The samurai were the warriors of medieval and early modern Japanese history. The word "samurai" is associated with a Chinese character which means "to serve," and thus samurai can be translated as "those who serve." Although the term "samurai" is much better known in the west, in Japanese history it was much more infrequently used; the more common word for these men was "bushi" which simply means "warrior." Although many people are fond of comparing the samurai with the knights of medieval Europe, such comparisons should be made with caution, for the samurai had a long history uniquely their own.
The Origins of the Samurai
In its late prehistory, Japanese society was structured around the "uji and be" system, in which powerful local families known as uji oversaw hereditary groups of workers known as be. Military organization, such as it was, was built around a hereditary class of warriors within the be system, but these warriors were nothing at all like the samurai of later epochs - they used spears and short, straight Chinese-style swords, wore metal armor when they wore armor at all, and fought largely on foot, with the occasional mounted officer or scout.
In the wake of the Taika Reform of 645, the uji and be system was dismantled. The final blow came following the Jinshin War, when Emperor Temmu initiated a "great sword hunt" to disarm the uji that had supported his rival, and created a new national army of peasant conscripts, with all weapons owned by the national government. Peasants were supposed to drill in the arts of warfare 10 days out of 100. The weapons they used consisted of short swords, spears, crossbows, and stone slings.
In the 8th and 9th centuries, however, the inadequacy of the conscript army was shockingly exposed when the Japanese began to expand the edges of their power into northern Honshu, where the ill-trained peasant soldiers came face to face with fierce Ezo warriors. Unlike Chinese style of warfare the Japanese were used to fighting, the Ezo fought a guerilla-style of war, which made extensive use of horses, archery, and hit-and-run tactics. The first peasant armies sent against the Ezo were ripped to shreds.
The new breed of Japanese soldier that evolved in response to the Ezo-style of combat was a type of mounted archer recognizable as the prototype of the samurai. Fast, mobile, and deadly, this new warrior traded the unwieldy crossbows for the bow and arrow, ditched metal armor in favor of lighter and more flexible leather armor, and eventually acquired a new type of curved sword, the katana, which was easier to wield on horseback, and may have been modeled after the similarly curved Ezo swords. This image of the samurai as a mounted archer would prove to have a powerful hold on the Japanese imagination, and latter-day samurai would retain the trappings of the archer - such as required archery training, a superfluous archer's armguard, and an unarmored right shoulder - long after the sword became the primary weapon of war.
The Rise of the Samurai
With the early failures of the national army, the Court increasingly relied on local families to deal with the Ezo threat. This made sense in many ways - as locals had the most to lose from Ezo incursions, and thus the most to gain by defeating them, and also had the most experience dealing with the Ezo. To maintain the fiction that the Court was battling the Ezo, the Emperor officially authorized well-connected families to battle the enemy on his behalf, and usually chose members of two distant branches of the Imperial Family - the Taira and the Minamoto - to lead major expeditions. In the fires of war, warriors became increasingly loyal to the leaders that personally led them into battle, rather than the far-off Court they were theoretically fighting for, and Clans such as the Minamoto and Taira became increasingly powerful, maintaining personal bands of loyal warriors, while the national army atrophied into non-existence.
In the 12th century a series of messy Imperial succession disputes wracked the country. With no other substantive source of military power to back up their claims, various candidates for Emperor increasingly fell into the bad habit of calling upon the great Eastern warrior houses to support their bids for the throne with steel. It was only a matter of time before one of the warrior families seized power for itself, and that was exactly what Taira Kiyomori did following the Heiji Incident of 1159.
Kiyomori declared himself a sort of prime minister and dominated Kyoto politics for the next decade, but he went too far when, in 1180, he tried to have his infant grandson installed as Emperor Antoku. Warrior clans rallied to the banner of Kiyomori's old rival, the Minamoto, and his Taira family was defeated by the Minamoto in the Gempei War of 1180-1185. The Minamoto leader, Yoritomo, emerged as the master of Japan, and set about installing Japan's first warrior government, the Kamakura bakufu.
The Golden Age of the Samurai
In 1191, Yoritomo had himself named Seiitaishogun, meaning "great barbarian-subduing general" - a title which in name seemed to relegate the samurai to their old role as court-appointed Ezo-fighters, but in actuality, handed rule of the country over to Yoritomo's fledgling government in his eastern stronghold of Kamakura, and initiated nearly 700 years of warrior rule over Japan. Yoritomo immediately set about grafting a warrior hierarchy onto the shiki system of land control that had been the basis of Court power for centuries. From among the warrior families that had supported the Minamoto in the Gempei war, each province was assigned a shugo or "constable," and each "shoen" agricultural estate was assigned a jito or "steward." These warriors were responsible for regional and local government, respectively, but were also given a relatively free to hand extract great personal wealth from the lands they oversaw. Thus the new system was a way for Yoritomo to put warrior power on the ground in the provinces, and retain the loyalty of his followers by either rewarding them with jito and shugo posts or punishing them by their removal.
Samurai were now a part of daily life throughout Japan, and their culture, their ethos, and their internecine struggles came to replace courtier traditions at the core of Japanese culture. The samurai had perhaps their most selfless hour when they banded together under the leadership of the Hojo Bakufu to successfully repel the Mongol Invasions of 1274 and 1281, but this triumph sowed the seeds of the Bakufu's destruction, as the Bakufu proved unable to find enough land grants to award the victorious samurai as a victory of that size would traditionally demand. Disaffection with Hojo rule grew, leading to a series of plots against the shogunate that culminated in the re-institution of direct imperial rule under Emperor Go-Daigo during a period known as the Kemmu Restoration.
Although the Kemmu Restoration seemed on the surface to be a blow to warrior power and a return to Court dominance of political affairs, it in fact confirmed samurai authority, as it was samurai who put Go-Daigo in power, samurai who sustained his position, and samurai who overthrew him when (you guessed it) he wouldn't give them the land grants they felt they deserved.
The scarcity of new land grants increasingly became a problem for Japanese political stability, as samurai had long since become accustomed to receiving land as a reward for loyal service, dating back to the Ezo wars when they would be granted titles to the newly captured territory. But now there was less and less wild land to open up to cultivation, and there were only so many punitive expeditions that could be mounted against various insubordinate families that would result in confiscations to be re-allotted. Meanwhile, the shoguns increasingly became fat and indolent. It had happened to the Hojo in Kamakura, and it happened to an even greater extent to the Ashikaga shoguns in Kyoto, who, taken in by Kyoto courtier culture, took to building ostentatious golden and silver pavilions, throwing lavish banquets, and composing flowery poetry.
Finally in the 1470s, fed up provincial samurai took matters into their own hands, launching the devastating Onin War in which great alliances of shugo turned Kyoto into a smoldering battleground for control of infant shoguns. The period that followed became known as the Sengoku Era, or "Era of the Country at War." All pretense of a national government backed by legitimacy flowing from the emperor via the title of "shogun" disappeared, as powerful samurai - the daimyo - directly ruled over personal fiefdoms, known as han, and battled each other to extend their landholdings. Finally in 1573, Oda Nobunaga abolished the Ashikaga shogunate, and for thirty years Japan did not even have a nominal national government. Instead, all power flowed forth from the blades of samurai, ensconced behind the walls of the mighty citadels they constructed on every mountain and hill across Japan.
The Bureaucratization of the Samurai
In the mid 1500s, minor warlord Oda Nobunaga had risen from obscurity through guile, tactical brilliance, and utter ruthlessness to become master of a vast portion of central Japan. Nobunaga was assassinated in 1582, but two of his generals, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, continued his efforts, working together to bring most of Japan under their control. Following Hideyoshi's death in 1598, it was the crafty Ieyasu who defeated the last of his rivals in the great battle of Sekigahara in 1600, at last bringing the bloody Sengoku period to a close, and initiating a Pax Tokugawa under which his descendents would peacefully rule Japan for more than 250 years.
But the enduring peace of the new Edo period obviated the raison d'etre of the samurai, which was to make war. Military innovation stagnated and armor and weapons became elaborately ceremonial as the erstwhile warriors evolved into an overclass of bureaucrats, ensconced in the castle towns and paid stipends out of domainal treasuries, who involved themselves in such mundane endeavors as tax collection and land surveys.
The solidification of a Confucian class system cemented the place of the samurai at the top of the social hierarchy, but elaborate sumptuary laws designed to perpetuate this status quo eventually led to the povertization of large numbers of samurai who were required to maintain certain standards of living despite declining real income. Although the sumptuary regulations were eventually relaxed, inflation and cyclical recurrences of famines and other natural disasters continued to eat into the wealth of the samurai, and by the end of the Edo period many samurai, especially those in the lower tiers and in rural areas, had been reduced to virtual peasantry, often forced to take up farming or a craft to supplement their meager stipends.
Nevertheless, the general flowering of culture witnessed by the Edo period also touched the samurai as well. Those who could afford it took up refined pastimes such as the tea ceremony, dancing, and music, striving for the perfect balance of bu (war) and bun (culture). Samurai, even poorer ones, continued to have access to the best educations around, becoming well versed in the Chinese classics. Samurai philosophers refined and syncretized Chinese Confuncism into a uniquely Japanese social system, samurai doctors crafted detailed anatomical textbooks, samurai existentialists meditated on the nature of bushido, and samurai poets refined Japanese poetry to its most soaring heights of aesthetic sensibility. It was the age of Basho, of Hayashi Razan, and the Hagakure.
And thus, despite their transformation from proud warriors to ceremonial paper pushers, the samurai retained much of their ancient authority, and therefore it was the old samurai classes who were in position to seize control and direct Japan's modernization in the aftermath of Perry's 1853 "Opening of Japan." During the Meiji Era and continuing well into the 20th Century, the vast preponderance of Japan's political and industrial leaders were drawn from the old samurai classes, which at best constituted only about 10 to 15 percent of the total population, and thus it was samurai traditions, ways of thought, and customs of bureaucratic rule that shaped the direction of national policy and identity, contoured the turbulent events of the century to come, and continue to resonate through Japanese society unto this day.
The 47 Ronin - Forty-six samurai (one chickened out) go on a vendetta to avenge their dishonored lord in 1702.
Akechi Mitsuhide - assassinated Nobunaga and briefly ruled Japan as the "13-day Shogun"
Ashikaga Takauji - victor at Minatogawa, founder of the Ashikaga Shogunate
Date Masamune - crafty Sengoku lord
Hojo Soun - rose from obscurity to become the first true daimyo
Hojo Tokimasa - lord of Izu, founder of the Hojo Shogunate
Imagawa Yoshimoto - mighty Sengoku Era daimyo of Suruga and Totomi provinces
Ishida Mitsunari - Lord of the West after Hideyoshi's death, rival of Ieyasu
Kato Kiyomasa - Hideyoshi's "Demon General"
Kitabatake Chikafusa - one of Emperor Go-Daigo's chief generals
Kusunoki Masashige - tireless supporter of Go-Daigo, epitome of samurai loyalty
Minamoto Yoritomo - leader of the victorious Minamoto clan in the Gempei War, founder of the Kamakura shogunate
Minamoto Yoshitsune - Yoritomo's virtuous younger brother, the greatest hero of the Gempei War
Miyamoto Musashi - wandering swordsman of legendary prowess
Nitta Yoshisada - Emperor Go-Daigo's leading general during the Kemmu Restoration
Oda Nobunaga - first of the three great unifiers, he ruled with an iron hand
Saigo Takamori - leader of the failed Satsuma Rebellion, now remembered as the "last of the samurai"
Sakamoto Ryoma - Tosa samurai who helped forge the alliance between Choshu and Satsuma that led to the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji Restoration
Shibata Katsuie - general of Nobunaga, rival of Hideyoshi
Taira Kiyomori - leader of the Taira clan during the Gempei War
Takeda Shingen - wily lord of Kai during the Sengoku Era
Tokugawa Ieyasu - cunning Sengoku warlord, third of three great unifiers, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate
Toyotomi Hideyoshi - second of three great unifiers, rose from peasant status to become ruler of Japan
Uesugi Kenshin - powerful Sengoku warlord, archnemesis of Shingen
Yamamoto Kansuke - one of Takeda Shingen's best generals, remembered for his spectacular suicide
Famous Samurai Battles
Battle of Dannoura (1185) - In a great naval battle, the Minamoto destroy the Taira clan and end the Gempei War.
Battle of Minatogawa (1336) - Ashikaga Takauji crushes Nitta Yoshisada and Kusunoki Masashige, ending Go-Daigo's Kemmu Restoration.
Battle of Kawanakajima (1553-1564) - Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin fight five bloody battles in 12 years without a conclusive victory for either side.
Battle of Okehazama (1560) - Oda Nobunaga begins his rise to power by crushing the army of Imagawa Yoshimoto.
Battle of Nagashino (1575) - Oda Nobunaga destroys the mighty Takeda clan.
Battle of Shizugatake (1583) - Toyotomi Hideyoshi assures his control of Japan by defeating Shibata Katsuie.
Battle of Sekigahara (1600) - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats Ishida Mitsunari to secure his dominance over Japan.
Siege of Osaka Castle (1614-1615) - In the last great samurai battle, Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats Hideyoshi's heir Hideyori and the last remnants of the Oda clan to secure rule over Japan for his descendants.