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Originally Posted by Doppleganger I don't buy that European Knights were just as fanatical, even more so than Japanese Samurai. Christian Knights did not celebrate death in battle as the Samurai did, did not make it a core principle of their faith, as the Samurai did. The values placed upon life by Christian cultures are entirely different than those placed by Bushido. If you want a modern analogy look at the Pacific Theatre in WW2. The Allied forces took very, very few Japanese soldiers as POWs. Why? Because being captured alive by your enemy is one of the worst disgraces of Bushido. Consequently, most Japanese soldiers fought with a zeal in battle that went beyond mere survival. Certainly some Christian soldiers matched this, the premier formations of the Waffen-SS spring to mind for example. But no general Allied forces fought with the intensity of their Japanese counterparts. This was also the case in Feudalistic era warfare.
I posted earlier that the Japanese Samurai would have a problem with European mounted knights for some of the reasons you said. The rank and file infantry soldier though would, IMO, be easily dispatched by a Samurai warrior, one on one. |
Greetings,
In trying to come to grips with this interesting issue, it might be useful to think about other European-Asian conflicts like the Mongol invasions or the Crusades or even the European liberation of Spain or Vienna. The Battle of Liegnitz might be of particular interest.
My knowledge of the period is quite limited, but I do know that some of the battles fought by the Teutonic Knights against the Poles resulted in extremely high losses among the nobility (ie. the grandmasters and that sort of thing). Also, my look at more modern issues has touched on the "Totenkopf" or death's head as some kind of medieval death philosophy. I seem unable to find anything substantial on this issue.
In any case, Europeans entertained an utterly different view of life 500 or 1000 years ago. European concepts seemed more similar to the Roman gladiatorial death cult that celebrated death. In Germanic folklore, death in battle was the road to Stovakor...sorry Valhalla. These traditions probably merged with Christianity to a certain extent. Since the European warrior elite devoted their lives to swordsmanship, riding and generally war, I think that comparisons with Bushido are probably in order.