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Samurai (侍 or sometimes 士) is a common term for a
warrior in pre-industrial
Japan. A more appropriate term is
bushi (武士) (lit. "war-man") which came into use during the
Edo period. However, the term samurai now usually refers to warrior
nobility, not, for example,
ashigaru or foot soldiers. The samurai with no attachment to a
clan or
daimyo was called a
ronin (lit. "wave-man").
Samurai were expected to be cultured and literate, and over time,
samurai during the
Tokugawa era gradually lost their military function. By the end of the
Tokugawa, samurai were essentially civilian bureaucrats for the daimyo
with their swords serving only ceremonial purposes. With the
Meiji reforms in the late 19th century, the samurai were abolished in
favor of a western-style national army.
Etymology of samurai
The word samurai has its origins in the pre-Heian
period Japan when it was pronounced saburai, meaning servant
or attendant. It was not until the early modern period, namely the
Azuchi-Momoyama period and early Edo period of the late 16th and early
17th centuries that the word saburai became substituted with
samurai. However, by then, the meaning had already long before
changed.
During the era of the rule of the samurai, the earlier term
yumitori ("bowman") was also used as an honorary title of an
accomplished warrior even when swordsmanship had become more important.
Japanese archery (kyujutsu),
is still strongly associated with the war god
Hachiman.
Clan origins of the samurai in the 8th and 9th centuries
During the Heian period, samurai came to refer especially to the guards
of the imperial palace and to those who carried swords. These forerunners
of what we now know as samurai had ruler-sponsored equipment and were
required to hone their martial skills in all times.
The actual armies of the emperor, on the other hand, were nothing but
groups of conscripts assigned to provincial areas of Japan in case of war
or rebellion. They were modeled after continental Chinese armies and were
composed of a third of the able-bodied adult male population. In contrast
to the imperial guards, each soldier had to supply his own weapons and
support himself.
In the early Heian, the late 8th and early 9th centuries, the
emperor Kammu sought to consolidate and expand his empire in northern
Honshu. The original armies sent to conquer the rebellious
Emishi (the ancestors of the present-day
Ainu) lacked motivation and discipline and were unable to prevail. He
then introduced the title of
shogun and began to rely on the powerful regional clans to conquer the
Emishi.
These clans originally were farmers that had been driven to arms to
protect themselves from the imperially appointed magistrates sent to
govern their lands and collect taxes. Skilled in mounted combat and
archery, these clan warriors became the emperor's preferred tool for
putting down rebellions (the armies were eventually disbanded). By the
mid-Heian, they had adopted Japanese-style armor and weapons and laid the
foundation of
bushido, their famous ethical code.
Samurai clans usurp
imperial power
Originally these warriors were merely mercenaries in the employ of the
emperor and noble clans. But slowly they gathered enough power to usurp
the emperor and establish the first samurai-dominated government.
As regional clans gathered manpower and resources and struck alliances
with each other, they formed a hierarchy centered around a toryo,
or chief. This chief was typically a distant relative of the emperor and a
lesser member of one of three noble families (the
Fujiwara,
Minamoto, or the
Taira). Though originally sent to provincial areas for a fixed four
year term as a magistrate, the toryo declined to return to the
capital when their terms ended. Their sons inherited their positions and
continued to lead the clans in putting down rebellions throughout Japan
during the middle and later Heian.
Because of their rising military and economic power, the clans
ultimately became a new force in the politics of the court. Their
involvememt in the
Hogen Rebellion in the late Heian only consolidated their power and
finally pit the rival Minamoto and the Taira against each other in the
Heiji Rebellion of
1160. Emerging victorious,
Taira no Kiyomori became an imperial advisor, the first warrior to
attain such position, and eventually seized control of the central
government to establish the first samurai-dominated government and
relegating the emperor to a mere figurehead.
Evolution of samurai culture during feudal-era Japan
The Taira and the Minamoto once again clashed in
1180 beginning the
Gempei War which ended in
1185. The victorious
Minamoto no Yoritomo once again established the superiority of the
samurai and in
1190 visited
Kyoto and in
1192 became
Seii Taishogun, establishing the
Kamakura Shogunate.
Over time, powerful samurai clans became warrior nobility (buke)
who were only nominally under court aristocracy (kuge). When
samurai begun to adopt aristocratic customs like calligraphy, poetry and
music, some court aristocrats also began to adopt samurai skills. In spite
of various machinations and brief periods of rule by various emperors, the
real power was in the hands of the
shogun and warriors.
Various samurai clans struggled for power over
Kamakura and
Ashikaga Shogunates. During the 14th century the practice of 'seppuku',
or ritual suicide, became more common.
The
Sengoku jidai ("warring-states period") was marked by the
loosening of samurai culture. Those born into other social strata could
sometimes make name for themselves as warriors and become de facto
samurai. In this turbulent period, formal
bushido ethics held diminished importance in the face of constant
warfare.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who became a grand minister in
1586, himself the son of a poor peasant family, created a law that the
samurai caste became codified as permanent and heritable, and that
non-samurai were forbidden to carry weapons.
During the
Tokugawa era, samurai increasingly became courtiers, bureaucrats and
administrators rather than warriors. The
daisho, the paired long and short swords of the samurai (cf. 'katana'
and
wakizashi) became more of a symbolic emblem of power rather than a
weapon used in daily life. They still had the legal right to cut down any
commoner who did not show proper respect; in what extent this right
was used, is unknown. When the central government forced daimyos to cut
the size of their armies, unemployed ronin actually became a social
problem.
Scholars codified the final form of the
bushido during the Tokugawa era. Also, the most famous book of
kenjutsu, or sword fighting, dates from this period (Miyamoto
Musashi's
The Book of Five Rings,
1643). Still, the incident of
47 Ronin (a murder of an official followed by the suicide of the
samurai who killed him) caused some debate about the righteousness of
their actions.
Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by
Yamamoto Tsunetomo is a manual of instruction into the way of the
samurai. It illuminates one of the core practices of that way, known as
shudo, or the way of the young. Shudo involved a young samurai
choosing an older warrior as lover and mentor, a relationship so intense
it often conflicted with a samurai's devotion to his
daimyo.
The
decline of the samurai during the
Meiji restoration
The last hurrah of original samurai was in
1867 when samurai from
Choshu and
Satsuma provinces defeated the shogunate forces in favor of the rule
of the emperor.
Emperor Meiji abolished the samurai status in favor of more modern,
western-style army, retaining only the
katana for officers.
Japanese soldiers still maintained some semblance of bushido ethics
even into
World War Two.
Some samurai bloodlines like house of
Honda have had influence in Japanese business and politics.
Further Reading
- Hiroaki Sato: Legends of the Samurai
- Stephen Turnbull: The Book of the Samurai
- Stephen Turnbull: The Samurai (more historical detail)
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