The Term
Samurai
originally meant "those
who serve in close attendance to nobility", and was written in the
Chinese character (or kanji) that had the same meaning. In Japanese, it was
originally pronounced in the pre-Heian period as saburau and later as
saburai, then samurai in the Edo period. In Japanese literature, there is an
early reference to samurai in the Kokinshū (古今集, early 10th century):
By the end of the 12th
century, samurai became synonymous with bushi (武士) almost entirely and the
word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the
warrior class. The samurai followed a set of written rules called the
Bushido. Samurai
teachings can still be found today in modern day society with the martial
art Kendo,
meaning the way of the sword.
The samurai used various weapons, but the
katana is the
weapon that has come to be synonymous with samurai, metaphorically speaking.
Bushido teaches that the
katana
is the samurai's soul and sometimes a samurai is pictured as entirely
dependent on the weapon for fighting. They believe that the katana was so
precious that they often gave them names and considered them as part of the
living. After a male bushi child was born, he would receive his first
sword in a
ceremony called mamori-gatana. The
sword, however, was merely a charm
sword covered with brocade to which was attached a purse or wallet, worn by
children under five. See
The Samurai Sword
Upon reaching the age of thirteen, in a
ceremony called genpuku (元服), a male child was given his
first real weapons
and armour, an adult name, and became a samurai.A
Katana and a Wakizashi together are called a
daishō (lit.
"big and small").
The wakizashi itself was a samurai's "honour weapon" and purportedly never
left the samurai's side. He would sleep with it under his pillow and it
would be taken with him when he entered a house and had to leave his main
weapons outside.
The
wakizashi was always
carried along with the katana, to make a daisho or pair. The wakizashi was,
esentially, a shorter
katana that could be wielded with one hand. One of the
main uses of the wakizashi was to fight indoors, where the low ceilings of
feudal japan would make use of the long
katana nearly impossible.
The katana-bearing samurai of the Genpei war period and the Warring States
Era would never leave behind their wakizashi, which was often used as a
backup weapon if the katana was lost or damaged. The wakizashi came in handy
when, at many times, the katana's length was a disadvantage.
The
Tanto was a small knife sometimes worn with or instead of the wakizashi
in a daishō. The tanto or the wakizashi was used to commit seppuku, a
ritualized suicide through disembowelment.The wakizashi was also used to perform seppuku, the ritual suicide of a
member of the warrior class who felt he or she was living with great shame,
from disappointing one's master or from being humiliated in a number of
other ways.
The following description is graphic and certainly not for the squeamish.
Please do not allow children to read it. The samurai, when asked to, or
granted permission to, commit seppuku, would kneel in the traditional manner
with his wakizashi at his side. He would take the short sword from it's saya
and thrust it deeply into his own torso, cutting himself open vertically. He
would then continue on his ritual, in spite of the pain, by cutting once
more horizontally across the original wound. The samurai, having
disemboweled himself, will have then died an honourable death. It was
permissible to have a close friend or trusted ally to act as a second,
meaning that he or she would stand behind the samurai and strike his head
off with the katana after the first cut had been made. If a female samurai
were to commit seppuku, she would only cut her own throat, a much simpler
and cleaner ritual.
The samurai stressed
skill with the yumi (longbow), reflected in the art of
kyūjutsu/kyudo(lit. the skill
of the bow). The bow would remain a critical component of the Japanese
military even with the introduction of firearms during the Sengoku period.
The yumi, an asymmetric composite bow made from bamboo, wood, rattan and
leather, was not as powerful as the Eurasian reflex composite bow, having an
effective range of 50 meters (about 164 feet) or 100 meters (328 feet) if
accuracy was not an issue. On foot, it was usually used behind a tedate
(手盾), a large and mobile bamboo wall, but could also be used from horseback
because of its asymmetric shape. The practice of shooting from horseback
became a Shinto ceremony known as
yabusame (流鏑馬)
In the 15th century, the yari (spear) also became a popular weapon. It
displaced the
naginata
from the battlefield as personal bravery became less of a factor and battles
became more organized around massed, inexpensive foot troops (ashigaru). A
charge, mounted or dismounted, was also more effective when using a spear
rather than a sword, as it offered better than even odds against a samurai
using a sword.
A samurai with no attachment
to a clan or daimyo (大名) was called a ronin (浪人). In Japanese, the word
ronin means "wave man", a person destined to wander aimlessly forever, like
the waves in the sea. The word came to mean a samurai who was no longer in
the service of a lord because his lord had died, because the samurai had
been banished or simply because the samurai chose to become a ronin.
Decline
Emperor Meiji abolished
the samurai's right to be the only armed force in favor of a more modern,
western-style, conscripted army in 1873. Samurai became Shizoku (士族) who
retained some of their salaries, but the right to wear a katana in public
was eventually abolished along with the right to execute commoners who paid
them disrespect.
The samurai finally came to an end after hundreds of years of enjoyment of
their status, their powers, and their ability to shape the government of
Japan. However, the rule of the state by the military class was not yet
over.
In defining how a modern Japan should be, members of the Meiji government
decided to follow the footsteps of United Kingdom and Germany, basing the
country on the concept of "noblesse oblige." Samurai were not to be a
political force under the new order.
With the Meiji reforms in the late 19th century, the samurai class was
abolished, and a western-style national army was established. The Imperial
Japanese Armies were conscripted, but many samurai volunteered to be
soldiers and many advanced to be trained as officers. Much of the Imperial
Army officer class was of samurai origin and they were highly motivated,
disciplined and exceptionally trained.
The last
samurai conflict was arguably in 1877, during the Satsuma Rebellion in the
Battle of Shiroyama. This conflict had its genesis in the previous uprising
to defeat the Tokugawa Shogunate, leading to the Meiji Restoration.
The newly
formed government instituted radical changes, aimed at reducing the power of
the feudal domains, including Satsuma, and the dissolution of samurai
status. This led to the ultimately premature uprising, led by Saigō
Takamori.
Samurai were many of the early exchange students, not directly because they
were samurai, but because many samurai were literate and well-educated
scholars. Some of these exchange students started private schools for higher
educations, while many samurai took pens instead of guns and became
reporters and writers, setting up newspaper companies, and others entered
governmental service.
