So I have been thinking about Samurai more and got me wondering what is fact and myth about them. I never bothered to actually study them and only have taken in a bit of pop culture over the years about them.My current idea of what a real Samurai is a landed military leader who partakes in traditional art when not leading a group of peasents for their Daimiyo. They also all mostly follow a set of rules we call Bushido although what that is exactly I'm not entirely sure.So is that accurate? If not then what would be a more accurate assessment and where would be a place to start for actual research.
>>18542643Samurai differ drastically depending on the era. Kamakura samurai, Sengoku samurai, and Edo samurai are all very different in behavior and roles.Check out these books:Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan by Thomas Donald ConlanInventing the Way of the Samurai by Oleg Benesch
>>18542666>Samurai differ drastically depending on the era.FPBP.
>>18542666>>18542676It should also be noted that to be a landed warrior meant you had a great deal of personal autonomy. Tsunetomi Yamamoto writes about how different clans had drastically different rules and etiquette.
>>18542643This >>18542666>Samurai differ drastically depending on the eraIs the simplest way to sum it up. Your idea of them is a kind of pastiche of samurai from different eras. Early on, samurai were warrior-retainers for the imperial court, they led their own families and clans, but weren't "leaders" in the sense of holding real political power. They were armed thugs who served the people in power. But eventually they did get political power, and usurped the court nobles they used to work for. Now there were a class of lordly samurai who ruled over the rest of them, who were still mostly just dumb muscle for the people in power. But those people were other samurai, now.Eventually, though, the centralized authority of the samurai regime broke down, and many lesser samurai began to amass power and influence to themselves, becoming known as the daimyo (literally "great names"), they were able to ignore the authority of the government and pursue their own ambitions, mostly by fighting each other for more land. This meant there was a constant demand for more warriors, and this resulted in new samurai being raised from the ranks of the conscripted peasants, either when they distinguished themselves or simply out of pragmatism. This meant that there were now many different ranks and roles for samurai. There were samurai of aristocratic birth, who served as bureaucrats and rulers, there were samurai of legacy warrior lines who had been faithful retainers for generations, and there were samurai that were essentially just upjumped peasants or bandits, who swelled the ranks of the daimyo armies out of necessity. Eventually, this chaotic period of civil war, known as the sengoku jidai (the "period of the country at war") came to an end, and the fluid nature of the samurai as a class was solidified into a rigid, hereditary caste. You had to be born samurai. It also meant there were no more wars, so samurai became landlords, scholars, artists, and monks.
>>18542782I think it's reductive to say they were ever dumb thugs. From the outset they were from wealthy enough families to afford horses, armor, weapons, and the free time to train with them. So even early on they were already chasing the trends of the imperial court to try and present themselves as cultured.
>>18542643Dey used to be robbers like da white knights but den Yasuke be showed dem blak magiks and ever since dey be all mulattoes. Then white devil came again and killed them all
>>18542812>So even early on they were already chasing the trends of the imperial court to try and present themselves as culturedThis is a part I never considered myself, the imperial court has always been separate and special and at times deified. So it makes sense that people would try to emulate them.
>>18542812>>I think it's reductive to say they were ever dumb thugsCompared to their relatives at court, they were, is my point. Most of them were related to court nobles, some even to the royal family, but they were decidedly lower status than their relatives in the capital, and some were seen as little better than barbarians, even ones as august as the Minamoto.
