[actifadepette]

This argument is bound to appear over and over again much the same way people always seem to want to pit pirates against ninjas. My take on it is that trying to compare a medieval knight and a samurai is comparing apples and oranges. Yes, both were swordsmen that wore armor but the devil's in the details. The armor used, sword construction and purpose, tactics, and martial mind-set were all quite different.

For arguments sake though, if you're wondering about armor penetration, look up kabuto-wari. If you're thinking that no matter what, there's still the chain mail to get through, Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu for example, aims for the unprotected gaps in yoroi in some of their kata. I know next to nothing about medieval knight fighting tactics but I would imagine most of the kills on the battlefield resulted from exploiting gaps in the armor or crushing certain pieces of armor to smash the fleshy bits underneath. But again, this is looking at samurai vs. samurai and knight vs. knight. Bottom line is that while the two do have certain similarities, there are still fundamental differences that make it very difficult to directly compare the two.