Are you serious? Or just trolling?
I think we just found a butthurt European fan boy. The video is proof enough that the Katana is far superior to the longsword in most ways, hell the Japanese even used the Katana in WW2!
Lets keep things civil there is no need for name calling.
@SirWarriant Please tone down the trolling, this is warning 1.
People need to people able to discuss their ideas and debate the concepts freely.
My first thing… i will provide a counter video to your ‘Gunny’ video.
Now, better training you say?
Nope, pretty much on par for both sides, of course. You don’t become a Knight without becoming a page and then a squire, and both were as vigorous and they went through as much if not more training then a comparable Samurai would have. Samurai also started off as page boys, sometimes getting molested by the Samurai they served, if various sources are to be believed 
Better Armour you say?
Wrong. Blatantly false.
Of course, whilst a Samurai would not have been wearing the oft-cited ‘bamboo’ armours as is commonly believed, they did use Iron and steel lamellar armours held together with lacing… not too disimilar from Arabic lamellar armour of the High-Late medieval period.
However, the Plate armour of the 1400’s timeperiod was becoming exceedingly strong and durable, perhaps not as strong as the blued spring-steel of the 1500’s, but exceedingly hard none-the-less. There is little that is capable of penetrating through the contemporary plate armour of the 1400’s except for very strong thrusts with polearm weapons, crossbow quarrels fired from a steel arbalest from a good angle or perhaps a handgonne projectile from a relatively close distance… Outside of those weapons, there is little chance of anything getting through except for bludgeoning strikes. You then have to think about the padded doublet or aketon worn underneath, consisting of perhaps 12 or less layers of Linen or a few layers of batting material such as sheeps wool which would also provide additional protection from strikes that are able to get through the armour. That may not sound like much, but as far as i know from what was worn in Japan, the Samurai would be wearing far less-well padded garments under his own suit of armour, and that means that a sufficient strike would be far more damaging for a Samurai then it would for a Knight wearing Plate armour and a padded doublet from the 1400’s.
Unless your Samurai wants to lug around his Kanabo, which as various sources say, they can be pretty heavy even if they can be quite large and hefty,all just to defeat that armour, very good. It takes the Samurai that large, often knobbed Kanabo to perform the same job as a one handed or two handed flanged mace could do, all whilst being lighter then the Kanabo.
Outside of the Kanabo, well good luck killing the Knight . Notice how the Knight gets up pretty quickly at 1:08 of the video? You probably didn’t, or at the very least you wouldn’t admit to doing so, for such is the Cardinal sin of the uninformed person providing a Gunny video as a source of information and expecting to win in a debate 
.
The Katana is the best sword you say?
Now, i admire the craftsmanship of the Samurai sword, it is amazing what blacksmith’s can do when they lack high quality iron and steel and thus have to rely on what is essentially pattern-forging methods to geta decent sword. Of course the Vikings were doing the exact same thing in 800-900AD.
But, the best sword of it’s class… you mean a two-handed single-edged curved sword… i would much rather use a Indian or Arabic Schimitar such as the Shamshir, which being better shaped and curved, would deliver far more cutting ability then the Katana would, and potentially all within a single hand.
You can keep to your fantasies of a Katana slicing through armour, but i will tell you the reality if you wish to know of it. Do you want to know what happens if anyone swung their sword really hard at a suit of plate armour? Dissapointment and presumably a broken sword. A katana striking against a suit of Plate will most likely glance off and do little actual damage to the man in the suit, and would more likely result in the Katana needing to be maintained and fixed by an experienced blacksmith. Simply put, you never strike with the edge of your sword against armour unless you don’t mind paying for a new sword.
Knights never used their swords against plate armour in this way, with a very large swing, they either tried to get into the gaps of the armour or they grappled their opponents to the ground and aimed to get through the weakpoints in their armour, namely the visors. This is very similar to what the Samurai would have done in combat, which is why styles such as Yoroi-gumi that emphasized on grapples and take downs over striking became popular with the Samurai during the Senkoku Jedai era, this is because striking is useless against an armoured opponent because you would do little actual damage, whereas because armour inevitably has a weight and it heightens your point of balance, it is far easier to perform grapples that lay your opponent down on the ground.
If you look at 3:03 of the above video, you should notice how the unarmed man is utilizing grappling techniques against a man armed with a dagger. Even though this is unarmoured fighting, Fiore says that these most of those techniques are as good against armourered opponents as they are against unarmoured opponents.
Japan has always been way ahead in terms of technology and having the finest, best steel?
That is also wrong.
Do you know what the largest Japanese import was besides Chinese silks? Portuguese steel. I wonder what that apparently inferior steel was turned into? Pehaps Katanas produced on demand for the Ashigaru and Samurai classes?
Spanish and German steel were in high demand by many nations, and so was Indian and Damascus crucible steel in demand from Arabic and Asian countries, however there was never any demand for Japanese steel. If Japanese steel is as superior as you say, then would it not be the other way around? I don’t see the Portugese getting all excited about Japanese steel…
Although, on the other hand you do see excited Japanese Samurai walking around in their new Nanban plate armour that were imported at great cost from Portugal, you know, that actual bullet-resistant product, and not the native made Lamellar type armour (Although native suits of Nanban-style armour started being produced in the later parts of the Sengoku Jidai era). Warlords, especially Oda Nobunaga, were famous for their unique foreign armours, and they were highly praised by the Samurai for their protective benefits, especially against ‘Teppo’ or arquebus fire.
Technology, Why totally, the Japanese were always the best at everything, and everyone else has always been inferior!
Say, did the Japanese ever go so far as to make their own trans-atlantic trips via boat that was without the aid of foreign designs… nope, i never heard about them?
China made very good progress with their own great Treasure fleet, and if the current King had a larger incentive towards establishing better relationships, he would not have burned down his own fleet. History could very well have changed in that instance.
Instead, there were incentives towards establishing widespread trade outside of ‘Muslim hands’ which prompted European monarchs to open up new routes to the ‘spice lands’ which would remain independent of the now Muslim led Constantinople trade routes. The successful discovery of America and the circumnavigation of the ocean lead to increased interest in ship building, which then prompted for advances in the fields of cannon manufacturing to make better and lighter naval guns, which lead to advances here and advances there, while continuous national warfare lead to advances in battlefield technologies as well.
I have however heard about the Red seal ships, but those were apparently built under the guidance of an English man called William adams… nope, i guess it was the superior Japanese technology that inspired William adams and not the other way around .
The knight was beaten by peasant archers?
Wasn’t the requirement laid down by Edward the III state that for a Yeoman to be a Yeoman, that he must own land worth 30 shillings per year, and stipulated that they ought to be paid 4 pennies per day when enlisted?
These were not peasants, these were rich men. They could afford armour and were expected to be proficient with Longbows as well as with sword, and to know how to Grapple and how to wrestle, for village wrestling was as much about sport as it was for combat.
Knight’s were almost never defeated by peasants armed with bows. They were however defeated by veteran yeoman and retinue longbowmen who were armed with bows, but those were not peasants. These ‘peasants’ as you call them were well trained and skilled men who were not only proficient and skilled with their Longbows, they were also trained with sword and buckler techniques as would be similar as shown from the I.33 Fechtbuch manual. It was these Longbowmen who often worked in unison with the Man-at-arms and dismounted knights, both as archers and as actual fighters.
The Longbowmen were placed at the flanks or ‘echelons’ of the ranks specifically because the arrows from the longbow would not perform adequately against front-on-armour. It was only arrows from the flanks that had the most chance of getting through plate armour, and only because the gaps within the armour could only be struck when from the flanks. It was not the Archer that defeated the knight, it was the archers who weakened the enemy ranks with heavy fire before switching to melee weapons and joining the Man-at-arms to strike at the now fatigued and possibly bruised and battered knight’s. It could be called the late-medieval equivalent of ‘combined warfare’ today.
If you wish to be better informed on the ‘Hundred years war’ and the matter of armour as would have been worn during the period, i will include these educational videos that provide great insight on the matter.
The Longbowmen were far from peasants, these were early-professional soldiers, and it was these professional Longbowmen-soldiers who would eventually become the hallmark to what would become the professional mercenary-soldiers such as the Swiss and the Landsknect soldiers of the next hundred to two hundred years. Look to John Hawkwood as an example.
And finally, a Samurai was extremely quick and could land a killing stroke before a knight would know what was going on?
Oh really!
A Samurai is human, and thus has no bullshit-super powers and reflexes like you would seem to presume. The reality is that a Samurai would be just as quick as a Knight, both are trained and presumably experienced and veteran warriors and would thus know what to expect and how to react when a sword swing is thrown.
If a sword swing is thrown, step backward, return with a counter stroke, if defense is given to couterstroke, defend with edge of blade and either parry or evade. This is what real combat is like.
There will be no killing stroke in one blow. If a Samurai knows that his opponent is armoured, he will try to get around that armour, and that very same thought will be within the Knight’s head as well.
If that Samurai attempted to get that perfect killing strike within that blow, the blow will have glanced off the armour, and the Knight would now have a very exposed armoured Samurai right were he wants him.
I am done.
Of course, you may continue to deny or debate my post, but it will ring hollow to the truths that i try to convey with my reply. You may continue to post misguided misconceptions about the overly fantasized and mysticised warriors from the Far East, but i think i have spent enough time providing sources and trying to educate you on the subject. It is not going to be as clear cut as “Oh, the Samurai totally jumps in with cat-like reflexes and subdues the ignorant peasant Gaijin with his 1 billion-times folded diamond sharp katana that can warp the space-time-continuum!”
The fact is that none are superior to the other, at least not to any discernible degree. They are products of their times and their places, and given a different scenario, things could very well be different. The facts are not worth hiding, there are so many things in common between Knights and Samurai, they are products of a ‘feudal’ era, their martial arts have much in common and yet all you seek to do is to divide them with your fantasies, to make one or the other superior.
Simply put, provide evidence to your claims. If you cannot provide credible claims that cannot be backed by sourced resources, then i will not debate with you further, and you will have made a mockery of yourself.
Now, this has taken me a long time to write, and i have provided you with sources that i hope will provide you with information that will hopefully give you more rounded understanding on the subject.
Note:
If you feel offense, know that some of what i say is meant to be sarcasm and is not meant to harm or otherwise belittle you. Your post did come off as what could be described as ‘fanboyism’ or even ‘weeaboo-ism’, but it was the misconceptions and blatant ‘untruths’ within your post that served as the point of my contention.
I do hope that the next time you want to contribute to a thread that you consider thinking about what you post first, and try to make what you write factual. If you are going to enter into a debate, it is a good idea to provide ‘legitimate’ sources.
Sincerely, TheJackinati275.
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Thank you for the constructive information, you have made me rethink my position on the matter.
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It is no problem.
I like to have debates that perhaps while a little bit harsh, try to give factual statements that are backed by examples and evidence in an attempt to show the truth.
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Sometimes it is a good idea to make a step back and rethink your position. 
**Wish you a peaceful Christmas!**
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this is an amazing idea for a video game. I would definitely pay for a great Crusades game like that
I for one would aboslutely love a game like this, set in feudal Japan. As has been said previously, most games set during this period are fantasy, over the top, or stratgey games - and most of them suck tbh. I would defintely back a reimagining of this type of game in Japan or even China.
Sidenote: why the hell are people complaining about Japanese steel. The quality of a nations steel doesn’t impact whether or not a good game could be made from the era and setting. This isn’t a debate over which nation had better equipment, weapons or warriors. It’s simply a post suggesting Japan would be a good setting for a similar game, and I whole heartedly agree.
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Dear god you re-awoken the beast you know not what you have done!
Many ancient history fans tend to lean fanboy toward European or Eastern cultures and then like to debate the subtle nuances of each aspect endlessly in places where it was never meant to be discussed.
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Lmao Oh damn! I didn’t realise how old this thread was when I posted XD
But yeah thats just stupid, we talking about making a great game with a great setting, people need to chill.
What…noooo, because that would make too much sense 
have you seen the threads where ppl literally just hate on each other?
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