Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Cummins Antony
Title : Samurai and ninja The real story behind the japanese warrior myth that shatters the bushido mystique
Year : 2015

Link download : Cummins_Antony_-_Samurai_and_ninja.zip

The Search for the Samurai and the Shinobi. As the twentieth century came to a close, something quite special happened. The study of Western knights and medieval combat shifted. Movies began to change, imagery began to adapt, and ingrained ideas began to fall away. The medieval knights of Europe were transformed from a clunking shiny Victorian hero figure into a dynamic, powerful and robust specialist practiced in war craft. He no longer swung a heavy sword with bent back, nor was he lifted onto a horse with a mechanical pulley system. Now the knight flashed with deadly skill as the intricate art of Western swordsmanship was rediscovered. In addition, we discovered that the knight was a very complex character. They were war masters, trained from youth to serve a lord, be experienced in the arts of the siege and defense, and master the various machines of his time; all with an aim bent on killing the enemy. The knight was no longer a two dimensional figure who sang beneath ladies’ bedrooms in the evening and fought the unholy dragon in the red light of dawn. His identity changed to the noble killer with a chivalric code that was an ideal and not a reality; a trained warrior wrapped in the fervent dedication of Christianity. This was all polished with education in various forms, the strings of ritual and an appreciation for beauty, all of which brought about a much more complex figure than previously believed. In full contrast to this, the samurai and the shinobi of Japan remain in the looming shadow of modern fantasy and romance. The samurai is now widely believed to be a knight who charges headlong into death for the love of a lord. They also have a mysterious and magical blade, which can cut through any material. In the day he meditates on loyalty and is gifted with blessed enlightenment, but in the night, he fearfully protects against his famously dreaded enemy—the ninja. This outline is as redundant as the knight fighting a dragon next to a maiden locked in a tower, and it belongs in one place; story books. Of all the associations that exist for the samurai, one of them has fallen from grace, which by rights should not have. The samurai were classically termed as the “knights of the East,” the Japanese equivalent to the European warrior class. This connection has fallen by the wayside in recent years, yet it is one founded in reality. The samurai share so many common traits with the European knight that the differences are found in the details, not in the principles. Therefore a revolution of the samurai should be moving in tandem with the revolution of the knight. ...