primarily made of wood and relatively simple

Also, less maintenance/ material required for its creation.

A spear point with a couple of langets is something a blacksmith can knock out by the hour. Good swords take longer and are more technical to make. You break your spear shaft in training? Well tough as, but you can find a suitable replacement and remount it on campaign.

The sword has always been the last option as a weapon. Like a handgun would be today. A spear would always be preferred.

Even more than that, while we think of the gladius as their iconic weapon, the only weapon that served for the entire history of the Roman military is the bronze spear, though it eventually became ceremonial.

Swords are flashy and the weapon of a noble in town, as they’re expensive, high skill, and a reasonable sidearm for relative safety. They weren’t replaced in function by the rifle, but by the pistol. This is actually quite similar to the mindset of revolvers in the American west. The primary armament of that period’s conflicts was the lever action rifle, but the revolver was better in town.

Don’t forget the Plumbata!

It's more that guns were hard to get until the British and Americans forced Japan to open its borders. They were generally imported through the Spanish/Portuguese, or the Dutch after they established trade relations. Even after they started making their own matchlocks, I believe they were only produced in small batches due to the high percentage of impurities in Japan's iron deposits.

You’re right, that last sentence was ham fisted - I was referring to the gunboat diplomacy opening the trade free for all after decades of isolation, not colonial annexation.

"what're you going to do, coward? shoot me?"

• Man who got fucking shot

Words of wisdom

In latin languages it's even called "besta" to indicate it's from the beast (Satan)

Correction, you are a bag of meat

Reading your links, the correction you made seems semantically insignificant. Yumi is the word for "bow" in Japanese and longbows describe bows that are long. Longbows are not unique to the English, and there are a lot of bows that can be described as longbows. So my point is, if samurais used yumis that are long (which some did) then saying they used longbows is not incorrect. Nevertheless, thank you for letting us know what the Japanese called their bows, it was educational.

Genghis Kahn would love the Toyota hilux. The modern technical is endowed with his spirit of “let’s make the real shit of war more mobile”