Europe you appear to be discussing (Clements, "Medieval Swordsmanship".

If you wish to see some plates from these manuals yourself then here are
two excellent places to start:

www.theARMA.org
www.aemma.org

In regard to your statement that European swords were "Dull" by
comparison with their Eastern counterparts, I submit that there is not
just one edge profile common on swords through the Middle Ages but
several; From my very limited(but, I hope, improving) knowledge of
Japanese arms/armor,the general shape of the sword seems to have gone
from a "chokuto" shape and morphed into their current shape by around
A.D. 1200 and appear to have stayed the same ever since. Based on what
little i know, I would conjecture that, Japan being a relatively
homogeneous culture, and for much of its history shut off from the
world, and being relatively small in area from a geographical
standpoint, the entire country developed similar if not identical
cultural and social conventions, extending through all of it's class
structures including the samurai caste. Having similar weapons and,
probably , similar rules of conduct during battles/duels,there would
probably be no need to change or adapt weapons to a culture which might,
at this time, be considered stagnant.

Europe during its Dark/Middle/Renaissance Ages, had several cultures on
its continent, and war was just as common, though with differing rules
as time and location changed. I conjecture that this perhaps led to a
more dynamic "arms race" between arms and armor; as one developed, so
must the other to catch up.

>From 300 B.C. till about900 A.D. the European fighter would be armed in
much the same general way with some variations; Spear, sword, large
shield, helm and hauberk(shirt of mail). Certainly if the Viking sagas
hold any truth to them, and based on test cutting with modern
historically accurate replicas, shearing off a limb or cleaving a skull
would be no difficult thing for such a weapon as the Vikings had.

Sometime between 1050-1150 a subclass of swords called "long swords"
came into use first as a means for cavalry to more easily reach foes
from horseback, and second to give somewhat more power to the weapon in
answer to improving mail and the beginnings of partial hard plate
defenses. The two main names we need concern ourselves with are the
Great sword and the Bastard sword.

The term great sword(Old English Grete Swerde) starts appearing between
1150-1180 A.D. and originally described a war sword(common name for
early long swords)i.e. a sword able to be gripped with both hands.
Larger versions
would pop up after this time which would need both hands to be used with
acceptable battle speed which would be called great swords, but they
didn't know this in 1150; they only knew these were the biggest swords
anyone had made in their time, they didn't know the trend would continue
for about another four centuries. Generally the blades on these weapons,
being in use during the time of mail, would have a blade profile which
remained the same width with a somewhat round point, to aid its use as a
cutting/slashing weapon. It is these longswords which are contemporarily
reffered to as War swords(which is accurate).

The term "Bastard sword" (Middle French, Epee Bastarde) first appears
between 1420-50, and describes a somewhat different weapon; it too can
be considered a "long sword" but has some different attributes from its
earlier cousin. Most notable among these is its markedly different blade
profile--It still begins broad near the hilt, and maintains somewhat of a cutting
edge, but then about two thirds of its length toward the tip, sometimes sooner,
it then begins to taper very sharply until it reaches a very acute point.
Looking at the change in armor by this time, this makes sense--by the mid fifteenth
century the Age of Plate is in its heyday--and so thrusts have become more
important so as to reach the gaps in that plate. Many of these also seem to be
slightly lighter than their earlier cousins, and are more easily used in one
hand for extended periods. It is neither a one hander nor truly a two hander and
so belongs to neither "family"--hence "Bastard" sword.

I do apologize for having been so longwinded, and I hope that you have
found the info and references i have supplied to be of interest and help
to you in any future endeavors on European arms and armor you may
undertake(I know I'll look forward to them if they come out).

Thanking you for your time and eagerly awaiting any feedback,

I remain

Andy Moynihan
Director, SPATHA"




Not 24 hours later all I received in reply was this:

"The original comment was made in the context of a comparison between
Japanese swords of the thirteenth century with their European and Chinese counterparts."


Nonplussed, but seeing my chance to advance my initial point, I tried one last time:

"Yes, I did understand that a comparison was being made, but not why the
comparison was being made referencing assertations about the European weaponry
which by this time is demonstrably innaccurate. Japanese arms are excellent
pieces of craftsmanship in and of themselves. Why does an attempt to praise
them need to be accomplished by denigrating those of other cultures,
especially when new information exists that runs counter to previously held
misconceptions pertaining to them? That was what I initially went to such
pains to write about."


Never since Feb of 2002 received any further response.


Wow. What sources. What masterful counterargument. Oh yeah, he sure showed me………..



………….but what exactly did he show me?



It should by this time go without saying that I'm more than a little concerned at this attitude which seems to pervade much of the halls of academia regarding this field. I had read this statement, contacted Dr. Turnbull, and, in a nutshell, as politely as I could while still presenting my case, said"This is a statement you made with which I disagree, this is the case I will make against it, these are the sources with which I back up my case, here are my numbers, would you please show me yours" and was basically told to go do something anatomically impossible to myself with a one sentence brushoff.

Why?

Was it because academics in this field might dislike being proven wrong that much?

Or because I'm not a Ph.D or something my words are somehow not worth as much despite that the numbers are all there?

Or--most frightening to me-is it because they just don't care?

In any case, the only choice left to undo the damage that academic fraud has done to the field of historical arms is for the community to stand up and be counted in any way they can to make the truth heard-and by "community" I mean YOU.


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Am fear nach gheidh na h-airm 'nam na sìth, Cha bhi iad aige 'n am a chogaidh"( "Who keeps not his arms in time of peace, will have no arms in time of war"

--Gaelic Proverb