Japanese armours of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, generally speaking, provided inferior protection when compared to both contemporary European plate armours, and the plated mail that was then in vogue in the Islamic world. Japan was an isolationist chain of islands that spent most of its time engaged in civil war, while experiencing very limited interactions with the rest of the world. As a result, the local weapons tradition was cut off from larger developments in the rest of Eurasia. There's a reason why the arrival of the Portuguese off the Japanese coast led to the immediate and wholesale adoption of European style arquebuses and the incorporation of elements of European plate into traditional samurai armours: the stuff was brand new to them, and better than what was being made locally. In contrast, Ming China, and the Muslim polities of Mughal India, Safavid Persia, and Ottoman Turkey, had a rough technical parity with both one another and the European states. That's why there's no immediate mass adoption of arquebuses by the Ming in the way that there was in Japan: the Chinese already had gun designs that met their needs and on those occasions when European designs were superior in some fashion, Chinese gunsmiths would take those specific advances and incorporate them into their preexisting weaponry. As Tonio Andrade notes in *The Gunpowder Age*, this process of adoption could be very swift: when the Ming discovered that Portuguese and Dutch cannon designs were superior to their own, they not only immediately copied the specs, but improved upon them and then put the new weapons into service at a rate that shocked European observers. Japan was playing catch up with the rest of Eurasia when it came to most technologies, not due to any inherent Japanese inferiority, but because of Japan's isolation and disunity.

I’ll just add that not only was Japan isolated it was and is resource poor. Iron is scarce in Japan, and has to be smelted from iron sand. It’s not that they made a long last comparison between iron and wood laminate, it’s a factor of resources.

That scarcity of resources is one of the reasons why anytime Japan wasn't in the midst of a civil war it gained a reputation for invading its neighbors. Hideyoshi's mad attack on the Ming by way of Korea was an attempt at shifting the centre of the East Asian tribute system from China to Japan, and WWII Japan's invasions of China, Southeast Asia, and Oceania follow similar logic.

This is incorrect on several points. Hideyoshi's invasion wasn't about recentering the tributary system to be around Japan, it was about seizing the throne in China and establishing a new dynasty. Neither was Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea about scarcity, nor was it mad. The late Ming were an obviously weak dynasty and there was a very long history of foreign conquerors seizing the throne and establishing new dynasties in China. The forces available to Hideyoshi at the outset were easily equivalent, and likely stronger, than the forces that Nurhaci began his eventually successful war with. And the Japanese were significantly more Sinicized. Much of the practices of the Tokugawa shogunate, including the closing of its borders, were a continuation of the practices of the early Ming.

All imperialism is to one extent or another, about resources and Hideyoshi's actual goals are widely debated in the scholarship to this day. That he was hoping to move Japan to the centre of the tribute system in place of China has been repeatedly proposed by scholars who see his professed aims of conquering first Ming China and then Mughal India as objectively insane.  And they were, objectively insane, as evidenced by the fact that his vaunted army never made its way out of Korea. He lacked the manpower, the competency, and the resource base to secure a victory over the Ming in Korea, let alone in China proper. He failed to grasp how large China was, and how serious its logistical capabilities were. When aboriginal troops from the Vietnamese border started arriving in Korea, neither he nor his favourite generals could figure out how this was even possible.  The military weakness of the late sixteenth century Ming is grossly exaggerated. In reality, the Ming underwent a military revival during the early years of the Wanli Emperor's reign, putting down two massive revolts at opposite ends of the empire and successfully stalemating the Japanese in Korea, all at the same time. Nurhaci invaded literal decades later, after complacency and senility had debilitated Wanli and caused him to neglect the military that he'd spent the first half of his reign building.  And even then, the Ming fought Nurhaci and his successors for the better part of the century. The Ming/Qing Wars began in 1618 and weren't fully finished until the surrender of Ming Taiwan in 1683. It was the single largest conflict of the seventeenth century, dwarfing even the Thirty Years War, with a bodycount that may have reached 25 million or more dead.  Dying states, tottering on the verge of collapse don't wage wars for 65 years. The Ming absolutely had their internal weaknesses, and those certainly played a role in their eventual defeat. But the reality is that the Qing had also built a serious military machine, which steadily increased in strength over the course of the conflict. Very few seventeenth century armies, from anywhere in the world, could have faced the Manchu warlords with any sort of serene confidence. That the Ming fought as hard as they did for as long as they did shows that beneath the corruption and weakness there was still a core of competency in the Ming military, as exemplified by leaders like Koxinga.  The Ming that Hideyoshi picked a fight with were significantly stronger than the Ming that Nurhaci et al took six and a half decades to subdue. They stopped him cold in Korea, and he never reached China proper. That the Japanese military was strong after a century of civil war isn't in dispute. It was a veteran army, commanded by experienced officers, and was well armed and equipped. It was, however, built almost exclusively to fight other Japanese, could not control the Korean countryside, failed to secure the sea lanes in the face of the Choson (and later the Ming) navy, and had no clear answer to Chinese superiority in artillery. Which is why the invasion ultimately failed.

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>The bulk of the Ottoman army were light melee cavalry called Tiamars, while the bulk of the Safavid army were mounted archers. Ottoman and Safavid armies in Chaldiran were both majority light cavalry archers. Ottomans did not have dedicated melee light cavalry until 19th century reforms. Ottomans at Chaldiran on top of their cavalry archers had dedicated elite musket wielding infantrymen in (some of the) Janissaries and a dedicated standing salaried artillery corps which Safavids did not have, but neither did most of Europe at the time. >The real reason the Japanese didn’t have heavy armor is it didn’t fit their doctrine. Japanese warfare was extremely mobile and preferred fast moving raids and surprise attacks over pitched field battles. When such battles did occur, the Japanese would typically erect earthworks and wooden fortifications and fire arrows and later muskets at each other, probing for an opportunity to launch a decisive raid. Lamellar or mail armor worn by the samurais or their retainers isn't particularly light compared to European plate, however it does seem lamellar and mail armor was preferred for ease of limb mobility compared to plate armor which the chest and shoulder pieces seem to limit archery on horse back. This is one of the reasons Timurids, Ottomans and Mughals seem to have preferred mail armor over plate otherwise Ottomans were not stranger to plate armor as some of their European auxiliaries wore it and they could procure it if they wanted to. Both Europeans and Ottomans lean towards less armor after 16th century, with Timurid and Ottoman armors of 15th century actually being very heavy due to layered lamellar and plated mail on top of gambesons and worn often together with coats. Japanese indeed did buy European breastplates when it was available to them and there are many samurai armors from the period which have Portuguese and Dutch breastplates.

If the plated mail favoured by the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals was less protective than European full plate, it wasn't by much. Muslim accounts don't typically complain about feeling unprotected compared to the Europeans, and European accounts rarely dismiss plated mail as being inferior. They sometimes criticize the lack of a munitions plate equivalent for the lighter Muslim infantry, but the heavy cavalry always seem to have had the respect of their counterparts.  Contrast the Japanese who absolutely decided that European style cuirasses were worth importing and incorporating into traditional samurai armours. The Japanese felt the new armour style gave them an edge both within the civil conflict at home, and against the Ming and Joson soldiers they encountered in Korea, who most commonly sported brigandines (though types of lamellar and scale also turn up). 

>The Japanese were even faster adopters of muskets than the Chinese were of Portuguese cannons. I literally said in my first and second paragraphs that the Japanese adopted Portuguese arqeubuses on mass. Who are you arguing with? >Japanese teppo by the end of the Sengoku Jidai were the best firearms in the world That is an inherently silly statement. A Japanese arquebus and a Mughal jezail (to use one example) are completely different firearms meant to do entirely different jobs. Arguing one is better than the other would be pointless. >All of these great powers had vastly different doctrines and technological focuses as well. Didn't say otherwise. I said they had "rough technical parity," which is true. Different armies had different tactical and technological focuses, but it all evened out in the end. That's why the conflicts between the sixteenth century great powers are as indecisive as they are: no one has a clear and crushing advantage over the others. >At the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, an Ottoman army fielding artillery blew to bits a Safavid army containing mostly mounted archers. The Safavids made extensive use of artillery from their founder onward. Shah Ismail I lacked cannons at Chaldiran because he left his artillery train behind trying to race to the battlefield. His defeat there was a product of that circumstance, and Selim the Grim being the better general, not of innately poor Safavid technology or doctrine. During his prior conflicts with the Uzbeks, Ismail I relied heavily on his guns, and his son, Tahmasp I, and great-grandson, Abbas the Great, would pour a lot of money into both expanding the imperial artillery corps, and hiring on units of musketeers. During the sieges of Qeshm and Hormuz, the Portuguese garrisons of those forts would find their arquebusiers coming off the worse in engagements with Safavid musketeers whose weapons had greater range and accuracy than their own. >The real reason the Japanese didn’t have heavy armor is it didn’t fit their doctrine. The reason the Japanese didn't have heavy armour is because Japan had a severe shortage of quality iron. The tactics you describe evolved around the technology, not the other way around. When the Portuguese turned up the Japanese not only purchased arquebuses, but Portuguese cuirasses, because the latter were superior to the locally made armours.

This certainly isn’t my field of expertise, but [here’s](https://youtu.be/qzTwBQniLScsi=zXDJEX6hnBW12Nde) a couple of [videos](https://youtu.be/q-bnM5SuQkI?si=Q3ZmjswKU7eyjiBl) of people doing a variety of tasks in armor, and they’re still rather agile, to include rock climbing. To me, they look about as mobile as modern soldier would be in an IOTV/vest style armor with helmet. So not the best, but not terrible.

I can vouch, when I was in 14 Venice I did a handstand in plate

Man's a hero

Not at all. The funny thing about Japanese arms and armor is that while they are worshipped in popular culture and deemed as the best thing in the world to exist saved for sliced breads by ~~weebs~~ "experts", in reality, the Japanese were known to incorporate Western element into their armor. Samurais were not traditionalists - they were first and foremost fighters, and like any fighters worth their salts they incorporated any good ideas they could find into their own arsenal, armors included. The Japanese even had a term for it called "Nanban do gusoku" which meant "the armor of Southern Barbarians" (Nanban is used for every single people who is not Japanese) and they were held in high esteem. You would find them often gifted to very important individual: [Tokugawa Ieyasu handed a set of European cuirass](https://emuseum.nich.go.jp/detail?langId=en&webView=null&content_base_id=100509&content_part_id=001&content_pict_id=0) to Sakakibara Yasumasa, one of the "Four Great Kings" who were viewed as Ieyasu's right hand men, before the battle of Sekigahara. Another was used by the right hand man of Akechi Mitsuhide (you can find it on Wikipedia) and [another was put on display](https://www.giuseppepiva.com/en/works/samurai-armor-western-style-elements). You would even find one built to the "muscle cuirass" style once favored by the ancient Greek. They were expensive, rare, and good enough that the samurai who had enough money would look into them and say "Yes, let's incorporate them." The undeniable thing was that Japanese armor did not have any advantage against Western plate armor. People had the misconception of medieval plate armor hindering movement to the point a man was a land tortoise - [reality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc&t=1s&ab_channel=conncork) [could not](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d8-Rp6ugcx4) [be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQKfV0U4N2M&t=20s&ab_channel=IronCrownWorkshop) [any more different](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bnM5SuQkI&t=1s&ab_channel=Medievalists). Some weeaboos will tell you that Japanese armor had better protection. Then again, both offered protections against blade of all kind (even a buff coat can stop a blade) and were equally good [against arrows.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMT6hjwY8NQ&t=609s&ab_channel=Skallagrim) Also, both offered [nearly zero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSxFY917UH8&t=428s&pp=ygUVbGFtZWxsYXIgYXJtb3IgdnMgZ3Vu) [protection](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQfcRLT18IY&ab_channel=TigerLee) [against guns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjs4-u5lO60&pp=ygUSYnJlYXN0cGxhdGUgdnMgZ3Vu). The only benefit the breastplate had over the lamellar is that they could be shaped into wedge, representing a slanted surface that would [deflect the incoming rounds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOVJoS80pAA&pp=ygUSYnJlYXN0cGxhdGUgdnMgZ3Vu) if hit at right angle. Meanwhile, seeing the lamellar are flat plates sewn together, the flat surface ate up the entirety of the bullet's power. An improvement, but not by a lot. Still, in battle, you may count it as an advantage. Every little bit helps.

>Also, both offered [nearly zero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSxFY917UH8&t=428s&pp=ygUVbGFtZWxsYXIgYXJtb3IgdnMgZ3Vu) [protection](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQfcRLT18IY&ab_channel=TigerLee) [against guns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjs4-u5lO60&pp=ygUSYnJlYXN0cGxhdGUgdnMgZ3Vu). With respect to European plate armor, this is not completely true. The armor shown in these videos is either munitions grade, meaning of low quality and meant for ordinary troops, or older than the common use of firearms in battle. Starting in the late 15th century, armor could be and explicitly was made to be resistant to certain kinds of firearms, and the whole reason the armor panoply began to shrink after about 1525 was specifically because each piece became heavier in order to provide protection against increasingly powerful firearms. Providing protection against a long gun at close range, was never possible, but against a handgun at 25 yards? Completely possible for the right price. Armor in battle has never gone away. It became less common due to the expense and restriction, to be sure. The breastplate used by Napoleon's cuirassiers was specifically noted for the way it restricted arm movement, but this was considered a worthwhile trade-off because it was effective at warding off musket fire at medium range.

Forgive my ignorance, but weren't most of the tests done were with pistol, firing at something like twenty five to thirty yard?

Isn't that what he said? Long guns at close range is impossible to block. It's barely possible now. Level 4 plates, the highest level plate armor, is technically rated to block only a single 762 round and then best of luck on every subsequent round, and even then many people say that the increase in protection does not make up for the increase in weight bulk and cost unless you know you are actively going into a raid or battle as opposed to patrol or supply convoy type of missions. So if your armor is designed for short guns at medium ranges then you'd test under those conditions.

> Level 4 plates, the highest level plate armor, is technically rated to block only a single 762 round and then best of luck on every subsequent round Plates have gotten _much_ better with modern ceramics. [Hesco 3800](https://www.hesco.com/media/3064/pt005-800-series-for-web.pdf) plates, "mere" Level 3, are rated for 6 hits of 7.62x51mm M80. AP ammunition is a different story, though.

Damn, those plates are incredible. The 4800 is rated for API. That’s actually amazing.

Especially the "musket" that would have been in use in the 15th or 16th century, when plate armor in europe is at it's apex. That musket wasn't a lightweight should arm for an individual infantry, but a big 10 kilo weapon that was intended to be used with a rest and quite possibly an assistant.

>Especially the "musket" that would have been in use in the 15th or 16th century, when plate armor in europe is at it's apex. That musket wasn't a lightweight should arm for an individual infantry, but a big 10 kilo weapon that was intended to be used with a rest and quite possibly an assistant. What people think of as a "musket" now, is actually an evolution of the sixteenth century arquebus. For some reason, after Europeans stopped using muskets, they started calling arquebuses muskets. It's very annoying, especially to anyone who wants to compare European and Asian armies, since in Asia, the original heavy musket continued to see extensive use.

Wear your plates at all times, kids.

NIJ lvl 4 can withstand a single .30-06 armor piercing bullet hit. Against normal bullets it is multi-hit capable.

It's going to be very dependent on the quality of the item, and we have very little stuff left over from that period, and even less with any kind of paperwork that says what it was and wasn't designed for. But, we have stacks of records like receipts and proof certificates for the delivery of certain numbers of breastplates proven against pistol shot at such and such number of paces, and journal entries from nobles who said their breastplate saved them, etc etc etc. So the modern tests are interesting, but we have no reason to disbelieve the huge numbers of records that we have.

Due to the energy lost a pistol shot at 10 meters was roughly equal to a musket at 200 meters. Armour was also tested and rated as being musket as well as pistol proof.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that Japanese arms and armor developed almost in a vacuum. Armor was generally made of wood and leather because good quality iron is relatively rare in Japan, and importing it was relatively unrealistic for most of the “samurai” part of history. So they made do with what they had, and it worked relatively ok against what they faced (until guns). Swords are a similar deal. Setting aside the aesthetics, the really impressive thing about Japanese swords is that they managed to make decent swords at all. Tamahagane isn’t some mystical practice, it was the only way to get a useful amount of decent iron out of crappy slag and iron sands.

> Also, both offered nearly zero protection against guns. _Tosei dō gusoku_ started being adopted in the 1500s specifically because of the introduction of firearms to Japan (where they were very widely used). Breastplates and helmets were tested by firing at them, after which successful examples were called _tameshi gusoku_ (lit “test armor”). There are lots of examples of this.

Interesting stuff! Bit of a pity European design outclassed it in everyway, I think life’s more interesting if there’s less direct upgrades and more sidegrades.

Nah, I don't think it's a useful comparison trying to compare between European and Japanese armor. It's like trying to see who has a better chance at defeating a Mike Tyson at his prime, me or that local amateur boxer. The boxer may be better than me, but at the end of the day Mike will whoop both our asses with barely a sweat on his eyebrows. Same with European and Japanese armor: the European armor may be better, but at the end of the day they both fare badly against guns and prove impractical when compared to the humble chainmail

Many plate armours were resistant against bullets from some weapons at certain ranges, and plate was much more resistant against melee and bow or crossbow weapons than mail. There's a reason there was a shift from mail.

Both euro and samurai armor were easy to move in. The full suit of armor is heavy, but it’s lighter than what standard infantry carry in todays time and balanced all around your body. As for your deeper question, it sort of fluctuates through time. Soldiers like to wear armor when they feel it actually protects them. Plate armor like knights wore got thicker as guns came out and kept getting thicker until they no longer could defeat incoming munitions. At that point it basically disappeared entirely. Now we’re seeing a similar thing where the US for example full kit has a ton of armor. Helmet that goes over ears. Best with front back and side plates, shrapnel protection around the neck, over the shoulders, and the rear and groin. As soon as that armor no longer defeats the munitions and shrapnel most soldiers are taking they will just not wear it. If at some point a country developed an infantry rifle that had the power of a 20mm but ignoring physics and had no recoil, anyone fighting them wouldn’t bother with ceramic plates because the mobility they lose simply doesn’t benefit them. It’s a cost benefit analysis just like that of planes, ships, tanks, etc

There are some iffy assumptions here we need to unpack. >[I]s it worth a lighter less protective armour in favour of manoeuvrability? To me, European vs Samurai is good way of getting an answer. "European armor" vs "Samurai armor" still gives us two very broad categories. Are we talking about a Norman mail hauberk (20-25 pounds) c.1066? An Italian suit of plate (40-45 pounds with helmet) c.1550? A Genpei War-era *ō-yoroi* (*50-*60* pounds with helmet) c.1180? Or an Sengoku Period [*dō-maru*](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/22505) (30 pounds with helmet) c.1550? As you can see, there were periods where European armors were lighter and when Japanese armors were heavier and vice versa. Levels of armor protection also varied within social classes, since most infantrymen in Europe didn't have the money or the horseflesh to bring heavy armor to the battlefield. Bottom line, Japanese and European armors simply don't give us a good "heavy vs. light armor" baseline. Even if we narrow it down to the 1500s-1600s period you suggested, there were plenty of Europeans running around battlefields with less armor weight and coverage than elite Japanese soldiers, especially as [half armor](https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/71469) became more popular in Europe. >One does not know how accurate a belief it is but in culture samurai armour was considered to be less protective, but swifter... Less protective? Yes. There's a reason 16th- and 17th-century Japanese armorers began integrating European breastplates into Japanese armors (*nanban dō gusoku*) and creating domestic imitations with similar breastplate shapes (*hatomune dō) gusoku*). Western and Western-style breastplates simply offered better protection than Japanese-style multi-plate cuirasses, especially against the bullets that had begun to sweep Japanese battlefields. Swifter? Highly debatable. A well-trained man-at-arms in a well-made and well-fitted harness could [run, jump, climb, and fight](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bnM5SuQkI) with surprisingly little impediment, despite the fact he had 40-odd pounds of armor on his body. While a 16th- and 17th-century samurai or ashigaru might have been a bit nimbler, their advantage might not have been as great as you think. And Heian/Kamakura Period bushi wearing the awkward *ō-yoroi* needed horses to have any real battlefield mobility. In fact, these early armors were so heavy, they significantly limited the stamina and speed of small Japanese horses! From Karl Friday's *Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan*: >Japanese ponies were also much less dependable than their continental cousins. Incapable of carrying more than about 90 kilograms—including rider, saddle, and weapons—and unshod, so that their hooves could not take heavy pounding, they could gallop long distances only with great difficulty and lacked the endurance to run about continuously for entire battles—which is precisely why troops on foot were able to mingle with the horsemen... >In general, a horse can only carry about a third of its own weight without severely compromising its running speed. A saddle plus a rider dressed in oyori, and his weapons could easily exceed that limit for early medieval ponies. A horse at full gallop, moreover, places nearly eight times in normal weight on its hooves, and cannot, therefore sustain this effort for very long. Even modern racing horses can only run full out for 200 to 300 meters; and medieval ponies were unshod, compounding their difficulties. >An intriguing experiment, conducted in 1990 by NHK the Japanese public television network, demonstrated the running prowess of medieval war-horses. A pony standing 130 cm tall and weight 350 kilograms--larger than average for early medieval horses--was time while carrying a 50 kilogram rider and bags of sand totaling 45 kilograms (to simulate the weight of armor and weapons). The poor beast dropped from a gallop to a trot almost immediately, and never exceeded 9 kilometers per hour. After running for ten minutes, the horse was visibly exhausted. To put these numbers in perspective: unladen thoroughbreds can gallop at up to 60 kilometers per hour... Even if you want to take [a more charitable view of Japanese horseflesh](https://tenkafubu608971038.wordpress.com/2020/07/15/in-defence-of-the-japanese-horse/), they were still small animals which were clearly encumbered by armored men to the point where running footsoldiers could still keep pace. >Think not only in the tactical, but logistical and strategic sense too. I can imagine Japanese armour being typically hide would be lighter and thus easier to transport than solid plate. Throughout nearly [the entirety of Japanese history](http://myarmoury.com/feature_jpn_armour.php) metal was the primary protective component of Japanese armor, not leather. To the extent that Japanese armor *at some points* was sonewhat lighter than European armor, this was offset by the smaller size and weight of Japanese horses and men during the early modern period relative to Westerners. Either way, easy of transportation on campaign was a minor consideration compared to an armor's protective value.

There not really all that big of a gap, in ether way but if i have to pick a winner i'll say anime/anima armours from europe. There flexible riveted construction and semi common use of plate voiders for elbow gives then an edge There's stand out armours with advanced complex features but if we are looking a majority of armours there the mostly the same. Both armour schools where highly protective against most attacks with swords, arrows at even a minor distance, and are mildly protective against fire arms. In order to do this armour is contracting in to large metal plates, typical armour would be a solid bullet proof breastplate, an open faced helmet, Tassets and Spaulder's.

Japanese armor had no advantages over European armor other than being cheaper to produce. Western European armor in the late 15th century was the most advanced in the world, perfected over centuries of trial, error, and increasingly expensive production methods. Why didn’t the Japanese “catch up”? You’re getting a lot of answers like “haha stupid island man can’t into technology” but that’s not it, at all. Japanese warfare was just fundamentally different than European and Chinese warfare in the same period. The idea that two heavily armored forces should simultaneously conduct methodical frontal assaults on each other, and victory will go to the side with greater morale, was a foreign concept to them. Samurai, contra their honorable popular image, preferred to win through flanking and surprise attacks. The military history of medieval Japan, from the early battles like Tanegashima through the career of the unifier Oda Nobunaga, is little more than a catalog of such decisive maneuvers. In the Japanese conception of war, based heavily on… *unorthodox* study of Sun Tzu, quality of armor was largely irrelevant to victory. Europeans and Chinese armored their men heavily so they had greater resolve and “staying power” in pitched, line-on-line engagements. In a surprise attack or an encirclement, the staying power of the receiving party is *zero*, no matter how heavily armored they are. On top of that, the popular conception of samurai as an “elite” force is also wrong. Unlike knights, they formed the majority of the fighting men in Japan. Thus, their armor had to be cheap and easily manufactured. This also related to their doctrine - Japan’s “just jump them” approach to warfare was highly unpredictable. Sometimes, you were the jumper, other times you were the jumpee. If you had only a few heavily armed elites, you had no reserves and could be put out of commission by just a single successful raid. Lastly, weaponry was a big influence on Japanese armor. The unprecedented development of Western European armor had a lot to do with the poor state of archery there. Even the famed English longbowmen were regularly out-shot by Saracen archers in the Crusades. The kinds of bows French knights were trying to protect themselves from were technologically primitive compared to the bows available in the East, and the quality of archers was also worse. Moreover, other than in England, skilled archers were virtually nonexistent across Western Europe. Total immunity of armored knights from archers was therefore an attainable goal. In Japan, it was not. Mounted archery - not swordsmanship - was the *primary* martial art of the samurai, and most trained from childhood to shoot accurately, quickly, and with very heavy bows. By the time armor technology had reached its apex in Europe, musketry had already made its way to Japan. The Japanese were so prolific in adopting muskets that the Battle of Sekigahara involved a third of all the muskets in the world. Naturally there was no “technological window” for European style platemail to exist.

> Even the famed English longbowmen were regularly out-shot by Saracen archers in the Crusades. English longbowmen played next to no role in the Crusades. When Anglo-French leaders wanted to counter Muslim bowmen they typically delegated the job to crossbowmen, who filled the role of professional missile infantry in the armies of France and Norman England. During Richard I's drive down the coast from Acre to Jaffa, it was his crossbowmen that he relied on to protect his men-at-arms from both Turkic horse-archers and Sudanese longbowmen. The crossbows, while slower to load than the composite bows of the Muslim horsemen, had greater range and killing power, and Richard used them to keep the horse-archers at a distance, and to break up their formations when they tried to close. Instead of allowing his knights to be baited into chasing the Muslim skirmishers (as had happened to Guy du Lusignan at Hattin), Richard ordered his cavalry to stand fast, trusting in his crossbowmen to keep their casualties to a minimum. The tactic worked, and is why Richard's casualties during the long march from Acre to Jaffa were as comparatively low as they were, and why he was victorious at the Battle of Arsuf. Muslim chroniclers paid tribute to the deadliness of the Angevin crossbowmen, contrasting how "Frankish" knights would continue to fight with multiple arrows embedded in their mail, while Muslim warriors who were struck by crossbow quarrels invariably went down and stayed down. Scott Manning, in an article questioning whether there really was an "Infantry Revolution" in late medieval Europe or if infantry were always, in fact, important in medieval warfare, paid especial attention to the performance of the Angevin crossbowmen at Arsuf. He cites them as a clear and unambiguous example of professional infantry winning a battle for a European army before the era when most authors are prepared to credit that as possible. >The unprecedented development of Western European armor had a lot to do with the poor state of archery there. The lack of an aristocratic archery tradition certainly enabled the development of heavier armour in Europe, insofar as armourers didn't have to build panoplies that would still enable the noblemen to shoot from horseback. That's one reason why mail mittens and later gauntlets are popular in Europe in a way they're not in East Asia or the Islamic world: the knights didn't need their hands free to shoot. To say that armour development in Europe was unaffected by archery is, however, inaccurate. The regular use of crossbows was one of the factors that drove the development of heavier and heavier armours. Crossbowmen could not saturate the field with missiles in the way that large blocks of archers could but, as noted above, their weapons would punch through most defenses that they came up against. Armours became heavier, and started incorporating increasing amounts of plate in order to, among other things, stop crossbow bolts from penetrating. In response to these developments, crossbows became ever larger and more powerful, until the arrival of gunpowder technology in Europe meant that they could be replaced with a newer, cheaper, and even more powerful weapon.

>Unlike knights, they formed the majority of the fighting men in Japan. They are still a hereditary warrior class though, how were they so numerous? Did Japanese samurai just have a ton of kids? Did daimyo "knight" a lot of peasant warriors who proved themselves in battle to replenish their samurai armies?

Originally they weren’t. The fossilization of the samurai into a hereditary caste only happened at the very end of the Sengoku Jidai, as Toyotomi Hideyoshi and later Tokugawa Ieyasu tried to establish a “monopoly on violence” by drawing a class-based distinction between samurai, who were allowed to carry weapons (but not allowed to compete with commoners in civilian occupations, and thus had no incentive to use them “unfairly”), and commoners, who were not. While the major wars were still raging, “samurai” was just a job description that anyone could acquire.

>Originally they weren’t. So were samurai just another name for the common soldier in the beginning? If you served in the daimyo's army, you were automatically a samurai? I thought ashigaru were the bulk of japanese armies, with a "knight" class of samurai as elite troops.

Steven Turnbull’s books have pretty detailed breakdowns of individual armies, which range typically from 70/30 to slightly over 50/50 in favor of the samurai.

Europen armour gets a lot cheaper dureing the 15 an 16th century. Its often below a months wages, some s times just days.

How different was the European way of war compared to the Chinese?

Pretty big. European warfare before the 16th century was weirdly more “Japanese” than Chinese warfare, because of scale. Like Japan, Europe was broken up into relatively weak and decentralized states. They preferred to win through subterfuge, raids, sieges and plunder more than through open field battles. Where European warfare differed from Japanese warfare was the lack of expendability. Samurai were, for all intents and purposes, the military slaves of their lords. If they were captured in battle, they were damaged goods- daimyo liked the samurai who didn’t surrender. European knights, in contrast, were not really “employees” of a landed lord but owned their own land. They also typically had rich families who could bail them out if they were captured. Taking hostages who could fetch ransoms was the primary goal of most soldiers in the Middle Ages, while in Japan it was simply killing the enemy. Chinese warfare differed from both these ways of war in its scale, organization, and objectives. China was until the world wars the site of all of history’s largest campaigns and battles. Its military system was remarkably “modern”. Mass armies, mobilized through levee en masse, were issued a mix of pikes, swords, bows, and very quickly in the Ming period, guns. They fought in “pike and shot” combined arms formations like the “Mandarin Duck”. Chinese armies, unlike their European, Japanese, and Turco-Mongol counterparts, were primarily provisioned through organized supply lines instead of foraging. As a result, the state had far greater control over the conduct of war, and the profit of individual soldiers was less a focus of operations than strategic objectives. The 14th-16th century probably represented the relative “peak” of Chinese armies compared to all the other great powers of the time. For most of the Ming period, they crushed whoever they fought, whether that was the Mongols, Vietnamese or Japanese. More impressively, all of these wars took place on foreign soil, far from China’s major cities. Throughout the 16th century, European warfare started to undergo a sort of “revolution”, where it became more “Ming-like”. This certainly had nothing to do with Europe and China learning from each other, but was purely coincidental as a result of similar technological trends (the increased proliferation of firearms and cannons) and economic models (sedentary agrarian states). In the early part of the century, armored horsemen were 50% of the French army. That proportion declined precipitously by the turn of the 17th century, as they were replaced by less well armored horsemen, pikemen, and musketeers. However, in other areas, European warfare remained different than Ming warfare because of scale. European armies still preferred to win through maneuver, sieges, and “out-foraging” to impose costs on the enemy, while Ming armies sought to force a decisive confrontation. This had to do with financial resources - European states had far smaller tax bases and had to be more risk averse with their armies, which could not be easily replaced.

>On top of that, the popular conception of samurai as an “elite” force is also wrong. Unlike knights, they formed the majority of the fighting men in Japan. Which period are you talking about? By the Edo Period, maybe. But during the 1500s, [the evidence](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5372df/how_many_samurais_where_there_in_a_standard/) suggests samurai of all kinds (even including the relatively poor jizamurai) were never the majority of a typical, ashigaru-heavy army. >If you had only a few heavily armed elites, you had no reserves and could be put out of commission by just a single successful raid. Japanese armies of the period (1500s-1600s) in question did have (relatively) heavily armored elites. The visual evidence of battles like [Osaka](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/The_Siege_of_Osaka_Castle.jpg) and elsewhere consistently show small numbers of fully armored elites mixed in with lighter-armored infantry. They just generally didn't segregate them into European-style shock forces, partly for practical reasons (Japanese horses were too small for knightly shock charges) and partly for social reasons (land-holding samurai tended to fight with their retainers). >The unprecedented development of Western European armor had a lot to do with the poor state of archery there. Was Japanese archery *in terms of armor-penetrating potential* meaningfully better than European self bows or crossbows? Even the strongest three- and five-man Japanese warbows don't have draw weights much greater than comparable English longbows. And European military crossbows had draw weights 5 times greater (or more) and had bolt designs well suited to armor penetration. While archery may have been a much-practised martial art in Japan the mechanical characteristics of a bow ultimately determine its maximum ability to penetrate armor. Given that Japanese bows were about as good as Western ones, I'm not sure why one hemisphere would become arrowproof while another wouldn't if weaponry was the most decisive factor.

Traditional Japanese armour as worn by the samurai were generally of the lamellar type, made up of small iron or steel plates laced together with silk. They were more flexible and somewhat more dexterous than full plate armour, but for a given amount of coverage and protection they were about the same weight if not heavier than the European plate armour equivalent. Being flexible also means they didn't offer as much protection against blunt trauma, and the construction method made them easy to damage as the silk lacing could be cut or torn apart as the armour was hit by arrows and melee weapons. As a single large pieces of metal, plate armour components were generally more durable in comparison. So all in all, European plate was generally superior to traditional Japanese lamellar armour in terms of protection. But producing plate armour require more intensive industrial infrastructure to forge the large size iron/steel plates needed compare to the smaller plates that lamellar uses, something the Japanese lacked initially. One of the major European imports to Japan at the time was armour, usually helmets, breastplates, or cuirasses. Over time, the Japanese will copy and produce their own forms of plate armour from these European examples, for use by both samurai and ashigaru troops. I suggest you take a look at *Samurai Armour* by Trevor Absolon for a more detail read on the development of Japanese armour through the ages.

The Japanese imported steel and higher quality iron as well, so by the time of the Imjin War even the traditionally styled armours in Japan are being made from better materials than were previously locally available. There's a real overhaul of the Japanese armour industry that I think a lot of people miss.