Fundamental Importance of Foot Soldiers in Battle

…Before the Tokugawa period [in Japan], when the feudal [daimyo] depended upon the martial skills of their retainers, inspired leaders understood the fundamental importance of foot soldiers in the winning of battles, and warriors of the lower ranks, such as the nakakosho, the tomokosho, and the kachi (that is, the huge mass of foot soldiers (ashigaru)), were properly trained and even encouraged to develop their abilities to the point where the might even attain a position of supreme command as had Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and others equally famous. The age of heroes defeating armies singlehandedly had always been more myth than reality—history proving with depressing regularity that battles were usually worn by using masses of troops in the most advantageous manner.

Even great warriors, vastly skilled in the arts of archery and spearmanship, were, upon occasion, cut to pieces by veteran spearmen of hirazamurai rank or by their attendants (chugen) led by leaders of kogashira rank. Each group of spearmen composed of warriors of these ranks was a formidable unit of combat that could be neutralized, not by a lonely knight charging blindly and vaingloriously into their midst, but only by similar body of trained archers or spearmen. Once the compact unity of the group had been shattered, the warriors of higher rank and their sword-wielding officers could finally engage in individual, close-range swordplay. And there is evidence to indicate that even then many of these officers and leaders fell beneath the skilled spear-thrust of an obscure veteran of the lower ranks.

— Secrets of the Samurai, pp. 108-9