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KNIGHT!

42 (49.4%)

SAMURAI!

7 (8.2%)

BOTH SUCK!

15 (17.6%)

NEUTRAL!

4 (4.7%)

I DON'T CARE!

17 (20%)

Total Members Voted: 81

[Empiricist]

Gonna need some context on this one.

Yeah, context is kinda' needed. That said, without context, both, being symbols of social oppression and brutality, objectively suck. They represent fairly terrible times, nearly unilaterally terrible people, and pointedly obsolete military ideology. Their sole saving grace was the occasionally aesthetically pleasing armament, for what little difference it makes.

I love you man.

I shall now provide a hypothetical scenario:

They are both in a locker room, wearing only jock straps, and armed with wet towels.  Both have self aggrandizing names.  Which one is the "best"?

Hygiene wins.

[Hawkfrost]

It's not even a contest.  Samurai is super duper hyped.  Knights didn't live up to the hype either but they were competent.

Japan had crappy steel, little coal and poor horses.  Japan was an insular culture where samurai didn't need to fight a variety of foes.  People also tend to massively underestimate the variety of warriors that were labeled knights.  Almost every fighting style that was fought in Europe from the late roman empire until muskets was used by knights at some point or other.

So generally speaking, knights hands down.  They actually knew how to fight, they knew how to adapt and they were much, much, much better equipped.  I'm pretty sure that a knight with a bastard sword could bisect a samurai in full lacquer armor with a simple horizontal slash.

And there's the troublesome fact that the height of the samurai came after knights had finally disappeared from European battlefields.  The contemporary of the pop culture samurai would be a Cuirassier armed with a pistol among other things and capable of killing a samurai 99.9% of the time using Caracole tactics.

The steel was good.  The iron ore was bad.  There is a huge difference.

A knight wouldn't try to cut a samurai in half because knights are trained well enough to know that it would be a stupid tactic that telegraphs itself and creates a huge opening.  Likewise, while a katana can stab through plate, it be obvious to the samurai that any attempt to do so would be easy to avoid, and create a huge opening.

First off, a katana is not designed as a thrusting weapon and would not be able to pierce plate, because no sword can pierce proper plate armor. You can thrust BETWEEN the plates, but not through a solid wall of tempered steel. It really doesn't happen. Same with being able to cut through with a slash; the entire reason European swords transitioned to an almost entirely thrust based design was because of this. You can see this with weapons like the estoc and the longsword.


Second off, samurai were primarily archers and rarely used their swords in actual combat. The whole magical katana mythos and "bushido" code came about after they had already become bureaucrats and wanted to inflate the prestige and honor of their position.


Third off, a samurai and a knight are the same thing just located in different places. Both were nobles who ruled through strength of arm and received land and peasants as payment instead of money, both were the best armored and trained soldiers in their respective lands, and both rather quickly became phased out once gunpowder weapons entered the battlefield.

[Bohandas]

Second off, samurai were primarily archers and rarely used their swords in actual combat. The whole magical katana mythos and "bushido" code came about after they had already become bureaucrats and wanted to inflate the prestige and honor of their position.


Third off, a samurai and a knight are the same thing just located in different places. Both were nobles who ruled through strength of arm and received land and peasants as payment instead of money, both were the best armored and trained soldiers in their respective lands, and both rather quickly became phased out once gunpowder weapons entered the battlefield.

There's also the difference of stupid and unnecessarily grandiose Chivalry vs. even stupider and unnecessarily grandiose Bushido.

[Ogdibus]

First off, a katana is not designed as a thrusting weapon

It doesn't need to be.  It just needs to have a strong and sharp tip, which it does, with the exception of gunto.  The samurai did not use gunto, though.

because no sword can pierce proper plate armor.

Which armor counts as "proper", which knights had it, and how do you know this.

My claim was based on a video demonstration, so it's hardly irrefutable proof, but I did also say that it requires too much force for too little effect to even bother trying.  It's not as if it were a claim of superiority.

Second off, samurai were primarily archers

They weren't just archers, they were mounted archers.

There is also a huge difference between pre Muromachi and post Muromachi period samurai.  A knight in plate would be the contemporary of a Late Muromachi or Sengoku period Samurai, which is after the decline of ritualized combat and the switch of emphasis from bow to sword.

[Cheeetar]

Gonna need some context on this one.

Yeah, context is kinda' needed. That said, without context, both, being symbols of social oppression and brutality, objectively suck. They represent fairly terrible times, nearly unilaterally terrible people, and pointedly obsolete military ideology. Their sole saving grace was the occasionally aesthetically pleasing armament, for what little difference it makes.

I love you man.

I shall now provide a hypothetical scenario:

They are both in a locker room, wearing only jock straps, and armed with wet towels.  Both have self aggrandizing names.  Which one is the "best"?

I would have already swooned by this point, and as such would be unable to judge any contest between the two.

[Loud Whispers]

I HEAR THE GORILLION FOLDED KATANAS

I HAVE HEEDED THE SUMMONS

PREPARE YOUR FOLDS

[miauw62]

I HEAR THE GORILLION FOLDED KATANAS

I HAVE HEEDED THE SUMMONS

PREPARE YOUR FOLDS

[grorious nippon steel intensifies]

[LordBucket]

who is superior The Knight Or The Samurai?

Based on several minutes of intensive research comparing google image searches for sexy samurai cosplay vs sexy knight cosplay I think I can safely conclude with a high degree of certainty that samurai definitely beat knights.

But sexy ninja cosplay absolutely destroys both the other two combined.

Like, seriously. Ninja cosplay. No question. Also, if you check the knight image search page there are some ninja on it. So they've already infiltrated the knights as I type this, and will probably have killed them all by the time you read it.

So, ninja.

context

Context. I have provided it.

[Loud Whispers]

My claim was based on a video demonstration, so it's hardly irrefutable proof, but I did also say that it requires too much force for too little effect to even bother trying.  It's not as if it were a claim of superiority.

If this is that one video of the Murrican' lad shoving a katana through a cuirass whilst a longsword fails to do the same, do note that the katana used is a modern one made in America on a weapons show run by Americans for the purpose of promoting American products. It isn't remotely close to being an accurate analogue.

[MDFification]

Fun fact: A lot of the 'Bushido' code as we know it, including the famous provisions on suicide-before-dishonor, was made up by the Imperial Japanese government at the turn of the 19th century. So many of the 'ancient traditions' which modern culture ascribes to the samuri were not, in fact, a codified thing they practiced.

However, the Code of Chivalry (dating back to Charlemagne) has provisions for honorable suicide. Knights just didn't really follow their honor codes very well, because they were extremely restrictive and tended to get you killed.

IMO Knights would win; plate armor > arrows, so long ranged combat would be out of the question and they'd have to close. Upon which point Shield > 2handing a katana (seriously, not having a means to parry or block other than with the blade is a bizarre trait for a warrior and only could have evolved in such an insular culture) followed by pretty much any weapon > lacquer armor.

Samuri did have a role they performed better in than a knight would, but that was as a highly mobile archer effective at suppressing light infantry or light cavalry. Seeing as that was all they were likely to face in their day, they were the most effective fighting force in Japan. If they were faced with anything else, they likely wouldn't have performed so well; their tactics and equipment just wasn't suited to any different role.

[WillowLuman]

Good plate armor can be pierced, but you need a strong, sturdy, and most likely short point, with a fair amount of mass (and/or a lot of force) behind it. The relatively wide point of a semi-flexible katana blade just isn't up to the job. Think more like the beak of a war hammer.

[Radio Controlled]

some samurai death poems were kinda awesome though.

[Loud Whispers]

Also that one Buddhist who frightened his enemies in death was pretty cool. His corpse was nailed to the wall with arrows, so the enemy still believed he was alive.

[birdy51]

What if two horses was thrown into the fray?

Would the Samurai and the Knight team up to defeat the horse overlords, or would they fall in division?

[TamerVirus]

Also that one Buddhist who frightened his enemies in death was pretty cool. His corpse was nailed to the wall with arrows, so the enemy still believed he was alive.

You mean Benkei Musashibou, right?

Pic related, it's modern imagery of Benkei

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