The word samurai derives from the verb saburau, meaning one who serves, yet for centuries these men were the only ones legally permitted to carry swords and ride horses in Japan. In the early Kamakura period, the bakufu explicitly prohibited those of bonge status from carrying weapons within city limits, ensuring that archery, swordsmanship, and horsemanship remained the exclusive attributes of the bushi class. This exclusivity was not merely a privilege but a necessity; warfare was a family tradition requiring years of training funded by private families rather than the state. While conscripts and militia could be raised quickly, they lacked the years of practice needed to master the complex skills of mounted archery, making the samurai superior warriors who commanded great respect and power. Their existence was inextricably tied to power, as violence was the currency of their status, and their ability to replace themselves was so low that they became indispensable to the feudal order. By the 12th century, the term had evolved from a general descriptor to a specific social marker, referring to landless footsoldiers who served the gokenin, the warrior vassals of the shogun. A warrior of elite stature in pre-seventeenth-century Japan would have been insulted to be called a samurai, as the term originally marked social function rather than class, referring to retainers of a lord rather than a hereditary caste. During the Heian period, it was not necessary for a bushi to serve a master to be considered a bushi, but during the Kamakura shogunate, a bushi's status was contingent on having a master, and losing that master meant losing land and honor. The distinction between the samurai and the commoner was so rigid that only the samurai had the right to possess the weapons that defined their very existence, creating a society where violence was the sole province of a specialized elite.
Land Reclamation And War
In the 8th century, Japan's government was highly centralized, but a major reform allowing individuals to claim private ownership of reclaimed farmland sparked a transformation that would birth the samurai class. As wealthy people began reclaiming land from the wilderness to feed a growing population, samurai became conspicuously involved in this process, emerging as a landowning class by the 11th and 12th centuries. The imperial court, burdened by the cost of maintaining a national conscript army, began dismantling the system by 792 AD, leaving security in the hands of local magnates who had the resources to train professional mounted archers. Conscripts proved ineffective against the Emishi, an ethnic minority in the north that relied on highly mobile mounted warriors, forcing the court to rely on elite units from wealthy families who had acquired skills in mounted archery before their induction. The growth of tax-exempt estates known as shōen led to a loss of tax revenue for the imperial court and a heavier tax burden on those farmers who worked the remaining taxable land, causing many to abandon their farms and join the ranks of vagrants. These abandoned lands were taken over by rising local landowning magnates, who delegated the matter of security in the countryside to the burgeoning class of landed warriors. The emperors, facing a treasury burdened by large harems, expelled members of the imperial family who formed two new clans: the Minamoto clan in 814 AD and the Taira clan in 825 AD. Wealthy provincial families married into the Minamotos and Tairas to acquire aristocratic status, gaining prestige and often tax exemptions, which allowed these clans to become big and wealthy with lots of warrior retainers. As the national army was downsized, the emperors delegated security to these landed warriors, who had a personal incentive to suppress lawlessness in their own lands as it directly impacted their revenue. War and law enforcement became increasingly privatized affairs, with the samurai serving as the de facto government in the provinces.
The rise of the samurai class culminated in the Gempei War of 1180 to 1185, a conflict that saw the Minamoto clan defeat the Taira clan and establish the first shogunate. In 1167, Taira no Kiyomori became the first samurai ever to be given a senior rank in the imperial court, serving as chief minister, but his installation of his two-year-old grandson, Emperor Antoku, on the throne sparked a rebellion by the Minamotos. Minamoto no Yoritomo promised lands and administrative rights to warriors who swore allegiance to him, and the Minamotos won the war, effectively destroying the Taira clan. In April 1185, the controversial child emperor was drowned by his own grandmother, who then committed suicide, and the new emperor, Emperor Go-Toba, was of Fujiwara lineage on his mother's side. Yoritomo took over most of the emperor's authority, reducing him to a figurehead, and established a parallel military government staffed by the warriors who had fought for him, known as the Kamakura shogunate. Samurai who served the shogun and owned reclaimed land were called gokenin, while those who did not serve the shogun nor manage reclaimed land were called higokenin. The shogunate formally granted these warriors a great deal of autonomy, with the shogun acting more as a mediator and coordinator than a true ruler. In the early 1190s, the shogun began appointing military governors, known as shugo, to the provinces, and only warriors from the Kantō region could become shugo. These military governors eventually displaced the authority of the civilian governors appointed by the imperial court, with their main duties including coordinating their area's gokenin in military matters, suppressing rebellions, and enforcing the law. During the Gempei War, many warriors had seized control of the private estates of the courtiers in Kyoto and presumptuously declared themselves the stewards of these estates. The shogunate now had a responsibility to restrain this lawlessness, and it was decreed that all stewards had to be appointed by the shogun, with most stewards chosen from warrior families. The title of jitō was heritable, and a steward could not bequeath his office to someone outside his family, ensuring that the office remained within the warrior class. The title of shogun was supposed to be hereditary, but in 1203, the shogun Minamoto no Yoriie died and his son was only 11 years old, so the leader of the Hōjō clan, Hōjō Tokimasa, declared himself regent, known as shikken. The Hōjō clan refused to return power to the Minamotos when the young son came of age, but out of respect for the tradition of hereditary titles, they did not declare themselves shogun but kept the title of shikken.
The Warring States
The outbreak of the Onin War in 1467, which lasted about 10 years, devastated Kyoto and brought down the power of the Ashikaga shogunate, plunging the country into the warring states period, known as the Sengoku period. Daimyo, or feudal lords, from different regions fought each other, and the traditional master-servant relationship between the lord and his vassals broke down, with vassals eliminating the lord, internal clan and vassal conflicts over leadership of the lord's family, and frequent rebellion and puppetry by branch families against the lord's family. These events sometimes led to the rise of samurai to the rank of sengoku daimyo, with Hōjō Sōun being the first samurai to rise to the rank of sengoku daimyo during this period. The period was marked by the loosening of samurai culture, with people born into other social strata sometimes making a name for themselves as warriors and thus becoming de facto samurai. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a well-known figure who rose from a peasant background to become a samurai, sengoku daimyo, and kampaku, exemplified this social mobility. When matchlocks were introduced from Portugal in 1543, Japanese swordsmiths immediately began to improve and mass-produce them, and by the end of the Sengoku Period, there were hundreds of thousands of arquebuses in Japan and a large army of nearly 100,000 men clashing with each other. On the battlefield, ashigaru, or foot soldiers, began to fight in close formation, using spears and guns, changing battlefield tactics and the equipment of the samurai class. The bow, which was difficult to maneuver in close formation, and the long, heavy tachi fell into disuse and were replaced by the katana, which could be held short, and the short, light naginata, which appeared in the Nanboku-cho period and gradually became more common. The katana was often cut off from the hilt and shortened to make a wakizashi, and the tachi, which had become inconvenient for use on the battlefield, was transformed into a symbol of authority carried by high-ranking samurai. By the end of the Sengoku period, allegiances between warrior vassals, also known as military retainers, and lords were solidified, with vassals serving lords in exchange for material and intangible advantages, in keeping with Confucian ideas imported from China between the seventh and ninth centuries. These independent vassals who held land were subordinate to their superiors, who may be local lords or, in the Edo period, the shogun, and a vassal or samurai could expect monetary benefits, including land or money, from lords in exchange for their military services.
Peace And The Sword Hunt
After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu consolidated power and was declared shogun in 1603, initiating a period of peace for 250 years known as the Tokugawa shogunate. During this era, samurai underwent many changes, and first became a truly hereditary class, a process begun by Hideyoshi with the combination of the Sword Hunt of 1588 and the Separation Edict of 1591. Most samurai moved from the land to the castle towns, with one town in each domain, and with no warfare since the early 17th century, samurai gradually lost their military function during the Tokugawa era. Neo-Confucianism became very influential, and the division of society into four classes was officially adopted by the shogunate. Landed samurai had to choose to either give up their lands to become stipend samurai, or to keep their lands and become peasants. Following the passing of a law in 1629, samurai on official duty were required to wear two swords, but by the end of the Tokugawa era, samurai were aristocratic bureaucrats for their daishō, becoming more of a symbolic emblem of power than a weapon used in daily life. They still had the legal right to cut down any commoner who did not show proper respect, known as kiri-sute gomen, but to what extent this right was used is unknown. When the central government forced daimyōs to cut the size of their armies, unemployed rōnin became a social problem. Theoretical obligations between a samurai and his lord increased from the Genpei era to the Edo era, strongly emphasized by the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, required reading for the educated samurai class. Pederasty permeated the culture of samurai in the early seventeenth century, and the relentless condemnation of pederasty by Jesuit missionaries also hindered attempts to convert Japan's governing elite to Christianity. Pederasty had become deeply institutionalized among the daimyo and samurai, prompting comparisons to ancient Athens and Sparta, and Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third shogun, was known for his interest in pederasty. From the mid-Edo period, wealthy and farmers could join the samurai class by giving a large sum of money to an impoverished to be adopted into a samurai family and inherit the samurai's position and stipend. The amount of money given to a gokenin varied according to his position, with 1,000 ryo for a hatamoto and 500 ryo for a gokenin. Some of their descendants were promoted to and held important positions in the shogunate, and some of the peasants' children were promoted to the samurai class by serving in the office. Kachi could change jobs and move into the lower classes, such as chōnin, and Takizawa Bakin became a chōnin by working for Tsutaya Jūzaburō.
The Gun And The End
In 1853, the United States sent a fleet of warships under the command of Commodore Matthew C. Perry to force the rulers of Japan to open their borders to foreign trade, and the shogun had no choice but to comply. His samurai were no match for Perry's marines, and as a pre-industrial society, Japan was no match for the United States. The Japanese were aware of how European imperialists defeated and humiliated the Chinese, and they feared an invasion of Japan was soon to come. Japan had to modernize if it was to maintain its honor and independence, and the Japanese began importing large quantities of European and American weapons and hiring European and American veterans to train their armies. The new weapons included modern rifles with caplock and breech-loading mechanisms, which were more versatile and deadly than the matchlock muskets the Japanese had been using for three centuries. Their rifled barrels gave them better accuracy and range, their mechanisms were less fiddly, they had a better rate of fire, they worked even in wet weather, and they could be fitted with bayonets to double as spears. Whereas matchlock muskets had been used alongside spears and bows on the battlefield, the new rifles became the standard infantry weapon. Revolvers and derringers became the self-defense weapons of choice, supplanting knives and swords, and these firearms were also much easier to use than the traditional weapons of the samurai, requiring about two weeks of practice to master as opposed to years. An army based on the gun did not require men who dedicated their lives to the martial arts, which is what the samurai essentially were, and commoners of any profession could be turned into effective soldiers on an as-needed basis. European armies relied on commoners, and the development of firearms had done away with knights and men-at-arms. From their own history, the Japanese remembered that peasant soldiers had been just as effective with matchlock muskets as samurai, and so even before the Meiji Restoration, the shogun and the other feudal lords emphasized commoners when they set about rebuilding their armies. There were also political advantages to using commoners, as commoners tended to be more submissive as they came from humbler backgrounds, did not inherit any military tradition, and were easier to replace. Commoners were less resistant to social reform because they had little to lose and a lot to gain, and they typically came without any political baggage or conflicting loyalties, which became especially important later on when the Meiji government sought to create a national army that cut across feudal domains. During the Meiji era, conscription into the national army exposed men across Japan to nationalist indoctrination, a way to build unity and national identity.
The Last Rebellion
In 1867, the unpopular shogun relinquished his authority to the emperor, who was seen as a unifying figure by the Japanese, and thus began the Meiji Restoration. The samurai were now defunct and obsolete, so the Meiji government began repealing their special rights and privileges. In 1869, the government reclassified high-ranking samurai as shizoku, or warriors, and lower status samurai as sotsuzoku, or foot soldiers. In 1872, the sotsu rank was abolished and the sotsuzoku were reclassified as shizoku, and in 1871, the government banned the samurai topknot, known as the chonmage. From 1873 to 1879, the government started taxing the stipends and transformed them into interest-bearing government bonds, with the main goal of providing enough financial liquidity to enable former samurai to invest in land and industry. In 1876, the government forbade anyone outside the military to wear swords even if they were of samurai lineage, and repealed the right of a samurai to strike an insolent commoner with potentially lethal force, known as kiri-sute gomen. Most samurai accepted these reforms, and in fact the Meiji leadership was composed mostly of samurai. Although they were no longer entitled to rule, many former samurai were offered positions in the new civilian government because they were typically well-educated, and others were offered teaching positions in the new public education system. During the Edo period, many samurai lived in poverty because there were few jobs for warriors and they were barred from working as tradesmen or merchants, and the Meiji liberalization allowed these men to seek better economic opportunities in other professions. But some samurai could not be placated, leading to sporadic samurai rebellions, and the largest of these was the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. Many disgruntled samurai flocked to Satsuma where the radical samurai Saigo Takamori had set up academies where he taught samurai the ways of modern war and his militant right-wing beliefs. The Meiji reforms of 1873 gave farmers ownership rights so that the government could tax them directly, which eliminated the traditional feudal role of the samurai landowners, of which Satsuma had an exceptionally high number. Saigo therefore found a lot of sympathetic samurai in Satsuma, and the imperial government feared an insurrection and sent a task force to disarm Takamori's growing paramilitary force. In response, Takamori marched his army on Tokyo, and the rebel samurai were defeated by the imperial army, which was composed mostly of commoners. Both armies were equipped with modern weapons, and after this rebellion was quashed, the Meiji government faced no further challenges to its authority. In 1947, the shizoku class was abolished, marking the final end of the samurai as a legal entity.