Samurai

The Samurai were a warrior class which existed in premodern japan. In the Heian Period (794 to 1185) the Imperial government in Kyoto turned to rely on a type of militarized peasants for cavalry soldiers in wars of conquest against the people of Northern Honshu and as enforcers against rebels and people late with their taxes and as they were full time fighters they were generally more reliable than peasant levies. These would be put under the command of a leader known as a Shogun. After the end of the Heian Period, central power broke down and local leaders took power. In this time of division the Samurai became the main fighters in war as well as leaders, both of soldiers on the battlefield and eventually political leaders, founding powerful clans vying for power. Eventually order was restored under the Tokugawa Shogunate, in which the land was divided among various prominent samurai clans and lower ranking samurai served as policeman, bureaucrats and public officials. After the Boshin War (1868-1869), the Samurai class was formally abolished. In government, samurai were replaced by non hereditary civil servants and in military affairs they were replaced by a new conscript army.

In that they were generally heavy cavalrymen, the class was generally hereditary and eventually became the main holders of power, Samurai could be thought of as rough analogues to western knights.

Samurai Weapons and equipment

• Yumi: Composite bows made of bamboo. The first Samurai were mainly archers and archery would remain a very big part of samurai fighting.
• Yari: Spears, usually used to fend off cavalry and as lances
• Naginata: Pole arms with a sword blade at the end
• Tanegashima: in 1543, some Portuguese ships got to Japan in search of business opportunities. When they got to Japan, they sold a few of their matchlocks muskets to a Daimyo in the south of Japan, who promptly had them taken apart and soon had them replicated. The Samurai quickly became very keen on these new weapons and made heavy use of them.
• Swords: Several varieties, including no-dachi, wakizashi and katana. The iron ore in Japan has a high level of impurities, as such Japanese swordsmiths worked out a method of folding and refolding steel during forging to work out impurities. This made them rather sharp and fairly strong, though they were also fairly brittle and not the best weapons for use against heavy armor. Samurai usually used swords as a backup weapon.
• Armor: Several varieties existed, including chainmail, scale armor, laminar armor and eventually plate, generally backed up with leather and silk.

Bushido

In general samurai (or at least those who got somewhere besides an early grave) were a pragmatic and practical lot. Even so, they did not want their subordinates to be a bunch of drunken armed 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, which stressed (along with loyalty) frugality, honesty and conducting themselves in a proper manner.

This rough mentality was taken after the Samurai were abolished during the 1920s-40s, when the militarists took control of Japan and wanted a militarized society to crank out fanatical conscripts to conquer china with.

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