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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3461410" data-attributes="member: 4937">Pretty much exactly.I always find it interesting that Katana fanboys are always into comparing European mass produced swords to the specially commissioned works of Japanese master swordsmiths.  The vast majority of period Japanese swords were no better than thier European counterparts, because it was too expensive to produce 10000 swords by the standards you'd use for a high ranking samurii's sword.  I'm reminded of how much scorn was heaped on the surviving Western melee martial arts by devotees of Eastern martial arts, until the two were actually used in something like an open contact competition.  You don't hear that so much any more, after the practicioners of ancient martial arts all got thier butts kicked and the only eastern martial arts traditions left standing were the ones that were most modern and most influenced by contact with the West (shoot fighting, for example).  If you want to idolize actual skilled and useful Eastern martial arts, and not peasants wishfully thinking they could defend themselves against armored swordsman, then look to the Mongols.  That's some serious martial art.  Kung Fu?  Not so much. Let me be as damning as I can be and get it out of the way.  The general continuing emphasis in the far east on unarmed combat techniques, improvised weapons, melee combat techniques is a product not of thier superior skill in these areas, but how much longer it took in the far east to develop sophisticated notions of individual and civil rights, coordinated unit tactics, military professionalism, and firearms technology.  The West, in Greece, had 'Karate' back in 400 BC.  They just largely abandoned it as obselete technology, and tended to retain it only in a sport form - and generally then only if it was easily adapted to something that wasn't so much a blood sport.</blockquote>

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