Ghost Dog was a great movie.

What kind of "Armor" are we talking about? Sheet metal?

Also, the whole thing about the samurai being educated fighters is essentially BS. You're always going to lean to one side. You can't be an award winning poet and fighting in Pride at the same time.

Wrong. You are confusing foot soldiers with officers and commanders. The tradition of gentleman/scholar/officer is ancient and well-documented. Officers have been some of the best-educated people in societies throughout history.

yep wastrel is right, look at pericles , thucydides, julius ceaser----- to name but a few

All right..I wouldn't doubt that there were some smart officers throughout history, and in late feudal Japan as well when the military was being deemphasized.

However, my point is slightly different. You can be an amazing warrior, or an amazing scholar, but not both. I read this in some of the readings for my friend's Japanese history class. Of course, this does not guarantee truth, but it seems like it would indeed be the case that throughout feudal Japan there would be an emphasis on war or scholarship depending on what's going on.

Of course, there are people who are intelligent warriors. I don't know specifics in feudal Japan, but take a modern example like Wesley Clark. High ranked general and Rhode's scholar. Nobel prize winning physicist? No.

And give me some examples of gentlemen/scholars/officers in feudal Japan.

There definitely were these types in ancient China (Warring States period I believe..continued on through Zhou), so it's probably the case they were in Japan I suppose.

Samurai were not the rank-and-file Albert. You're looking for some extreme examples. "Award-winning poet"? "Nobel Prize winning physicist"? That's getting silly.

What you said was that they weren't educated fighters. I'm telling you, you can't be an effective officer without being relatively well-educated.

The leader of a "unit" is not the one who is the best in single combat.

I'm using extreme examples in order illustrate what I percieve to be the common view of the samurai. I think it's way off base; again I think it was somewhere of a middle ground depending on the time period.

Where I think we run into trouble is the equating of a samurai with an officer. Since "officer" is a modern term I don't see how it applies to feudal Japan. It's like saying "the ancient nations of the world.." The concept of a nation is a modern term so it doesn't apply. Basically I don't know enough about samurai history so I'll just leave it at that.

And a correction: it was the Zhou..then the Warring States. My chronology was wrong.

The "officer" class has its roots in the European gentry. The samurai were a pseudo-gentry, and later full-blown gentry class.

And there were commissions and officers at least as early as the Hundred Years War.

The Hundred Years War is irrelevant since we're talking East Asian history here. As far as the gentry stuff, I have no idea. I hope to take a class on feudal Japan at some point.

remember we are still talking about a period here where there was not much formal education, the samuria class, having access to a full education, would be cond=sidered thinkers

Albert,
It's called an analogy.

What makes a good commander, Albert?

Ok, so the officers during the Hundred Years' War were analogous to the samurai of the 14th century. But what was the social/economic status of the samurai at this point? How exactly do they correspond to the officers of the HYW? Basically I think you need to flesh that out more to make it clear exactly what's going on.

Also, the whole thing about the samurai being educated fighters is essentially BS. You're always going to lean to one side. You can't be an award winning poet and fighting in Pride at the same time.

I'm trying to address this comment. Military commanders are educated. And individual battlefield prowess is not the same as command prowess.

The samurai were like virtually any officer corps that ever existed. They were educated. No one is saying that they were Nobel prize-winning physicists, Pulitzer prize-winning poets or anything nonsensical like that.

My point is that like any corps of commanders, they were required to be educated. The only reason the samurai seem remarkable to anyone is because of stupid martial arts fantasies about samurai being whirlwinds of death and haiku-riffing geniuses.

It all comes from a basic misunderstanding of the nature of unit combat that only a martial artist could construct.

Albert, let me explain my point regarding samurai and their role in society, and what I was trying to accomplish by making that statment.

The Tokugawa era samurai was not a fighter. The warring states period was over, and with the exception of a peasant uprisings, there would be no internal war in Japan for a long time. During this time period, the samurai, who composed at the most 2% of Japans population, grew into an administrative role. They didn't train in MA much if at all, they didn't lead armies, they ran the country. There were generals and commanders at this time as well, many of whom were of the samurai caste, but the role of that caste become one of governing as opposed to waging war.

The foot soldiers, commoners, and the "farmer Bushi" (lower ranking members of the samurai class who owned thier own farms) were the fighting types. They were the ones ordered to put down revolts and such. So, an army of farmer warriors and conscript footsoldiers lead by Samurai generals and their officers would have invaded Korea. It's kind of analogus to the US of today vs the US of 1776. George Bush ain't leading the troops in Iraq, but George Washington was leading his troops. I understand it's not a perfect analogy, so don't hurt me. :)

The real reason I wanted to draw peoples attention to the fact that the Samurai class were a group of administrators rather then the worlds greatest warriors is that I, as a practicioner of Japanese Traditional MA, am offended by the massive misrepresentations made by the uneducated masses about what JMA is or was.

The samurai WERE NOT the best warriors ever. The katana IS NOt the greatest sword ever. Those who claim that the Tokugawa samurai were ALL expert swordsman and deadly fighters are making a statement not unlike me saying that since the American military is the most powerful in the world at this time, those senators must really be a bunch of bad-azzes.

Medevial Japan was militarily dominant over a relatively small section of the world compared to other warrior cultures and nations, and spent most of it's feudal era looking inward and ignoring the rest of the world. As an academic study, they are really neat. They perserved a great number of arcane and fascinating combat systems over a long time period.

But they weren't supermen.

Btw, in the final battles of the warring state period, prior to the Shogunates esthablishment, more people were killed on the battlefeilds of Japan by thrown ROCKS then by swords(I can get the stats for you if you wish, they were compiled by Karl Friday).

ok, rant over. you may return to your normal discusion :)