Unit Speculation?

[General Malaise]

I'm not an expert but I do have experience with sport and mock melee combat (albeit on foot) and I think the discussion about polearms from horseback being unwieldy is mixing up a lot of different issues. Especially when someone says something silly like you're going to hack your horse's head off (it's like imagining people hack their own limbs off by using swords improperly, which never really happens). First, using anything from horseback is lot more difficult than using it on foot, second, how difficult the polearm would be to use has more to do with how top-heavy it is as much if not more than how long, and third, how ambidextrous a user would be would affect viability a lot.

The first point should be obvious, but using a polearm from horseback wouldn't be much different than using a longbow like a yumi from horseback, you'd have to steer mostly with your knees/legs in order to use both hands to wield the weapon. In fact, horse archery is a hell of a lot harder than wielding a blade on the end of a pole from a horse, but no questions the validity of that. Horse archers are more common though, despite it being harder, because it's very difficult to counter a horse archer you can't catch. Since melee cavalry is often about shock impact, it's not really much of a big deal what kind of weapon you use (barring lances), so you might as well go with your normal spear or sword instead of something weirder, but there's no real reason you couldn't pick something weird, especially if you were skilled in its use.

In regards to the second point, the unwieldiness of any type of weapon is related to how long it takes to pull back from an attack. Axes, maces, hammers, and especially axes and hammers at the end of poles all have this issue, but you sacrifice attack speed in order to get enough impact from the blow to crush through armor. Of course, a longer weapon that's top heavy is even more unwieldy than a shorter one, and thus using something like a lochaber axe from horseback would be nutters I'd say, but a naginata isn't that top/front-heavy at all really. From what I've seen of people using it, it's actually pretty damn fast, and not just for a polearm either. Granted some of that speed would be lost on a horse from lack of footwork and hip movement, but presumably you'd make it up with the mobility, speed, and shock of the horse.

Lastly, attacking to your off-hand side is pretty awkward on top of a horse no matter what weapon you're using (again, except maybe lances). You also lose a lot of reach doing so, because your arm has to cross your own body. You can twist to a certain extent or stand up in the saddle on the stirrups, but still this is precisely why most cavalry weapons are actually longer, rather than shorter (like horseman using the tachi for instance). However, if you can switch your grip to the left hand side with a polearm without awkwardness, which would be possible as you're not using a shield, hitting the "off-hand" side would actually be more effective. Of course, ambidexterity isn't very common nor easy to learn, so that's probably another reason you don't see it much.

The tl;dr version of this would just be that, we know it *was* used and it probably wasn't more uncommon than wielding an odachi on foot was for a comparison, which is also pretty rare in the records IIRC. So most likely the issue was simply that this required much skill or had specialized use or didn't make a huge difference, but because of the simple fact it was used, and by professional warriors who clearly knew what they were doing and were taking their life into their hands, I don't think armchair theorizing on what was possible or viable on pre-modern battlefields should be stated with the certainty a lot of people do, particularly because essentially no one living has direct experience of this kind of combat (where you are actually trying to kill your opponent or be killed). If someone has direct quotes from something like a Turnbull book on this issue, post them, but I've only encountered contradictory interent speculation on this issue.

[Tsar Alexsandr]

There's all sorts of depiction's of famous samurai using naginata and spears from horseback. One in particular has Toshimitsu Saito at the battle of Yamazaki, clearly holding a naginata before the battle of Yamazaki.

I don't understand the debate, it was a clearly used weapon of samurai cavalry forces. (It was in the old game too.)

[Karl08]

There's all sorts of depiction's of famous samurai using naginata and spears from horseback. One in particular has Toshimitsu Saito at the battle of Yamazaki, clearly holding a naginata before the battle of Yamazaki.

I don't understand the debate, it was a clearly used weapon of samurai cavalry forces. (It was in the old game too.)

No, it was not clearly used. We have some evidence in the form of a few illustrations (not many), but that's it. There aren't any actual records of their mounted use, as far as I'm aware.

[Tsar Alexsandr]

Would you argue that a naginata could not be used as a ordinary spear from horseback? Because I'm pretty sure it can. And it could be pretty deadly in a thrust.

And there are a lot of illustrations. Both from Japan of the Naginata, as well as the Guan Dao, and from China, men wielding Guan Dao, Pudao, and all sorts of variants of the Guan Dao.

[General Malaise]

Disagree, because the difficulty of wielding a polearm from horseback has little to do with steering the horse. Horse archery would be easier, because the arm movements are much more manageable, and the bow doesn't impact with anything. The thing about melée weapons is that they do make impact. The shorter the weapon, the more control you have of the impact. Things such as edge alignment and slicing motions become much more difficult the further away the edge is. Footwork is also very important for how you use the weapon, which is a problem you simply do not have with bows. Furthermore, you do not make sweeping motions with the bow, nor with the tachi, but you do with the naginata. How do you propose to do this from horseback? From a static horse I can see how it is feasable, but how do you do it from a moving horse? I elaborate on this point further down.

The majority of attacks made with the naginata are thrusting or chopping attacks, and not side-slashes or sweeps. Thrusting with it from horseback would be no more difficult than with a standard spear, and chopping downwards would not be much more difficult than slicing downwards with a longsword from horseback. Many lancers in the ancient world had to use two-hands on their lances before the development of advanced stirrup and saddles which allowed couching, so I don't think arguing you'd have to hold it with one hand to thrust while charging is accurate. As for slashes, I don't see any reason to say because slices in motion would be hard to coordinate that you couldn't use it at all. Furthermore, if you've already charged and are in the thick of melee, you won't be moving around that much. Japanese cavalry often fought intermixed with infantry, they wouldn't used in the western knightly way so much of charging, peeling back, and charging again. Hence I don't understand why so much of your argument against them seems to assume the horse in going to be in full gallop.

Because it is more difficult to counter a horse archer, it's harder to be a horse archer? I'm sorry, I don't get that one.

No, you've misread me. I said horse archery is more common despite being difficult to master because it's more difficult to counter, except with other horse archers. It's not an element of your army you can ignore if your enemy is going to use them, while cavalrymen with polearms don't really require a special response.

You'd have to be skilled in its use from horseback. I know how to use a sword on foot, but if I was on horseback, not able to use the footwork I'm used to, and perhaps having to lean down to reach a target, I'd be like a fish on land as I'd have to use the sword in quite a different manner.

Well, I certainly agree you'd have to be skilled, but I don't think the naginata from a mount would really require extraordinary ability.

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Not just that. There is also how you impact the target. A chop is different from a draw-cut, and draw-cuts become more complicated when you place the blade on a pole. You would not, for example, use a naginata the same way you would a pollaxe - they are very different animals.

Well, true, as a pollaxe was meant for piercing plate armor more than anything, as were most late western weapons.

They certainly have the ability to injure through armour, but glaives/naginata, which slice rather than chop, do not crush armour. They will not penetrate heavy armour, though may cause damage through the armour all the same. The main thing about slicing blades on poles, however, is simple reach, preferably against lightly armoured targets. They are not can-openers.

I went and watched a lot of naginata competitions after this debate started around the internet, and I reiterate my above comment about the vast majority of naginata attacks being thrusts and chops. Given most were championship level tourneys I don't see any reason to disbelieve what I saw. Also, I wouldn't say "simple reach" as, looking at the development of pike warfare, reach becomes the most important factor in melee weapons (for samurai too).

It's not particularly top heavy, no, but neither is a great-axe or pollaxe. If you've noticed the axeheads on those things, they are very thin, and a pollaxe has a counterweight as well. It's a very manouverable weapon.

Well, I said lochaber axe, not greataxe, but if you've used one of those before and say it's not top-heavy then, while I'll be surprised, I'll concede that.

But that's precisely why it would be unsuited for horseback: the speed and direction of the horse would not help the naginata, which needs to move in an arc in tune with the shape of the blade, but would rather hinder it. That's why you have these sliding motions with the hands along the shaft, after all. A horse's momentum could cause damage to the blade or the shaft, which are not meant to receive that kind of force. I suppose with a short naginata something of the sort might be feasible, but it would have to be angled backward at any rate, to minimize the force received.

Again, why would the horse always have this momentum and why is the samurai constantly trying to slash rather than chop or thrust with it? If my weapon can normally thrust, chop or slash, and putting it on horse removes the last one, that's still one more effective attack angle than the horseman who can only thrust (that is, with his yari). Also, you don't seem to have considered simply attacking your opponent's horse with it. A side slice at an armored opponent with it might not effective as you are saying but even if you cut into a trained animal's flank it could panic or at its legs, and render it little more than a fleshshield on the ground. You wouldn't necessarily even need to really put any force into the swing if its the other horse that is coming at you. I suppose you'll try to argue with would somehow break the blade but, personally, (seeing as every samurai had often multiple sidearms) I'd risk it if thought it would work and my life defended on it. Moreover, in the chaos of a melee a lot of your opponents won't even be facing you, and, especially as the vast majority of combatants on samurai battlefields were poorly or wholly unarmored, it would not be that difficult to give a quick hack to someone's back to inflict a disabling or fatal laceration. Which brings up my last point on this, which is that although you've said "arc" and have talked about the difficulty of sweeping attacks on horseback with the naginata, even on foot the slashing strikes are very quick and short and not wide arcs, with the bulk of the striking power coming from the wrists and the forearms, not hip or footwork.

Why would it be shorter? The reason cavalry weapons tend to be slightly longer than the infantry versions of the same weapon is because you may need to reach further, especially if you're attacking infantry. Off-hand or no off-hand.

I don't think it would be shorter, which is exactly why I think you might want to bring a polearm with you on your mount if you feel you can use it.

Another thing I ought to mention, which I forgot to above is even many samurai with horse would get off and fight on foot on many occassions, although if I need to mount again and ride to another side of the battlefield, the naginata is not really a weapon you can sheathe easily so, if no assistant is around I'm going to be fighting my way to the other side if necessary with it from horseback.

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Before I can comment on that I need to know what "tl;dr" is.

"Too long, didn't read". Most people on the internet have a fit if a post is longer than four or five lines, or god forbid, has multiple paragraphs. Thus, that was for them.

The use of naginata on horseback is itself speculation, as the only evidence we have is pictorial. And we have pictorial evidence of a great many things, such as dual wielding yari and naginata (good luck with that one). Samurai in desperate situations doing desperate things are a common theme, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

I see no real reason to distrust pictoral evidence any more than textual evidence. History in general has an undue bias it shares with the population at large that the written word is more authoritative than the image. Anyway, this is borderline condescending as I think it's a given any kind of evidence on anything period should be taken with a grain of salt. What I also find questionable though is trying to rationalize accounts of practices or events from the past, especially according to modern attitudes, and becoming more skeptical than is really necessary because of that. People do not always behave what we would consider rational (and often for good reason). Yet another aspect about it that irks me even more though is that it assumes we must be able to better reason about things than people of the past, even if we have no direct experience. Perhaps as I've said before that there was some particular point we could both be missing about why you'd have a polearm when mounted.

Speaking of grains of salt, Turnbull has presented material of varying quality, especially when it comes to Japan. He has, for example, fallen afoul of the old "katana is the bestest sword" myth in one of his books (don't remember which one at the moment). In his book "Samurai" he graces the ninja with one or two sentences, simply saying they're a problem for historians due to the lack of hard information on them. And indeed, this is true. Nevertheless, he later wrote a whole book about them, caleld "the Ninja". I have the book, and it seems to have been written on popular demand more than anything. So Turnbull is an author who sometimes shines, and sometimes not. Caveat emptor.

You'd have this problem no matter who the author was, and whether it was a primary or secondary source though in my opinion. Unless we want to be incredulous about everything, a lot of historical reports and depictions though need to be taken on a certain amount of good faith. Reasoning that there are fanciful depictions or accounts of things so this should be "taken with a grain of salt" has some merit, but you have to consider context more. In none of the pictures I remember seeing of horsemen with naginata does the scene or tone of the image depicted resemble anything like those of the overly heroic or desperate images you have described above of dual-wielding yari. They look rather normal to me, no different than seeing a samurai on foot with a bow shooting at someone.

And with that, I think I'll leave the last reply on this issue to you, as this isn't really a topic I'm all that passionate about and I have now completely derailed my own thread for two pages, lol.


EDIT: Actually, to bring the thread back around to my original topic, if you notice what I named "Juukihei" actually do use a nagamaki mounted. The only unit I listed as having the naginata mounted was sohei, and I believe that's because I imagined them as more a mounted infantry, which it would be important to be able to move around the field quickly as with their morale-penalty getting sohei to attack wavering units is very important from a gameplay persepective. Not even sure why I've been arguing all this time as I anticipated this debate when coming up with my suggested list and that's why I limited it to that one unit, heh.

[Karl08]

Sorry for the delay. Blame it on TWcenter, for working again.

I'm not an expert but I do have experience with sport and mock melee combat (albeit on foot) and I think the discussion about polearms from horseback being unwieldy is mixing up a lot of different issues. Especially when someone says something silly like you're going to hack your horse's head off (it's like imagining people hack their own limbs off by using swords improperly, which never really happens). First, using anything from horseback is lot more difficult than using it on foot, second, how difficult the polearm would be to use has more to do with how top-heavy it is as much if not more than how long, and third, how ambidextrous a user would be would affect viability a lot.

I haven't heard the "decapitating horse" argument, and that would be a particularly silly claim as the blade would be farther away from the horse's neck than with shorter weapons. I agree with everything you say in this paragraph.

The first point should be obvious, but using a polearm from horseback wouldn't be much different than using a longbow like a yumi from horseback, you'd have to steer mostly with your knees/legs in order to use both hands to wield the weapon. In fact, horse archery is a hell of a lot harder than wielding a blade on the end of a pole from a horse, but no questions the validity of that.

Disagree, because the difficulty of wielding a polearm from horseback has little to do with steering the horse. Horse archery would be easier, because the arm movements are much more manageable, and the bow doesn't impact with anything. The thing about melée weapons is that they do make impact. The shorter the weapon, the more control you have of the impact. Things such as edge alignment and slicing motions become much more difficult the further away the edge is. Footwork is also very important for how you use the weapon, which is a problem you simply do not have with bows. Furthermore, you do not make sweeping motions with the bow, nor with the tachi, but you do with the naginata. How do you propose to do this from horseback? From a static horse I can see how it is feasable, but how do you do it from a moving horse? I elaborate on this point further down.

Horse archers are more common though, despite it being harder, because it's very difficult to counter a horse archer you can't catch.

Because it is more difficult to counter a horse archer, it's harder to be a horse archer? I'm sorry, I don't get that one.


Since melee cavalry is often about shock impact, it's not really much of a big deal what kind of weapon you use (barring lances), so you might as well go with your normal spear or sword instead of something weirder, but there's no real reason you couldn't pick something weird, especially if you were skilled in its use.[/quote]
You'd have to be skilled in its use from horseback. I know how to use a sword on foot, but if I was on horseback, not able to use the footwork I'm used to, and perhaps having to lean down to reach a target, I'd be like a fish on land as I'd have to use the sword in quite a different manner.

In regards to the second point, the unwieldiness of any type of weapon is related to how long it takes to pull back from an attack.

Not just that. There is also how you impact the target. A chop is different from a draw-cut, and draw-cuts become more complicated when you place the blade on a pole. You would not, for example, use a naginata the same way you would a pollaxe - they are very different animals.

Axes, maces, hammers, and especially axes and hammers at the end of poles all have this issue, but you sacrifice attack speed in order to get enough impact from the blow to crush through armor.

They certainly have the ability to injure through armour, but glaives/naginata, which slice rather than chop, do not crush armour. They will not penetrate heavy armour, though may cause damage through the armour all the same. The main thing about slicing blades on poles, however, is simple reach, preferably against lightly armoured targets. They are not can-openers.

Of course, a longer weapon that's top heavy is even more unwieldy than a shorter one, and thus using something like a lochaber axe from horseback would be nutters I'd say, but a naginata isn't that top/front-heavy at all really.

It's not particularly top heavy, no, but neither is a great-axe or pollaxe. If you've noticed the axeheads on those things, they are very thin, and a pollaxe has a counterweight as well. It's a very manouverable weapon.

From what I've seen of people using it, it's actually pretty damn fast, and not just for a polearm either. Granted some of that speed would be lost on a horse from lack of footwork and hip movement, but presumably you'd make it up with the mobility, speed, and shock of the horse.

But that's precisely why it would be unsuited for horseback: the speed and direction of the horse would not help the naginata, which needs to move in an arc in tune with the shape of the blade, but would rather hinder it. That's why you have these sliding motions with the hands along the shaft, after all. A horse's momentum could cause damage to the blade or the shaft, which are not meant to receive that kind of force. I suppose with a short naginata something of the sort might be feasible, but it would have to be angled backward at any rate, to minimize the force received.

Lastly, attacking to your off-hand side is pretty awkward on top of a horse no matter what weapon you're using (again, except maybe lances). You also lose a lot of reach doing so, because your arm has to cross your own body. You can twist to a certain extent or stand up in the saddle on the stirrups, but still this is precisely why most cavalry weapons are actually longer, rather than shorter (like horseman using the tachi for instance).

Why would it be shorter? The reason cavalry weapons tend to be slightly longer than the infantry versions of the same weapon is because you may need to reach further, especially if you're attacking infantry. Off-hand or no off-hand.

The tl;dr version

?

of this would just be that, we know it *was* used and it probably wasn't more uncommon than wielding an odachi on foot was for a comparison, which is also pretty rare in the records IIRC.

Before I can comment on that I need to know what "tl;dr" is.

So most likely the issue was simply that this required much skill or had specialized use or didn't make a huge difference, but because of the simple fact it was used, and by professional warriors who clearly knew what they were doing and were taking their life into their hands, I don't think armchair theorizing on what was possible or viable on pre-modern battlefields should be stated with the certainty a lot of people do, particularly because essentially no one living has direct experience of this kind of combat (where you are actually trying to kill your opponent or be killed). If someone has direct quotes from something like a Turnbull book on this issue, post them, but I've only encountered contradictory interent speculation on this issue.

The use of naginata on horseback is itself speculation, as the only evidence we have is pictorial. And we have pictorial evidence of a great many things, such as dual wielding yari and naginata (good luck with that one). Samurai in desperate situations doing desperate things are a common theme, and should be taken with a grain of salt.


Speaking of grains of salt, Turnbull has presented material of varying quality, especially when it comes to Japan. He has, for example, fallen afoul of the old "katana is the bestest sword" myth in one of his books (don't remember which one at the moment). In his book "Samurai" he graces the ninja with one or two sentences, simply saying they're a problem for historians due to the lack of hard information on them. And indeed, this is true. Nevertheless, he later wrote a whole book about them, caleld "the Ninja". I have the book, and it seems to have been written on popular demand more than anything. So Turnbull is an author who sometimes shines, and sometimes not. Caveat emptor.