SECRETS OF THE SAMURAI

Of all the warriors of history, the samurai are some of the most iconic. The dramatic silhouette of their armour, the demonic snarls fixed on their face masks and the deadly sharpness of their blades are images well established in our minds even if you know little else about their background. Like the Spartans before them, we know the samurai primarily as a warrior class, seemingly devoted to combat and the perfection of their lethal skills.

Naturally, the truth is a little more nuanced and complex. The legends and tales of the samurai that have passed down into popular culture paint a very particular, romantic ideal of the group. As Nitobe Inazō pointed out in his most famous work, Bushido: The Soul Of Japan in 1900, they have much in common with medieval knights in that their stories dominate the social landscape of their era even though they made up only a small fraction of the population. They even have in common that they were supposed to live as examples of their warrior codes: chivalry in Europe, Bushido in Japan.

But who were the samurai exactly? Well, it’s important to point out that they were not just soldiers, conscripted or otherwise, but an entire social class. From the 12th century to their abolition in 1870 the samurai were the military nobility of Japan, employed as retainers by wealthy landholders or warlords (called daimyo) to manage their lands. It was not, however, as rigid as it would become.

“The warrior caste was more poorly defined before 1600, so you could have some people not just become samurai but rise to become lords and even de facto rulers of Japan,” explains Dr Nyri A Bakkalian, who has written extensively