Ninja vs Samurai: WHO WOULD WIN?

[A Black Falcon]

Just because the Edo Period was relatively peacful doesn't mean that the Samurai were bad swordsmen. Whether in battle or not they would train just as hard as ever before. A war could break out at anytime. That's like suggesting that our military is incompetent when there isn't a war going on.

Now the actual lords and nobles are a different story in the Edo period, Samurai in name only in many cases. And it was during the later Edo period that the Samurai lost their masters and became Ronin.

But the point is that most of the Samurai in the Tokugawa period weren't warriors. They did all kinds of jobs, but most weren't warriors... when you have over 200 years of peace the military side fades, of course. Most were lords, merchants, administrators... not fighters. 'Samurai' was just the class and didn't actually mean that they were warriors. It meant that once they had ancestors who were. :)

Sure, earlier Samurais were certainly great warriors. But in the 17 and 1800's? Not so much.