Why did Japanese not use shields?

A shield was impractical for horseback fighting. Fighting on foot was for the low classes of Japan, their force of ashigaru surrounded the samurai on foot. So basically, two handed spears and bows were hugely popular in Japan and hand held shields aren’t particularly useful for archers and spearmen.

Why did some samurai refuse to use guns?

Feudal Japan was mostly isolated at the time of the Samurai. While they knew of gunpowder and had been exposed to matchlock type of firearms. These weapons were not good for more than a volley or two before you would be using it like a club against a man with a sword that could remove a limb or head in a single blow.

Did the Japanese use handheld shields?

This is a very major misconception. Japanese actually had shields, and their use evolved with the advancing nature of warfare as weapons became more sophisticated. In the beginning, soldiers wore their shields, so they had two hands to do other stuff, like firing arrows, using other two-handed CQC weapons.

Why didn’t the samurai use shields?

On why didn’t the Samurai use shields as often, in addition to the inconvenience a hand-held shield poses to a horse-borne archer, one of the clearest reason is because the unique Samurai armour, the kogusoku and ōsode.

Did the Japanese ever use shields in battle?

They did use shields actually. People tend to only look at the samurai period, but that’s just a portion of Japanese warfare. There happened a lot before it aswell. From 12.000 BC to 300 AD hand held shields were very popular and were used by Japanese infantry.

Why don’t people use shields instead of Swords?

Some of the reasons were: clumsiness. The clumsiness is somehow obvious: with a weapon in one hand you can do some other stuff with the other hand. A shield is not really easy to carry around. A sword isn’t either.

Why was the sword/shield Warframe rejected?

It was rejected because its too simple of an explanation – it reads sort of like “samurai r00l” as it is. You have to explain why, exactly, shield use would have been ineffective against the Samurai class and why these reasons don’t apply to societies that adopted shields. Brilliant.