Why samurai abandoned horse archery?

It wasn't anime enough, so they switched to fireballs.

wot dis

Mongols, and then the as armies grew bigger, and samurai played a lesser role on the battlefield, the focus went on spear and pike blocks, made of either low-ranks samurai or ashigaru.

Sociological shift, bad previous encounters with people who actually had a very organized way of doing horse archery and high-status samurai starting to be lazier.
Most samurai couldn't do horse archery, this shit is complicated and expensive.

"Mononoke-hime" by Hayao Miyazaki.

Because guns.

Why they dropped archery after mongol invasion?

They didn't dropped horse archery even after Mongol invasion. If asserts so, he or she should show evidence.

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Samurai Hunters - Full Documentary youtu.be/FW9WBzo6fAk

Because mongols were better at that game, they also got the shift to bigger use of the spears from them. They didn't really dropped archery but horse archery. Then after 1540's they massively shifted to guns rather than bows.

Also, at the start (11th-12th centuries), the samurai needed to get some cred, so they went on battling as horse archers. Once they were installed, they didn't need to do that shit anymore, so the big status samurai who were practicing horse archery started to stop doing that (on the battlefield at least) and concentrate on having lots of ashigaru and retainers to fight for them. I think that something like only 1 in 20 or 25 samurai was a horse archer and those were the richers dudes who didn't need to fight that much.

Foot archery was still widely practiced by the ashigaru, and then guns took over.

They didn't dropped it but it certainly was of a lower importance in terms of numbers at least. But that has to do with armies getting bigger and filled with spearmen ashigaru / ji-samurai. If you don't get more horse archers but more spearmen, the importance of the first one is lessened.

The strategies didn't really allowed horse archers to play the bigger role that they had at the start of the Feudal era.

How often were katanas used? I mean sometimes samurai were shown using only a katana and I don't mean in the anime so were there dedicated swordsmen in Japan? Also Ashigaru used uchigatanas among their weapons so it's not like all swords were purely status symbols that could be afforded by only the richest people.

Afaik tachi at least were used more as a sidearm
I might be totally wrong though

Tachi and uchigatana were always secondary weapons on the battlefield, but it also means they were mainly used to get out when your main weapon is useless at that present time. Horse archers carried tachi that they used to fend off people in close combat for instance. But that also means that swords weren't really used to actively kill people, they were to protect yourself when gathering with your friends. They were adequate to fight pretty much any close combat weapon, but the situation they were used in were mostly retreat and gathering rather than all-out assault.

Also, no one during the beginning of the feudal era up until the 17th century were a dedicated swordsman. All fighters knew how to fight with a spear, sword, staff at the very least. And then you could go with glaives, bows and more expensive weapons. But most people knew how to fight with spears, because they were the primary fighting weapon, besides, what's good with a sword is that you can carry it alongside a bigger weapon, you don't choose sword or spear, you take both (or glaive and sword, bow and sword) ! Most samurai had some servants with additional weapons, so if your spear broke, you used it like a staff or you could draw your blade until your friends came to help you and brought you another spear.

But it's true that ashigaru were using kodachi and other short swords at the beginning of the Feudal era, at the end of it, most bushi had some form of long sword so indeed, before the 17th century, it was just a practical weapon and not that much of a status symbol. Most bushi, even the poorest could afford some piece of chest armor and a jingasa, a spear and a sword.

It's only after the wars of the 16th century that the sword took on as "the samurai status symbol", because by then only them could wield and carry a long sword.

But there were records of samurai fighting on foot with katanas. This ''le swords were sidearms all the time'' meme needs to end.

>But there were records of samurai fighting on foot with katanas.
I didn't say anything otherwise, but it was usually if not always as a secondary measure. They didn't go in combat with only a sword, that's the whole point. It's a sidearm because you can have it alongside another, longer weapon. You used both, but usually, the pole weapon or the bow before the sword, that doesn't mean that you'd never use your sword, there are plenty of opportunity to do so, as I've written.

Swords being sidearms didn't mean they were never used, just that they were mostly used alongside others.

Most kills were still made with missile weapons.

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>But there were records of samurai fighting on foot with katanas

And modern soldiers sometimes use pistols.

Japan's terrain is not good for horse archery.
The best question is why it was so popular there in the first place.

Because of the ff: factors.
>Tribal nignog nature of the early Japs which favored shitloads of skirmishing and limited melee to minimize casualties.
>The Emishi. Who used to rule Northern Japan, Did mounted archery and wiped the floor with Yamato repeatedly during the 500s-800s.
>Korean influence (those cunts JUST love archery.)

Horse archery is always doable, that's when you want to go for it en masse that you better not have mountains and forests.
Japanese horse archers weren't really formations but group of individuals, so it kinda helps. Samurai based their warfare on being fairly mobile, having horses certainly helps and then, bows were always considered one if not the main weapon of war during the early middle-ages. Being a horse archer makes you classy and all.

Besides, battles were somehow agreed business in the early feudal era, in the same vein than the ancient greek battles. They both didn't used tactics well suited to their terrain (horse archery and lines of infantry), but if you concert yourself with the opposition on the where and when, you can choose the proper setting.

>Japan
>limited melee

lmao tell that to poor ashigaru who were sent as meat shields

We're talking of the fucking Yamato-Nara period here.

I don't speak chinese.

That depends on the time period but in the sengoku era, which saw the prominent use of ashigaru, they fought in tight formations using long spears.

The lines would approach eachother and and start thrusting and slashing with their spears until a space was created. The samurai would then charge through that space to try and inflict as much damage as possible until a rout.

Cavalry were mainly mounted infantry that would ride around the flanks, charge through gaps in the line, or to other advantageous positions, dismount and charge the enemy.

Horse archers were used earlier on to strafe the enemy and attack the flanks with constant fire but that fell out of style by the mid to late 1500's with the advent of guns. Then volley fire became really big.

That's just kind of a basic overview of japanese warfare for the time period though. They had all kinds of different formations and tactics to accomodate enemy movements and numbers.