Why Didn T Japan Use Shields
The battles with the emishi who were skilled at riding horses necessitated a similar horse mounted warrior to fight them.
Why didn t japan use shields. While facing enemy arrows or polearms a samurai placed his big shoulder shield on the front covering the face and the upper torso. A historical presentation about ancient japanese warfare and some specific military choices made by the ancient japanese warlords. 1 in japan sword fighting comes from spear fighting techniques. At some point in time the hand held shield seems to have been completely abandoned in japan its not as if the japanese never used hand held shields.
On why didn t the samurai use shields as often in addition to the inconvenience a hand held shield poses to a horse borne archer one of the clearest reason is because the unique samurai armour the kogusoku and ōsode. Let this sink in. The biggest reason european mediterranean armies developed large metal shields was to combat the massed arrow volleys that were commonly used. In japan however powerful long range bows were slower to develop and thus massed arrow volleys were less of a concern.
By ryan dawson on june 28 2020 shekel. 2 furthermore using the sword as mainly a dueling and self defense weapon the use of the shield wasn t so favored. As a result the shield wasn t so prominent. To be able to use effectively the bow the samurai didn t use hand held shields.
3 japan lacked hellenistic and roman influence which was huge in the case of europe. Besides japan i don t know any country or place in the world that had active relations with countries possessing shields and just didn t catch on to it. Although the preference is not to use hand held shields sometimes the samurai class did use shields whilst riding into battle. Reposting a vid i put on epimetheus s channel japanese hs girls forced to be battlefield nurses.
Why didn t the japanese use shields 0. 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. Use of shields in japan s history. Why didn t the japanese use shields.
The use of shields in warfare as existed at least since the bronze age and it became a core element of warfare in all european and asian nations. To view this content you must be a member of ry s patreon at 1 or more.