Ancient Japanese Shields

The nara period starting around 700 is where the samurais are sent west to fight the emeshi.

Ancient japanese shields. A historical presentation about ancient japanese warfare and some specific military choices made by the ancient japanese warlords. Please consider supporting me on patreon for more and better. Bows played a significant role in medieval japanese warfare so there was no lack of ranged weaponary that could explain the lack of shields. Bushido values of battle were a symptom not a cause of sword centric shieldless single combat.

Horo a cloak reserved for prestigious high ranking samurai. You can see it just in the way it forms a straight line of defense when in a defensive stance. Its purpose was to identify. Shields were in use during the shang period or even before.

Other points to consider. Japanese actually had shields and their use evolved with the advancing nature of warfare as weapons became more sophisticated. I can t think of any books right off the top of my head but the earlier cultures like the jomon and yayoi and kofun used shields and huge cleaver like swords. The japanese stirrup contrary to accepted answer has been in use since 4th 5th century because of xianbei warriors in.

The shield is the earliest defensive system used by mankind universely with the odd ecxeption of japan. A samurai on horseback wearing ō yoroi 大鎧 in the beginning soldiers wore their shields so they had two hands to do other stuff like firing arrows using other two handed cqc weapons. Early ones were larger probably because the body armour of the time was less efficient than later versions. It provides additional protection from arrows.

Both samurai and ashigaru used shields tate to hide behind both on land and sea these were not hand held shields they were large wood panels. The armor was the shield. Actually shields were used in early japanese warfare. Agemaki a decorative.

Some combined bronze plates and leather while more rudimentary versions would have been made from whicker interlaced bamboo or reeds wooden slats or animal skins. Usualy i see two recuring types of answers to this question. It was only much later that they were abandoned. The unique samurai armour coupled with the.

Also early japanese armies followed the chinese style of fighting and used shields. Early japanese foot soldiers did at one time use hand shields dorothy perkins notes the use of wood and leather shields by foot soldiers as early as the mid 6th century. A samurai s cloak horo.