Comments by "Seven Proxies" (@sevenproxies4255) on "Roman Legionary VS Samurai" video.

  1. One thing that comes to mind in a duel situation. What sort of fighting style or weaponry would a samurai have access to in order to counter a scutum? The scutum is one of the largest, man portable shields in history. As far as my knowledge, samurai didn't fight or encounter many foes using such large shields carried by infantry. Now I know that you've previously mentioned a type of shield that samurai used (although the name escapes me), but from the looks of it, it seemed to be more of a projectile protectin device, which the samurai employed primarily against archers by bracing it against the ground. But from the looks of the images it didn't look like something they would use in melee combat, whereas the scutum was designed to be used both in close quarters as well as protection against archers. Let's say the samurai use a yari. I have a hard time seeing the yari giving him an advantage, because the scutum looks pretty effective as protection against a spear. And as soon as the legionary manage to close the gap where he's well within the business end of the yari, the samurai would have increased difficulty in employing it. So the legionary would then be within sword distance, meaning the samurai would have to use a katana or weapon of similar length (a kanabo perhaps). In this situation the samurai blade would have a range advantage to the gladius. At this point I see a sort of stalemate happening. The legionary would have a blade too short to engage the samurai since he'd have to expose himself during a strike, where the samurai would be able to use the range advantage of his sword. But on the other hand, I don't know of any katana fighting styles employed by the samurai that could be used to counter the protection of the scutum. So it's quite difficult to ascertain which warrior would have the definitive advantage in such a duel situation. My personal view would say that the legionary has a slight advantage, because he could just slam into the samurai shield first and doing so still be able to protect himself from a thrust or cut from the katana relatively easily. But on the other hand: if the samurai keeps his wit about him and sidesteps in just the right moment, the bulk of the scutum would put the legionary at a disadvantage to turn quickly enough and defend against getting slashed or stabbed from behind.
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