I've never seen a portrayal of samurai or medieval Japanese soldiers with shields. Why? Did they not invent the most obvious thing ever?
>>65351257Because movies and games don't portray them accurately.Katanas weren't their primary weapon either.
>>65351257Samurai were primarily horseback archers
Long spears could also be used for defense, and Japanese armor and helmets incorporated various features designed to deflect arrows.
>>65351257did you get your knight portrayals exclusively from hollywood?
>>653513221346 is peak and you cant change my mind
>>65351327Nope that's wrong because it's actually the 1250s that kick the most ass
They did. Japanese handheld shields were primarily associated with non-samurai and with earlier eras before the Warring States period.
>>65351257Handheld shields existed, but seem rarely portrayed in art. Samurai used two handed weapons a lot. In the earlier eras, mounted bows and naginata, and taichi. They had huge pauldrons that could be adjusted on the fly to sit forward if they turned bladed on the saddle that served a similar function as a shield. Later on, yari became much more common, as well as fighting on foot being supported by large ashigaru units. The large pauldrons mostly went away and a more streamlined type of armor took over. The type of shield that is common in portrayals, and thus probably in real life, were large shields that would be planted on the ground, like a pavise.
>>65351382https://gunbai-militaryhistory.blogspot.com/2017/12/tate-tedate-japanese-shields.html?m=1Here's an old blog post that I was half remembering for the above post.
>>65351322I hate that stupid fake Frankish helmet found in one or two illustrations by monks depicting the troops like Romans or Greeks from antiquity with these meme helmetsNo helmet like that or derivation of it has ever been found
>>65351322Can you read english? OP did not mention knights.
Maybe same reason why European knights discarded the shields eventually?The armor was considered good enough.
>>65351588early medieval descriptions are in general incredibly bogus and fraught with bullshit fantasies, at least the pic got the winged spear right for the period since it had appeared only slightly earlier.
>>65351592what would constitude a medieval soldier more than a knight or a man at arms, colloqually also referred to as a knight, my pedantic saar?
>>65351257Using shield is not seen as honorable by the samurai class.
>>65351379Yeah when you think about it, the Sengoku era already had firearms and shields were on the way out in Europe by that time too
>>65351621What additional word did OP include between the words "medieval" and "soldiers"? Read the post carefully, this will be on the test.
It was hard to find a good one-handed weapon.
>>65351257Gey
>>653513221165 feels like an imposter.
>>65354884Kettle hats are a bit unsexy
>>65351588interesting that in inaccurately depicting a helmet frequently seen during the time period they tried to display they ended up coming close to designing a helmet that largely emerges almost 800 years later
