Who would win: Samurai or Knight?

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The Samurai sword is too sharp I think. I read they had to redesign them after the Mongol invasions because they broke on the Mongols' leather armour. Take off the armour and then Samurai has advantage obviously coz he is swinging a blade. How is it honourable that a warrior in armour has a weapon designed for cutting flesh anyway?

Even while covered in plate armor, the joints are always an easy target, or if you wanna take a risk, you can try passing the blade under the helm at 90 degrees.. Also, i don't know if any of you tried wearing even something as basic as a chainmail shirt (i had an awesome teach in school who would take a class as a workshop for doing this outside of his classes....even showed us one of his work once, as well as his method, which is rather simple...) but it is rather heavy to wear, let alone adding platemail to it... Whereas i'm not as well documented on samurai armor, but it can't have been as heavy as platemail, so someone relatively dextrous could easily overpower a lumbering knight (it's all relative though).

Welsh Yeoman archers killed off the effectiveness of plated knights, and since all but the most specialised Samurai used archery I vote for the Samurai. The heavy plate armour most associate knights with was for jousting only, and was so heavily armoured it was effectively useless in combat.

After the domination of longbow archers and crossbow, "knights" started to wear less armour prefering to use a more modernised battle strategy known to all as "flanking". Before this the impetious knights would just charge the middle line and break the enemies shield wall.


So, mounted the knight would be archered down, and dismounted he would die from exhaustion trying to fight the Samurai in his overlapping plated armour that is much lighter and allows for more freedom of movement.

England relied on archers cos they couldn't afford to lose as many men and they could run back to the safety of an island. In reality, on the mainland, the sword ruled not archers nor even longbowmen.

^ interesting point. Japan being also an island, maybe we should see a connexion?

The ruling class was based out of what is now France for extended periods during the time "knights" were useful. Archers were originally used because "fighting" men who were usually farmers/hunters could get hold of them relatively easily compared to iron and steel melee weapons, add the additional cost of armours. The average conscript farmer couldnt hope to afford anything but the bow he would have used outside of war time.

During the same period the French relied on extremely expensive knights and payed the price for it. Others armies had been using the slower "crossbow" for a fairly long time.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cr%C3%A9cy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt

It is very good at thrusting. The tip of the blade is the sharpest point. Even when the blade itself is dull.

The problem is the sword is curved.

It never fails to surprise me how little people know about history, But whatever. A katana can still thrust, Its just not as effective as a strait sword. Either way the armor of the knight is way to heavy. Samurai hands down would win. But take off the armor and thats a whole different ballgame. Then it would depend on personal strength, agility, stamina and skill. I'd pay good money to see that ! !

Knight would win. He need to hit the samurai once and then it's game over. The samurai wouldn't even be able to block a direct hit from a two handed sword since it would break the catana into pieces.

Both knights and samurais were warrior from birth so that makes them about equal in skill.

I seem to remember hearing things like this before now. If I remember properly european soldiers who's main armour was mail armour was resistant to heavy blows but very suseptable to the arows of the Japanese, while the light armour of the japanese was resistant to arows but weak to the heavy blows. I am not quite sure how much armour a knight would wear to battle, whether they would wear very heavy armour to block arows, but I would asume lower speed by a lot and require a horse, but the question didn't a horse, so that would be excluded. And I would asume that if a knight was in such heavy armour, the samurai would kust have to use speed and get a good hit.

I think the arrowheads the samurai used were too broad to be a real danger to a mailed opponent. (I'm not sure of this however.)

It don't. It hinders your movement and tiers you faster, but your speed is the same, since your hits most often are going from up-down, gravity helps you alot. The worst part is to get your sword up again, that drains you alot.

Edit:

Indeed.

Edit 2:

You have to be one hell of an archer to manage to take down someone wearing this...