Samurai: Japanese Honor, Tradition
Evolution, Virtues, and Life of the Stoic Japanese Samurai
The samurai influence on the Japanese culture is evident even today.
The samurai are best described as an elite, warrior, social caste, surviving for some seven centuries. They wore lacquered iron armor and would yield a sword, together with a dagger and a bow.
During the Heian Period (794-1185), when strong landowners began to hire warriors for the protection of their properties, the samurai class grew in clout and significance. They would emerge as military aristocracy. During the Kamakura Shogunate (1185-1333), a military government held power in Japan, and Minamoto Yoritomo, a samurai shogun or general-in-chief, became the Japanese ruler. The Kamakura Shogunate is referred to as Japan’s feudal period from the relationship between samurai and their lords. In 1274, the Kamakura Shogunate withstood the Mongol invasion of Kublai Khan, thanks in part to the “divine wind” (kamikaze) of a timely typhoon.
As the warriors of Japan, the early samurai were inferior only to the nobility and the power of the nobility resided within the samurai. The samurai were tied to the shogun and to the nobles’ lands by loyalty, and were compensated mainly with rice, though many would take on jobs for supplemental income. In the absence of war, the samurai would become administrators, lower government officials, and even farmers. The most serious offense a samurai could commit was turning on the nobility or “daimyo”, as the nobility was called. In number, as written in Suicide Squads (London: Salamander Books, 1981), Richard O’Neill writes the samurai were approximately five to eight percent of the Japanese population.
The term, samurai, is a derivative of the Japanese verb for service, “saburau”. Samurai literally means “one who is a servant”, as in, a servant to a feudal lord. They were originally named “bushi-dan” or, “warriors”The Samurai were inspired by the “bushido” or, ‘the way of the warrior’, and bushido was the code that lined their behavior. The fundamental virtues of the bushido consisted of loyalty to the emperor, to the feudal lord (daimyo), to the nation, and to ones self. Confucianism and Zen Buddhism influenced the bushido, resulting in men, and sometimes women, who were always prepared to die. “The way of the samurai is death” is a quote from the samurai monk, Jocho Yamamoto, in his work Hagakure. The samurai would readily fight for honor, glory, and wealth. Not all samurai followed the code, as some were disillusioned with disloyalty and cowardice.
The samurai fundamental beliefs held great influence over the subsequent warriors of Japan, giving them a willingness to sacrifice themselves for their cause, all the while displaying courage and honor. The samurai and their code were a few of several causes for the development of a traditional, principled, reserved Japanese culture.
Sources:
McKay, Hill, Buckler and Ebrey, A History of World Societies, Volume I: Seventh Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007)
