Inejiro Asanuma?

Samurai were skilled archers too.

Samurai probably spent more time training in archery (and their bows were pretty cool and long) and polearm combat than swordsmanship. Their swords were strictly backup weapons when it came to battle.

They only came to prominence after the Shogun came to power and largely put an end to the warring periods and a lot of samurai were rendered unemployed due to their Lords not having the money to keep them employed in peacetime. They were permitted to carry swords as part of their station (Samurai was more of a caste than a profession), so even homeless unemployed ronin (masterless samurai) would almost always have a pair of swords at their hip, even if their kimono was full of holes and their sandals were paper-thin.

Though, some did wind up having to sell their swords to avoid starving to death, but this was very rare, as most of them would sooner turn to banditry than give up their swords, which were considered to represent their soul, more of a symbol than a primary weapon for battle in war time.

So, basically, yes, samurai swords were really important, but more symbolically than as primary weapons, but sometimes they were the only weapons they had, especially if they were poor and unemployed, so they started to gain more attention and dedicated martial arts styles started to get more complex and focused upon using swords alone as society shifted and real warfare became a rare thing of the past (and they would face very few armored or mounted opponents).

Basically, it's complicated, but not unlike how lances, polearms, and maces were more commonly the primary weapon of most knights, with swords as a backup for when they were dismounted/disarmed, and then dueling became a lot more complex and the focus on swordplay (and with swords shifting to lighter weapons intended for dedicated dueling purposes) increased as warfare changed due to pikemen and crossbows and firearms and cannons and whatnot rendered the knight largely obsolete.

But yeah, Samurai on the battlefield would definitely rather shoot their enemies from a few hundred feet away with their bigass bows and arrows, or stab their opponents from a few arms' lengths away with their polearms rather than let them get close.

Samurai may have trained in archery, but I don't see how that matters, given the unimpressive quality of Japanese bows. When people think of formidable archers, what do they think of? English longbows. Italian crossbows. Mongol recurve bows. Not dinky Japanese yumi - which, if the available evidence is any indication, packed a draw weight of a mere 30 pounds (*snort*).

With all his training, the samurai could kill a squirrel with that, maybe.

Number two on my list of things poeTV has shamed me out of loving is archery.

I used to really love archery.

You heard about Lars Andersen and the backlash against his trick-shooting videos, right meme?

At least none of you can ruin sex for me.

The only thing Poetv ruined for me was my belief in Libertarian ideals and supply side economics. Otherwise it's introduced me to some cool stuff like Steven Universe.
Homer, you are terribly mistaken. The umi out performs the long bow in just about every way from force, accuracy, and rate of fire. Please see the video I submitted.

Oh, believe me Meme, I can ruin sex for you.

Cena - oh my GOD, that si such bullshit. "To make a fair comparison", "we have chosen bows with the same draw weight".

Yeah, OK, no. I hope you don't need me to tell you why that's bullshit, but it's basically like saying "we're going to compare a Honda Civic with a McLaren F1, and to make it fair, both cars will have 100 horsepower".

Furthermore, not only is 50lbs DW less than a third that of a real longbow, it's almost twice that of a real yumi!!! Garbage television for garbage people.

I'll vote it up, just so I can point in the incongruities of your video.

I don't know about archery & bows to have an opinion on this discussion, but I voted up Cena's bow video so I could read EH's rebuttal. Smithsonian videos are often entertaining, but they should never be taken seriously. When they cover subjects I do know something about, I inevitably spot many many instances of oversimplification, sensationalization, and straight-up mistakes.

So you just accept Homer's ridiculous figures just like that. Where does he even get these statistics. This is the Smithsonian here. Since when are they suspect? It's not like I used something from the History Channel. Homer's ideas play straight out of the ideas of white supremacists. "As you can see here, the tiny yellow man could only pull five pounds, so he made his bow tiny and weak, whereas us powerful white men had bows with a draw of one trillion pounds."

One hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds, based on the longbows found onboard the Mary Rose {1}. That's science, not racism. Meanwhile, the "yellow man"'s pull is unknown, but modern yumi are usually 30 pounds, with fifty or sixty (the same as a modern hunting bow) being considered very high end and almost too heavy to use.

{1} Strickland, Matthew "The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose" Sutton publishing, 2006. p 17

Oh, I don't "just accept" anything that EH writes. He's been completely wrong so often I've lost count. But I will say this for him: he'll usually go to the bother of typing out his reasoning for why he believes what he does. He seems to engage in good faith, and I really, really like that. If I had more energy, I would counter-engage more with him a lot more, but I just don't have the urge to type that much anymore.

The point of my post was just that Smithsonian videos tend to be rather sketchy, and I was interested in what flaws EH saw. That doesn't mean I'd take EH's criticisms as gospel.

Oh, and you're right; Smithsonian videos aren't anywhere near as bad as the History channel. They are based on fact rather than ALIENS and/or HITLER. It's just that their fact should be taken with a grain of salt.

It really is. That's why I hate when people say discussing things like politics is pointless, cause it is not.