Samurai Swordsman - Stephen Turnbull

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elite nature of the samurai is an important factor to remember when considering the historical sources for the period. Some, like the important Azuma Kagami, are in the form of diaries or official chronicles, but others are more like heroic epics, written for an aristocratic public who wished to read of the deeds of their own class, and preferably their own family’s ancestors. So, for example, the hundreds of foot soldiers who accompanied the samurai into battle are almost totally ignored. For this reason, these gunkimono (war tales) have to be treated with considerable caution as historical records. They are, however, invaluable for the light they shed on samurai values and beliefs, and in particular the ideals the samurai cherished about how they should behave in action.11 Much of the description is concerned with the samurai acting as an individual and aristocratic lone warrior, whose brave deeds in single combat contribute to the overall victory. As will be explained below, this is a misleading construction, but it can provide very valuable information about the practice of the martial arts because the mode of combat and the use of various weapons are described within a framework of sound knowledge of the technical limitations of the arms and armor of the period.

      Several of the most important gunkimono have been translated fully or partially into English. The earliest of the genre, the Shōmonki, which deals with the rebellion of Taira Masakado, was written about the year ad 954, and contains valuable early descriptions of combat.12 The Konjaku Monogatari, which also includes Taira Masakado among its wide-ranging subject matter, has several sections of great interest, some of which are used here.13 Hōgen Monogatari contains vivid descriptions of the brief fighting of the 1156 rebellion.14 The later gunkimono, such as the well-known Heike Monogatari, are much less reliable in their descriptions of combat, and can indeed be very misleading. Karl Friday, in particular, has drawn attention to the deficiencies in Heike Monogatari, which is a work of polemics that achieved its present form as late as 1371. Among its stereotypes is an entirely fictitious contrast between the Minamoto as rough and ready warriors from the east, and the Taira as refined imperial courtiers.15

      Samurai Arms and Armor

      The samurai were fully armored and went into battle mounted on horses. By the twelfth century, the samurai wore armor of a characteristic design that was to have an important influence on the martial arts. It was made from small scales tied together and lacquered, then combined into armor plates by binding them together with silk or leather cords. A suit of armor made entirely from iron scales would have been prohibitively heavy, so a mixture of iron and leather scales was used, with iron predominating to protect the most vulnerable areas of the samurai’s body. This classic “samurai armor” was therefore of lamellar construction (armor made from small plates fastened together), the traditional defensive armor of Asia, rather than the plate and mail of European knights.16

      The standard suit of armor of the classical samurai of the Gempei War was known as the yoroi. The body of the armor, the dō, was divided into four parts, giving the yoroi a characteristic boxlike appearance. Two large shoulder plates, the sode, were fastened at the rear of the armor by

       a large ornamental bow called the agemaki. The agemaki allowed the arms fairly free movement, while keeping the body always covered, because the samurai did not use shields. Two guards were attached to the shoulder straps to prevent the tying cords from being cut, and a sheet of ornamented leather was fastened across the front to stop the bowstring from catching on any projection.

      The iron helmet bowl was commonly of eight to twelve plates, fastened together with large projecting conical rivets, and the neck was protected with a heavy, five-piece shikoro, or neck guard, which hung from the bowl. The top four plates were folded back at the front to form the fukigayeshi, which stopped downward cuts aimed at the horizontal lacing of the shikoro. The samurai’s pigtail of hair was allowed to pass through the tehen, the hole in the center of the helmet’s crown, where the plates met, either with or without a hat to cover it, which would give some extra protection. No armor was worn on the right arm, to leave the arm free for drawing the bow, but a kote, a simple baglike sleeve with sewn-on plates, was worn on the left. This completed the costume of the samurai which had one overriding purpose: to provide the maximum protection for a man who was a mounted archer. This role was so important that the samurai referred to their calling as kyūba no michi, or “the way of horse and bow.”

      The design of the traditional Japanese bow that the samurai wielded from his horse is still used today in the martial art of kyūdō. The bow was a longbow constructed from laminations of wood and bound with rattan. The arrow was loosed from about a third of the way up the length of the bow. A high level of accuracy resulted from hours of practice on ranges where the arrows were discharged at small wooden targets, from the back of a galloping horse. This became the traditional art of yabusame, which is still performed at festivals, notably in the city of Kamakura and the Tōshōgu Shrine in Nikkō. The archer, dressed nowadays in traditional hunting gear, discharges the bow at right angles to his direction of movement.

      The Way of Horse and Bow

      In ancient times, horses had been known only as beasts of burden, and the Japanese first came across war-horses during one of their early expeditions in Korea. During the first five centuries of the Christian era, Korea was ruled by the three rival kingdoms of Koguryo, Silla, and Paekche. Kinship ties with Paekche meant that this was a conflict in which Japan inevitably became involved, and in about ad 400 a Japanese army, sent to support Paekche and composed entirely of foot soldiers, was heavily defeated in battle by a Koguryo army riding horses. This battle was Japan’s first encounter with cavalry, and there is archaeological evidence that horses were being ridden in Japan within a century of this event. The plains of eastern Japan proved to be ideal ground for horse breeding and pasturing, and as riding skills developed, so did the notion of cavalry warfare, with mounted archery coming to be the preferred technique. In 553, Paekche once again sought Japanese help, and this time asked specifically for a large supply of bows and horses, thus indicating that the combination of horsemanship and archery was now firmly established in Japan. There are further references to the deployment of mounted archers in ad 672, when the brother of the late Emperor Tenchi asserted his claim to the throne in a bold revolt against his usurping nephew, and used the powerful striking force of a squad of mounted archers.

      Shimazu Yoshihisa of Satsuma (1533–1611), dressed in full armor.

      A hunting party, one of the best ways of training a mounted archer.

      A fur covered quiver and a selection of arrows.

      A face mask, complete with moustache.

      A nodowa, giving protection of the throat.

      One of the most celebrated demonstrations of skill given by a mounted archer occurred at the Battle of Yashima in 1184. The Taira fastened a fan to the mast of one of their ships and challenged the Minamoto to bring it down. This drawing by Hokusai shows the young Nasu no Yoichi earning great glory for himself by hitting the fan with his first arrow, which greatly enhanced the morale of the Minamoto.

      Samurai mounted combat, single or in the form of a pitched battle, began with the bow, and usually ended with it. Accounts of sword fighting between samurai, or even hand-to-hand grappling with dagger or bare hands, are quite clearly descriptions of what happened at the end of an encounter if, and only if, the mounted samurai had lost the use of his bow, or horse, or both. Otherwise, a fight between mounted samurai would be decided by bow and arrow. The following account from Konjaku Monogatari is probably the best of the genre:

      Then fitting arrows with forked heads to their bows, they urged their horses toward each

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