Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arrgh! Mark!" data-source="post: 1678192" data-attributes="member: 14559">As a fencer myself, there seems to be a misconception about a commited thrust. Being a student in a spanish style (with of course other elements such as Silver, Thibult and Voltaire) the defensive and cautious element of the western technique is not dwelt upon. From what I gather, you seem to assume two men who immediately (Ala an Iai draw) go at one another, which isn't the case - or the gentleman duellist attacks first. Why would he? I could do an immediate stop-thrust and my rapier is poking through the back of your neck, and my arm is lying on the ground - but thats not what is stressed in western martial arts (Though it is, for good or bad, in Japanese). I would instead play quite defensively, as I am trained to do. My culture enforces living as being something I generally like to do. So - no committed thrust to an expected area. Lunges are good for two things and I know it - getting you killed, and getting me killed. I only ever do it when I know I've a guaranteed kill.As for taking my rapier and chopping my hand - the western fighter can do the same to the samurai. A famous technique strait from Marozzo is simply to grip the hilt and draw into a striking position. Death results. If a samurai takes his hand from his hilt, he loses almost every advantage the katana has.There are far more uses for a poking weapon than what one may expect. the thrust and the lunge are not the only things the western swordsman can do. something as simple as interlocking with his blade; his movement triggers a cut over and reverse posture, or whatever. doing funny things like slicing the samurai's cheeks open would be embarrassing to the samurai, and all too possible with an earlier rapier. The kendoists in the discussion seem to assume the westerner will attack from a direction they are expecting, as well - which is not something the rapier is designed for. Unexpected angles, circling attacks, even things like a quillion to the eyeball are all to be unexpected by the samurai.Also forgotten was that generally the rapier and the dagger were paired, or buckler and good old Gentlemans Cut and Thrust. But, I too would agree that likely they would kill each other. The arrogent western duellists thought nothing of the orient, and vice versa for the occident. Guards were let down. The point I'm trying to make at any rate is the western duellist has a far greater repository of movements than a thrust and a lunge <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />. Problem being though, is that though our westerner just stabbed a samurai through the throat, that last dying strength combined with that sharp katana can open up large arteries <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

Verification