There is a reason this thread is so long. These two fighters would have been profoundly well matched, and in all honesty there is just no definitive answer other than the skill of the fighter.

If these two forces were at war for any length of time, both sides would have developed methods for dealing with their foes. The Europeans and the Japanese were nothing if not innovative when necessity arose. The Japanese would develop better martial arts maneuvers for unbalancing their heavier foes, as well as practiced targeting the narrow weak points in their armor. The Europeans would have trained more shield wall tactics. Both armies would have very quickly elected to put as many infantry troops and archers between one another as possible. Finally, who is to say the samurai wouldn’t have developed use of the shield after seeing it’s successes, or the knights a martial art of their own? After any contact between these two groups, the debated contest would be moot.

Therefore, the only thing we have to debate is the initial contest itself, which would have been a draw, and perhaps a few rematches that would boil down to the skill of the fighters.

I’ve practiced martial arts since age 5. My father was a kung fu instructor. In 1995, I began practicing Aikido, and have also studied Kendo and Iaido. I have fought heavy weapons (a sport approximation of the knight’s style of combat) since 1985, and have done historical fencing since 1998. I’ve debated this subject with the best of them, both verbally and on the sparring field. There is no clear advantage to either the knight or the samurai.

(The winner of this fight is the guy with the gun, which is the fencer who had enough sense to stay out of melee range with either of those dudes, knowing full well he’d lose if he dared to cross blades. The best he could hope for in melee with them would have been getting a killing blow lodged into their armor, at which point they’d have anywhere from 10 seconds to 3 minutes to chop him in half before bleeding to death or falling from shock, which was far more than they’d have needed because if the fencer opened himself enough to do so, the killing blow would already have been coming. Guns. Lots of really big guns. That’s why we use them now instead of swords and armor.)

All kidding aside, any knight worth his weight in armor isn’t going to fall for the bait of chase in the first place, and this fight will be a stalemate as the female samurai isn’t going to engage the knight on his terms nor is the knight going to engage her on hers.

Yet again, this contest is a draw.

The Japanese developed a high carbon steel smelting process while figuring out how to use the poor quality iron they had. In the folding process, the Japanese would put charcoal into the iron, creating steel that was higher quality than the Damascus steel that Europeans coveted. Their steel was simply better.

Next, the samurai’s martial arts were in fact much more evolved than the western combat styles. Also, the samurai martial arts involved a great deal of momentum countering and redirection, giving an advantage to them when facing larger more heavily armored opponents. While there is a great deal of over exaggeration about the samurai’s martial arts, all one need to to see the capabilities of these styles in action in the real world is take a look at Aikido, Judo, or Jujitsu which are derived from the samurai arts. These are highly effective and potent styles that offer the samurai many more options in combat than their western counterparts who relied upon freestyle and prowess. Most importantly the samurai arts were specifically designed to counter a direct and focused style like that of the western knights.

Therefore, these opponents had very clear similarities, and their differences play against the other’s strengths and weaknesses. This theoretical conflict will truly boil down to ‘if’s.

First, let’s assume that both fighters have had good training, and are of equivalent raw physical and talent. The western knight is larger, and his armor is heavier, giving him a strong advantage in mass, but to further this the knight may employ a shield granting a six square feet of flat leverage to apply this mass advantage. The samurai is smaller and wearing lighter armor, giving him an advantage in mobility and speed, both on foot and upon horse as the samurai steeds were smaller and lighter than the knight’s draft warhorse, but also in striking with weapons. The knight’s weapons and fighting styles will be able to minimize the samurai’s armor if a solid strike is achieved, however the samurai is extremely well trained in using mobility and momentum redirection to avoid being hit. The knight’s armor will be extremely difficult for the samurai’s katana to penetrate, however, the samurai’s combat style is specifically designed to target weak points in armor at the joints which the knight’s armor also has.

If our opponents are allowed use of every advantage they may take, their combat will resemble the following.

A unit of knights versus a unit of samurai will be a short fight. The samurai will outrun and shoot them down with close to 20 volleys of arrows that are each very unlikely to miss a target the size of an entire unit of mounted knights. Any knights who survive will be sorely outnumbered in the fray that follows. While they may take a few samurai with them, it is unlikely that they will even take their own number, as the samurai will team up on any remaining foes. However, I am assuming that this discussion is about a theoretical contest between one knight and one samurai.

The knight will be unable to catch the samurai on horseback, who will be firing arrows that can penetrate his armor. The samurai were lethally accurate horse archers, and it is probable that the samurai could hit the knight, and possible that the samurai could kill the knight with one of his shots before running out of ammunition. However, the knight has a shield, and arrows do not move at the speed of bullets, making it not only possible but likely that any well aimed arrows end up embedded in the knight’s shield. The samurai however, will probably be aiming for the knight’s horse to dismount him, then fire remaining arrows at the fallen target. If the knight’s horse is barded in plate, the likelihood of it being brought down is reduced, but so is the mount’s speed making it even less possible for the knight to catch the samurai. For all intents, we will have to call this part of our contest a draw based on the ifs.

Let’s assume the samurai manages to dismount the knight, but cannot kill him before running out of ammunition. The samurai now turns the tables on his foe, and does a jousting charge with his spear. The advantage is clearly to the knight, who has training in dealing with such an attack. Within a few passes, the samurai will likely be dismounted unless he gets a very lucky shot in. The difficulty of the weight and leverage of the spear in that position combined with the horse’s movement far outweigh the advantage of being on your feet on solid ground and able to sidestep at the right moment with full control of much faster weapons.

If the samurai did not manage to dismount the knight, the samurai will dismount and perform the same tactics mentioned above. The samurai would not joust charge another cavalry unit, as their fighting style gives them far more advantage on foot against a single mounted foe, and they are also well trained in this situation. However, the knight’s lance is even more unwieldy and the samurai even more mobile and faster.

The end result is the contest that seems the be the true focal point of this discussion, knight versus samurai on foot.

The samurai will have used the katana, and possibly the wakizashi, depending on preferred stance. He would not have used the spear against another elite unit in single combat. Bushido would forbid it, but so would the samurai’s training which taught him as a spear fighter how dangerous it is to get tied up with your own weapon by an opponent who closes distance. Nor would the samurai use the naginata, as it was considered a woman’s weapon. The weapon choice of the knight is going to be the most important factor.

If the knight takes a two handed sword, or even the hand and a half mentioned above, the fight will be bloody, and play the the strengths of the samurai’s speed, accuracy in striking armored weak points, and better skill at fencing with a faster weapon. Also as previously mentioned, the samurai will likely attempt to get his more heavily armored opponent to the ground prone as quickly as possible, and has ample training to do so. However, the fighting style of single sword combat actually leaves both fighters extremely well balanced and thus defended against such tactics, and the samurai were not the most adept defensive fighters, favoring initiative over a second strike. If the knight can connect before the samurai dismantles him, the knight could win, especially if the knight is able to keep his footing.

The knight’s best advantage would have been his sword and shield. The longsword had reach, nearly comparable speed, and enough power to chop through the samurai’s armor. The shield afforded him the ability to defend a large amount of strikes, as well as overrun his smaller opponent. This fight will come down to wits, pure and simple. Both fighters have the tools to kill one another. They are both well trained, accurate to a target the size of an eyeball in melee, and most importantly experienced in controlling a fight. By nature of the training methods, the samurai is more accurate with his katana against the knight’s armor, allowing him to make disabling strikes that will lead to victory. The knight is accurate enough to make disabling and killing strikes through the samurai’s armor. And both of these fighters are able to do these things reflexively with no hesitation. To control a fight, the knight can overpower the samurai and chop him to bits as he struggles for footing and a good shot around the shield. The samurai can unbalance the knight, especially if the knight over extends any of the attacks, shield bashes, or attempts to overrun. Once unbalanced and prone, the samurai is very likely to end the knight. Whichever fighter has more wisdom in controlling a fight is going to win. The fighter that creates an advantage for himself despite his opponent’s attempts to stop it is going to make the strike reflexively and win. The advantage on foot leans slightly toward the knight, as his equipment requires the samurai to be more precise and cunning. However, the samurai were exactly that.

However, despite all this discourse on the subject, my conclusion is that if both fighters are equally skilled in their own arts it will be a draw. While both fighters have a fair amount of advantages over the other, leaning samurai while mounted and leaning knight while on foot, the simple fact of the matter is that these two fighters also have developed their reflexes around the expectations of safety within their styles of combat. They’re going to make mistakes because they aren’t going to expect what the other opponent is doing, and reflexively move into a killing blow. The samurai will sacrifice defensive posture for a sure strike when one is unconsciously offered by the knight, and at that point take a lethal blow through an area of armor he would not have expected the knight’s blade to pierce. The knight is going to take a lethal strike in a weak point of his armor not expecting such a fast thrust to be accurate enough to do so, most likely the face or the neck, and the samurai is likely to take an uppercut swing into the armpit not expecting an attack from that angle (as witnessed by the design of their armor), which will sever an artery and allow him to live long enough to write a haiku about this strange foe who dressed like a turtle and fought like a tiger.

In response to the Portugese and Spanish encountering samurai… There is an account of such a skirmish in a Chinese harbor, where the Europeans ‘innocently boarded a Nipponese vessel’. The ‘Nippons’ numbered five and with double swords ‘fought like the devil’, killing nearly ten times their number before the Europeans decided to back off and shoot them out of abject terror. Other accounts of European swordsmen against samurai can also be found in Japan. Japanese fencing was clearly superior to western fencing in each of these combats. (But the same would be true of a knight on those boats. They’d have destroyed the unarmored fencers, and would have met their deaths at gunpoint.)

There is no mysticism to the arts of the samurai, however there was certainly science, and that science evolved over 1000 years into an extremely potent war art.

That said, I’d agree, katana-wielding samurai against longsword/shield wielding knight is bad news for the samurai. I just don’t think it would have happened that way.

Remember, during this time Europeans were basically “giving up” on swords and other melee weaponry and transferring their interests into firearms. They were considerably less trained in melee tactics than in ages past. I would say that these sailors were, on the norm, just basically trained in hand-to-hand combat and weapons training. But, there could of been a few exceptional individuals among them…this we can never know for sure.

But…I would have to say in my honest opinion that if a basic Portugese/Spanish sailor armed with his saber or cutlass faced off against a Japanese warrior armed with a katana, the sailor may be in a bit of trouble because the common samurai would, in my opinion, be better suited and more well trained in his weapon and melee/hand-to-hand combat. But, the sailor could just brandish his pistol and pop a lead ball in the samurai’s chest and that is all she wrote…

I think it would be more interesting to find out if there are any historical records (Japanese or European) of actual sword fights between Europeans and Japanese taking place. The Portugese and Spanish soldiers must have had some training with swords and knives since the firearms of their day often malufunctioned, took a long time to re-load, and were not very accurate. Or how about Japan versus Korea or China? How well did the Samurai fair against these countries in sword duels?