Daibutsu, Kamakura

Daibutsu, Kamakura
Daibutsu in Kamakura, June 2010. There were thousands of school kids visiting that day. It was still great fun.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

The myth of of samurai cavalry

I am republishing this 2009 post because there is such a common misconception regarding medieval samurai cavalry.

This poster from the Akira Kurosawa film Kagemusha illustrates the classic view of early samurai cavalry. Great cavalry charges of thoroughbred looking horses.


But as Karl Friday in his book Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan reveals, the mounted samurai of the movies bare little resemblance to the actual mounted warriors from medieval Japan. Early medieval Japanese war-horses were actually much smaller and slower than the horses seen in classic samurai movies.

According to Friday, the mounts favored by early medieval samurai were stallions raised in eastern Japan and selected for their size and fierce temperament. They were stout, short-legged, shaggy, short-nosed beasts, tough, unruly and difficult to control.

In 1953, a mass grave at Zaimokuza near Kamakura was unearthed that is believed to contain the remains of men and horses killed during Nitta Yoshisada's attack on the city in 1333. The skeletons show the horses of the period ranged in height from 109 to 140 cm at the shoulder. Modern thoroughbreds by comparison range in height around 160 to 165 cm.

Also, these medieval horses could not sustain high speeds for long distance due to their size and the weight they were carrying, mounted samurai with full armor. Even modern racing horses can only go full out for 200 or 300 meters. Early medieval Japanese horses gave the samurai a rugged, stable, and comfortable platform from which to shoot their arrows, but it was a heavy beast not well designed for high speeds or long distance riding.

Horseman had different roles throughout the samurai era. During the Heian/Early Kamakura era they operated much like skirmishers with bows. They began to make greater use of hand-to-hand weapons like naginata and swords as time went by, ending up using primarily short yari during the sengoku. And by the late Sengoku with the advent of firearms, they did begin to function much like 'trucks'-there are many accounts where samurai were told to dismount before they reached the battlefield so as not to have their horses shot. Horses were rare and expensive, and no samurai was in a hurry to throw their horses lives and training away. (Samurai Archives)

In addition, the amount of dismounted combat in Sengoku jidai increased along with the increase with the number of guns. I think this was probably due to the fact that relatively few number of Japanese cavalry made it easier for concentrated fire of arquebus to defeat them. (Samurai Archives)

So the scenes in the movies with the cavalry charges that seem to go on forever are of course greatly embellished. But they make for an exciting movie.

8 comments:

  1. Saga of the Samurai 4 "Shingen in Command" does a great explaining Japanese horses. After reading that, it change my thinking. Conlan two books did have some pages on the subject as well. Still, Kagemusha was a kick ass movie. One of my favorites.

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  2. I love Kagemusha as well. I just watched it again last month. What is Shingen in Command? Is that a book? I think I've heard of it.

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  3. I still marvel at the scope of the final battle scene in Kagemusha. Classic Takeda Charge to the bitter end.

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  4. Except that Kagemusha is about Shingen more than 200 years later. Conclusions about Shingen's ponies shouldn't be drawn from horses hundreds of years before. Maybe they were the same, maybe they were smaller, or maybe they were bigger.

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  5. AL, that was only one source I provided by Friday. Many other documentation from Shingen's time period has also shown that the samurai horses were smaller and that Shingen and others did not engage in the large and long cavalry charges you see in the movies. Respected historian Thomas Conlan has also written much about this issue. The cavarly charges you see in the movies are a myth.

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  6. Al, please note also that this does not take away from the legacy of Takeda Shingen. Shingen was one of the greatest sengoku jidai generals ever. He was one of the few daimyo that put fear into Oda Nobunaga. Who knows what Shingen would have achieved had he not died of illness when he did.

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  7. From the Samurai Archives. Horseman had different roles throughout the samurai era. During the Heian/Early Kamakura era they operated much like skirmishers with bows. They began to make greater use of hand-to-hand weapons like naginata and swords as time went by, ending up using primarily short yari during the sengoku. And by the late Sengoku with the advent of firearms, they did begin to function much like 'trucks'-there are many accounts where samurai were told to dismount before they reached the battlefield so as not to have their horses shot. Horses were rare and expensive, and no samurai was in a hurry to throw their horses lives and training away.

    ReplyDelete
  8. In addition, the amount of dismounted combat in Sengoku jidai increased along with the increase with the number of guns. I think this was probably due to the fact that relatively few number of Japanese cavalry made it easier for concentrated fire of arquebus to defeat them.

    ReplyDelete