The sword was the soul of the samurai, right?
In a sense, yes. There has been plenty written on the relationship between a samurai and his sword. I shall not go into that now. However, we need to keep in mind that a sword is like a pistol to the modern soldier – a weapon of last resort. Samurai were often first trained in the use of the bow and horsemanship before progressing to use of the sword. In combat, arrows, spears, pikes, halberds, and polearms were most often employed before the sword. Both are much better at cutting through armor and keeping your opponent at a distance. We also need to keep in mind the march of history and the media and what it has done to our perception of the samurai. Samurai themselves are guilty of fluffing up their image from time to time and Hollywood and even academia has fed the flames. I don’t want to go off on tangents, but this thread should get you off to a good start on the image distortion of what “samurai” means.
