SAMURAI 8 blade sword called a katana During unarmed fighting samurai warriors relied on their training in the martial arts which meant they engaged in hand-to-hand combat The word martial refers to something that is warlike or relates to soldiers Popular martial arts used in the heat of battle included kendo karate and jujitsu Known for their fighting strength and abilities the samurai as a class of people also had a softer side Influenced by the teachings of Zen Buddhism the samurai were responsible for certain classic Japanese cultural arts such as the tea ceremony and flower arrang ing Each of these customs relies heavily on discipline and order which are well-known traits of the samurai By the mid-nineteenth century lower-ranking samurai were eager for societal change and anxious to create a strong Japan in the face of encroachment by Western powers They took part in the movement that overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 The new government led by the emperor Meiji stripped the samurai of their privileged status Some samurai rose in rebellion but the revolts were suppressed The reign of the samurai had effectively ended
9 CHAPTER 1 TO BE A SAMURAI WARRIOR In ancient Japan an elaborate bureaucracy was established At the head of this bureau cracy was the emperor who acted as the head of state In theory all land belonged to the emperor Large landholdings were abolished some farmland was redistributed among the peasants The govern ment started collecting taxes on a regular basis However to encourage agricultural development the government did not make people pay taxes on newly cultivated land This practice actually stimulated the growth of Samurai warriors were skilled horsemen who could fight as well on horseback as they could with two feet on the ground
SAMURAI The Rōnin When a landowner died or otherwise lost his power his samurai became masterless warriors or ro nin Because they no longer protected a master the ro nin had to find either other work which disgraced them or a new master Many wound up simply wan dering about the country side stirring up trouble among the people and employed samurai The ro nin remained a great cause of disorder in Japan through out the first half of the seven teenth century An illustration from a copy of 47 Ro nin the supposedly true story of a group of samurai who took revenge for their master’s death 10
TO BE A SAMURAI WARRIOR huge privately owned estates called shoen Similar to the manors of medieval Europe the shoen were owned by powerful families court aristocrats or religious institutions Medieval Japanese aristocrats employed bodyguards called samurai to protect them and their landholdings The samurai were provincial Japanese warriors who resembled medieval European knights The samu rai often managed the estates of aristocrats and sometimes held land in their own right RISE TO POWER Beginning in the 1100s the samurai warrior class rose to political power The samurai had developed advanced military skills and set up a military government called a shogunate Each shogunate was headed by a shogun which is the Japanese word for general The term used in Japan to describe the rule of a shogun is bakufu which literally means tent government and suggests the field headquarters of a general while on mili tary campaign As the shoguns acquired increased control over national af fairs they became the actual rulers of Japan The country still had an emperor but he held less power than the shogun or military ruler For the most part the emperors lived mostly in seclusion and had only formal powers 11
