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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ledded" data-source="post: 1657990" data-attributes="member: 12744">Very true Vig. Very true. It's like that line from the Hagakure... <not sure this is exact, I'm going from memory here> "Even if one's head were to be suddenly cut off, he should be able to do one more action with certainty. With martial valor, if one becomes like a revengeful ghost and shows great determination, though his head is cut off, he should not die". But like I said in my long-winded post, I do truly believe that many, if not most, samurai (depending on period) would have been trained to handle rapid footwork and thrusts. Mutual deaths in duels between rapier and sword I would predominately assign to Samurai mentality, and the fact that irregardless of popular belief, some of those rapier guys may have just been better swordsmen, but didnt expect some crazy little japanese guy to keep swinging at them with 6 inches of steel in his belly <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=":)" />. While it's certainly true or even likely that many Samurai, through ingrained feeling of superiority or just plain stubborness, underestimated the reach and style of a rapier-wielder, I feel that it was probably less than systematic. Maybe more misunderstanding or underestimation of philosophy than purely the opposed weapon system on either side; experienced swordsmen/warriors often develop the art of evaluating and understanding another's fighting style quickly, because those who don't usually don't live to become experienced swordsmen. And remember too that the "one hit and he dies" view of sword duels perpetrated by the movies is not very accurate at all; in 18th century france, nearly 70% of the smallsword duellists killed as a result of duels died 2 or more days after their wounding, and quite a few of those resulted in the death of both parties. These weren't "first blood" duels either, which normally were considered unmanly or unsatisfying (another movie contradiction); they fought until one or the other simply couldnt go on and would submit, lose consciousness, or be stopped by a judge/seconds . I don't have solid statistics for a lot of other settings such as early rapier, Tokugawa japanese, viking duels of law, etc, but there are hosts of anecdotal evidence suggesting that quite a few folks survived sword duels only to succumb to their injuries, infection, etc later. EDIT: Another side note; my Kenjutsu sensei gave us some figures from a study performed by several japanese sword historians about duels from the pre-Tokugawa era up until their outlawing during that period. According to these studies, the average length of a duel between two samurai was estimated to be around 8 seconds. Fast. I wish I could remember the reference to the study right now.</blockquote>

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