Why Japanese never used portable shields like literally everyone else and sticked to pavises?

>most foot soldiers archers
>most mounted warriors also archers.
>melee weapons pole arms to deal with >mounted warriors
>Most early swords three to four feet long to >deal with said polearms

What hand are they going to carry the shield in?

They did. Not commonly, but they did. They were more common pre-samurai but some examples exist concurrently with samurai.

Here's an example of a pre-Edo shield.

Bucklers were quite popular in Europe. Not to mention autistic German longshields.

Same reason European pikemen didn't

>pole arms
it's their fault for being microdicked betas if I fought in feudal Japan I would simply knock the cavalry out with my cock which is roughly pike sized and dual wielded shields so the archers can't do fuck all to me

They just mounted the shields on their shoulders.

>autistic German longshields.
Can you elaborate? You've piqued my interest.

Trial by combat using longshields was pretty popular in the HRE. It takes up an inordinate amount of space in German fechtbuchs.

Holy shit, that's like a pavise on steroids. Were those actually used in war?

The longshield was only used for judicial duels. There's some theories as to why. Some say it's an ignoble weapon with no place in glorious war, its use beneath a knight. Others say it's simply impractical.

Rodeleros and bucklers being freaking everywhere in civilian Europe though...
It wasn't as popular as before sure, but it was out there in significant number. In fact, s&b was still the typical popular fighting setup until the second half of the 16th century.

thanks user

>katana and nagitana are one hand weapons

The meta was two handed weapons.
Armor provided good enough protection against arrows.
Shields weren't useful against matchlocks.

Overreliance on two-handed weapons

I really don't know what good a normal shield would do in japanese warfare.

Here's a shield from the Yayoi era.

>shields fell out of favor with japs because their best attempt at a shield was just a fucking wooden plank

Shields went out of fashion in Japan around the same time they went out of fashion in Europe.

Seems accurate

Not much. Better to have protection from missile weapons rather than sword strikes in Japan.

>Some say it's an ignoble weapon with no place in glorious war, its use beneath a knight.
Mair shows them being used by knights (or at least men in expensive armour) though. It should be considered though that Mair is an early 16th century source when judicial combat was not really done any more.

In general I don't think any weapon ever was considered "beneath" anyone. The only thing that mattered was whether a weapon worked.