First, this whole picture of Light Brigade style charges against gunners is dramatically overblown; there's a ton of new research coming out that shows that guns didn't dramatically alter the shape of Japanese warfare, they simply replaced the bow and arrow. An analysis that I was just looking at this morning, of documents reporting battlewounds, for example, shows that between 1500 and 1560, out of some 620 casualties described, 368 were arrow wounds, 124 were spear wounds, 96 were injuries from rocks (thrown by slings or by hand), 18 were sword wounds, 7 were combined arrow and spear wounds, 3 were combined arrow and sword wounds, 2 were combined rock and spear wounds, and 2 were combined rock and arrow wounds.
Between 1563 and 1600 (after the adoption of the gun) some 584 reported casualties break down as follows: there were 263 gunshot victims, 126 arrow victims, 99 spear victims, 40 sword victims, 30 injured by rocks, and 26 injured by combinations of the above (including one poor SOB who was shot by both guns and arrows and stabbed by spears, and one who was speared, naginata-ed, and cut with a sword). In other words, long distance weapons (arrows and rocks) accounted for about 75% of the wounds received in the pre-gun era, and about 72 % (arrows + guns + rocks) during the gunpowder era. Which is to say that "traditional fighting" does not appear to have been heavily centered on close-quarters clashes of swords or even of spears, except in literary sources.
So, I've had people call me an elitist snob and I haven't been able to mount any sort of defense. Such is life, and a price that I'm willing to pay.
