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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kannik" data-source="post: 7975280" data-attributes="member: 984">I can't speak for sure what may have been known (or not) to scholars in '79, but given that The Art of War was written sometime in the 5th century BCE and kung fu films were already influencing/creating the general view of the amazing prowess of "oriental martial arts," it seems unlikely to me that any detailed research could have led to such an odd view of Chinese military history and its weapons.  Especially the unbalanced and unwieldy assertion -- both from the "martial arts expertise" view but even more so that if you've been using fighting implements since 2200 BCE and amassing armies, led by generals for which there were exams in order to earn your rank, it is almost unfathomable that someone along the way wouldn't have redesigned them to be greatly functional and effective.  Telling I think is the bibliography at the end of the article -- of the 11 works noted, only 3 are not Japanese-specific, and of those three, one also covers guns and other items while the remaining two are written by art historians and consist mostly of either photographs/illustrations with text describing their origin, but little else.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />At any rate, this is not meant as a slight to you on your review of the magazine!  More about my shocked reaction from reading the article.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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