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Post by demented on Feb 11, 2020 18:45:52 GMT
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Post by Cosmoline on Feb 13, 2020 17:48:17 GMT
Another pearl from Wiktenauer! I've never seen the whole thing before. Of course, how much of this was utilized in 15th century training, and how much was simply a translation of the Latin, is another question. I'm particularly interested in whether double weight weapons were actually used, and whether knightly class fighters trained with bow and sling (the Assize of Arms suggests they did not, but this was centuries later).
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Post by treeslicer on Feb 13, 2020 19:34:43 GMT
Jigen Ryu does this to an impressive extent. Youtubes of them bashing an upright pole are common and easy to find.
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Post by demented on Feb 13, 2020 20:08:41 GMT
Didn't the Japanese also string up bodies to use for sword training?
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Post by treeslicer on Feb 14, 2020 18:48:51 GMT
Didn't the Japanese also string up bodies to use for sword training? While I'm sure that this must have happened occasionally, I'm not aware of historical references to practicing cuts on cadavers or upon live prisoners prior to the Showa era adventures into China. The use of the bodies of executed criminals for testing swords during the Edo period is well known, but was carried out by a small cadre of specialists, and had nothing to do with sword training.
The use of rolled mats, poles, hay bales, and the like for Japanese sword training seems to have been the norm.
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Post by MOK on Feb 14, 2020 22:08:09 GMT
Yamamoto Tsunetomo makes several mentions in Hagakure (compiled 1709-1716) about using executions for practice.
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Post by legacyofthesword on Feb 15, 2020 3:59:00 GMT
Yamamoto Tsunetomo makes several mentions in Hagakure (compiled 1709-1716) about using executions for practice. Damn, that last paragraph is pretty chilling. |
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Post by treeslicer on Feb 15, 2020 6:53:37 GMT
Yamamoto Tsunetomo makes several mentions in Hagakure (compiled 1709-1716) about using executions for practice. Yup. You picked some choice cherries. I don't consider the examples a valid "yes" answer to demented's question. That's not "practice", it's "conditioning". Big difference. And they're in Hagakure because of their exceptionality.
Lovely little book (sarcasm warning!), summed up in Wikipedia as "[T]he book grapples with the dilemma of maintaining a warrior class in the absence of war and reflects the author's nostalgia for a world that had disappeared before he was born.". During Showa, it was beloved of the IJA (just the stuff to inspire banzai charges, etc.), and required reading for kamikaze pilots. The thing's close to a stream-of-consciousness ramble, having proverbial wisdom juxtaposed with conscienceless brutality. I view it as a sort of a samurai Mein Kampf. For the curious, I'm including a pdf copy, but would caution against taking it too seriously. Even in its own time, it was considered more than a little extreme. 
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Post by MOK on Feb 15, 2020 9:10:28 GMT
Yup. You picked some choice cherries. I don't consider the examples a valid "yes" answer to demented's question. That's not "practice", it's "conditioning". Big difference. And they're in Hagakure because of their exceptionality. Everything in Hagakure is in there because Yamamoto Tsunetomo said it and Tashiro Tsuramoto thought it worth writing down. Nothing more nor less. The book's also chock full of all the usual "kids these days", "everything was better in the past" and "the world is coming to an end" crap. It's a selection of remarks on warrior philosophy by someone born to a warrior caste and raised to be a warrior who never saw a war - kind of a Tyler Durden of his age, a wistful "middle child of history" (aren't we all). I can't blame him too much for what he was and thought, but it is somewhat remarkable how much more pragmatic, levelheaded and humane even something like e.g. Go Rin No Sho, written by an actual soldier, is when it happens to speak of the same things... |
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Post by treeslicer on Feb 15, 2020 9:24:27 GMT
Yup. You picked some choice cherries. I don't consider the examples a valid "yes" answer to demented's question. That's not "practice", it's "conditioning". Big difference. And they're in Hagakure because of their exceptionality. Everything in Hagakure is in there because Yamamoto Tsunetomo said it and Tashiro Tsuramoto thought it worth writing down. Nothing more nor less. The book's also chock full of all the usual "kids these days", "everything was better in the past" and "the world is coming to an end" crap. It's a selection of remarks on warrior philosophy by someone born to a warrior caste and raised to be a warrior who never saw a war - kind of a Tyler Durden of his age, a wistful "middle child of history" (aren't we all). I can't blame him too much for what he was and thought, but it is somewhat remarkable how much more pragmatic, levelheaded and humane even something like e.g. Go Rin No Sho, written by an actual soldier, is when it happens to speak of the same things... By "exceptionality", I meant that Yamamoto was picking particularly pointy sticks to goad his contemporaries with. The one where he brags about his public-spiritedness in playing executioner is a good example. He wasn't exactly writing a dispassionate memoir. Like using Xenophon's favorable writings about the Spartans, you have to take some of it with a historical grain of salt.
BTW. Tyler Durden, or more Walter Mittty, or maybe Hari Janosh? Some stories improve with the telling.  |
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Post by MOK on Feb 15, 2020 9:46:07 GMT
By "exceptionality", I meant that Yamamoto was picking particularly pointy sticks to goad his contemporaries with. The one where he brags about his public-spiritedness in playing executioner is a good example. He wasn't exactly writing a dispassionate memoir. Like using Xenophon's favorable writings about the Spartans, you have to take some of it with a historical grain of salt. BTW. Tyler Durden, or more Walter Mittty, or maybe Hari Janosh? Some stories improve with the telling. Oh, no story should ever be taken without salt! (Although, just to be extra clear because people keep getting this wrong, Tsunetomo wasn't writing any kind of book at all; it's just a bunch of things he said on various occasions and someone else wrote down. All those moral little tales about manly deeds and proper warrior spirit are third hand accounts.) |
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Post by treeslicer on Feb 15, 2020 9:50:25 GMT
By "exceptionality", I meant that Yamamoto was picking particularly pointy sticks to goad his contemporaries with. The one where he brags about his public-spiritedness in playing executioner is a good example. He wasn't exactly writing a dispassionate memoir. Like using Xenophon's favorable writings about the Spartans, you have to take some of it with a historical grain of salt. BTW. Tyler Durden, or more Walter Mittty, or maybe Hari Janosh? Some stories improve with the telling. Oh, no story should ever be taken without salt! (Although, just to be extra clear because people keep getting this wrong, Tsunetomo wasn't writing any kind of book at all; it's just a bunch of things he said on various occasions and someone else wrote down. All those moral little tales about manly deeds and proper warrior spirit are third hand accounts.) Yup. Wouldn't Cervantes have had fun with it? |
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