site banner

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I've been reading more of James Clavell's Asian Saga. I've also been catching up on cleaning and maintaining my garden tools.

In the books every peasant bows and scrapes at the feet of the samurai. My very limited knowledge of martial arts is that those same peasants developed ways of fighting with their gardening tools because they were forbidden from owning real weapons.

So... who were the peasants fighting?

So... who were the peasants fighting?

If German history is anything to go by: Robbers, marauding soldiers, each other, their wives, their lord's enemies when something went very wrong in the levying process, and once every few generations, their social betters in some abortive peasant uprising.