[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

French and English boxing are really nothing more than informal styles evolved from street fighting. The German and Italian schools may have focused on a weapon (two-handed sword, side sword, rapier) but none of them were tied explicitly to one weapon, and all trained in the use of several weapons or shields and armors, generally as a companion to their favored weapon.

Asian martial arts evolved from street fighting just as much as western arts. By this I mean that the fights might have been fought in streets, or a forest or in a field or at your front door against hostile people trying to kill or rob you, and winning was to be achieved by any means necessary.

I also don't know any Asian martial art that would be explicitly tied to a single weapon that don't have comparable western equivalents, e.g. kendo - sport fencing. Most martial arts seem to teach both unarmed techniques and usage of many different weapons, or only unarmed techniques, or only usage of a single weapon.

Eastern martial arts seem to be tied explicitly to a single weapon or style, with a history for that style extending for hundreds and hundreds of years. I think this is why we today link the word "martial arts" to "Eastern martial arts".

In Asia, martial arts have stayed important for far longer than in the West, and the martial culture has been stronger and more secretive. At least in China, many martial arts are only passed down a single family line and to close family friends, and furthermore, people have remembered who taught who before their time. These charts and family lines go back several hundred years when there's that much history, but people often deviate from what they were thought, or learned from several masters, or weren't tought everything so they improvised the rest.

As for the reason many people don't think the Western martial arts are important, well, the reason is there have already been many generations who thought the same. Majority of the Western martial arts have been forgotten.

also, any thoughts on why so many specific styles were developed in the East but never in the West?

See above. Secretive families, and perhaps also the fact that the arts get fancier names in the east. "East-London Fencing School Style" probably doesn't live that long...

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

there is evidence of even the Native Americans developing open-handed styles of personal combat.

They fought, so of course they had a way of fighting! It's not about the style so much as the methods of teaching it, and for the systems used for that. They might have lacked the systematic methods of teaching that would transform a personal fighting style into a martial art, but surely they had something which they taught to friends and family.

I'm more concerned with Middle Ages era of martial arts. It is at this point that we have specific styles developed for warfare... ...while the east have specific terms for each style related to a weapon, the West has the more general term "fencing".

Terms are necessary for teaching the use of weapon. If weapons aren't used, the terms will be forgotten. See link to Silver's Paradoxes of Defence for some weird terms.

Western styles are limited to the schools they came from, and typically when the teacher of a school died his style died with him. Eastern styles are focused on the weapon itself, and many schools would teach the same style with some variation. We just didn't see this in the west.

"Eastern styles are limited to the families they came from, and typically when the sons of the school didn't learn it the style died with the master. Western styles focused on the school itself, and many students would spread the teachings around with some variation."

It goes both ways.


For anyone interested, I tried to learn about Western martial arts myself, few years back. Here are some useful links.

Paradoxes of Defence, George Silver, 1599
It gets interesting after the half-way point, when he starts telling why the (French) rapier is bad and polearms, including the British shortstaff, are good. It's interesting because he mentions so many ways to fight with the various weapons.

British Quarterstaff Association videos

A Brief History of the Quarterstaff

Irish stick fighting (shillelagh/bata)

Also, here's an Indian martial art. It's much less known than other Asian MAs, so I thought to post it here.
http://www.kalari.in/kalari_videos1.html

So my original question: how should the learning of of something like Kenjutsu vs the italian Dardi school be represented in a game system?

How the LEARNING should be represented? That's a very good question. I guess it hasn't been asked often enough, because this is how it is represented in most games:

"Okay, you hold the sword like this, with your hand on the grip, between handguard and the pommel. That's good, now, the main thing is, you stick it to your enemies. Let me show you..."

*Ding! You have mastered Iaido! You can now use swords, katanas, sabres and two-handed swords!*