OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts

[sector24]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

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.

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

I don't think this is necessarily the case, at least not for the entirety of history. There's a lot of anecdotal information indicating that talented fighters in the east would create their own schools which would last for roughtly their lifetime plus a decade or two and then be absorbed into other schools. For instance, the famous story about Sasaki Kojiro vs. Miyamoto Musashi. Kojiro founded his own school and even had a signature move, the "tsubame-gaeshi" but it didn't save him from being killed by Musashi. The school isn't around anymore, but the move survived.

So in the above case, I would consider training under Sasaki Kojiro to be the same as studying under George Silver except for one very vital difference; George Silver and many other European swordsmen wrote combat manuals which survive. I think the reason we believe the East had some kind of homogenous school of thought lasting thousands of years is because we don't have a written record to prove otherwise. But that doesn't mean things didn't change over time, it just means that when the process was finally put to paper, the independent schools had been absorbed.

The next important question is why do eastern fighters master a single weapon type while western fighters learn sword, dagger, buckler, etc.? Again, I think this is a misconception based on the fact that our contact with the east occurred during a relatively peaceful time in their history. For instance, significant western contact with Japan occurred just before Tokugawa Ieyasu had unified Japan. During the Edo period all these professionally trained warriors had no wars to fight. This led to a devotion towards perfecting their art rather than a practical application of arms. I think if you compared an 13th century samurai with an 18th century samurai, the 13th century warrior would have extensive knowledge of both the bow, the sword, and possibly other weapons such as the yari, hachiwara, naginata, etc.

By contrast, Europe did not have the social stratification that prevented samurai from being anything else. There was also a fairly constant level of warfare somewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages so martial skills were always innovating. And they wrote everything down so we have a record of it.

From a game design standpoint, I would not differentiate between west and east. And I apologize if the above is overly Japan-centric and massively oversimplified.