Editing Samurai (section)

== Bushido ==

In general samurai (or at least those who got somewhere besides an early grave) were an opportunistic, pragmatic and practical lot. Doing what was needed to be done to win and go forward and often quite innovative in how they did it. Even so, they did not want their subordinates to be a bunch of unruly armed drunken louts, a hazard to themselves and others. As such they were generally instructed to follow Buddhist and Confucian teachings and (especially for the latter) loyalty to one's superiors was a key part in this. Eventually you got rough codes of conduct emerging for samurai called Bushido (Way of the Samurai), which stressed (along with loyalty) frugality, honesty, duty and the importance of conducting their tasks and affairs in a proper manner. As is the case with other people elsewhere some Samurai were more pious than normal and some of these spent time as Buddhist Monks.

What many people get wrong about Bushido is that they assume it applied to samurai throughout history, when in reality it is something that became commonplace during the two and half centuries of peace of the Edo Jidai. It is quite easy to be a honorable warrior during peacetime. And once the chaotic years of the Bakumatsu set in, culminating in the Boshin War, the samurai quickly forgot about all this honor.

Something that is also widely believed is that Bushido was a strict clearly defined and standardized code followed by every samurai to the letter. But if that was the case, why is there not single surviving document from the time of the samurai on which the code is written, when something like that would have definitely been printed widely if it did exist? Because it did not actually exist like that.

During the 1920s through the end of World War II, this rough philosophy would be blown out of proportion and mixed with a heaping dose of nationalism, at which point it became a big part of the standard school curriculum. This was done because the generals who controlled Japan at that time sought a militarized society to crank out fanatical conscripts to conquer China and East Asia with. This manifested in fanatical loyalty, a willingness to die for their cause, and utter contempt and horrendous cruelty to every enemy, especially those who surrendered. When modern people think of Bushido in the west, they are usually thinking of this, or at least a cleaned up version of it [[Grimdark|as the Imperial Japanese Army could be a rather nasty lot to say the least]].

Anyone interested in the topic of Bushido would do well to check the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagakure The Hagakure] (or already has), given that in truth, actual comprehensive writings of the Bushido "code" are rare because it actually really wasn't, well, codified until many years since Samurai were last actually politically-relevant due to it being peaceful times - the Hagakure itself cannot be considered a sort of handbook to Bushido as it is actually a collection of musings from a samurai over the years who retired to be a monk that was written down by a younger friend who regularly met with him and only published it years after the old monk died...so it's basically a more-coherent-than-usual bunch of [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|old-man's rants about how the kiddy Samurai these days are soft weaklings who can't cut their enemies down.]] It also extols being [[gay]].