Introduction to the Japanese Samurai and the Samurai Class

Introduction to the Japanese Samurai:

Japanese Samurai (Japanese for attendant, personal attendant). In Japanese, the word samurai its original meaning is attendant, personal attendant. The samurai was expected to observe undaunted, loyal, competent and courageous behavior. However, this code represented an ideal, and the samurai's loyalty and valor were based on a master-slave system in which the lord he served rewarded the samurai for his contributions.

Many historical sources record that the samurai originated in China. When they came to Japan, they were called samurai.

Japanese Samurai Ranks:

The highest rank of the Japanese Samurai was the Shogun, and the following were the Grand Old Man, the Elder Middle Man, the Oyashiro, the Guardian Generation, the Daimyo, the Iyashiro, the Minister, the Serving Admiral, the Admiral of the Foot Guard, the Head of the Foot Guard, and the Admiral of the Foot Guard.

Expanded:

Origin of the Japanese Samurai:

The Japanese Samurai came into existence In the Heian period, beginning in the middle of the ninth century, a number of local lords began to establish private armies for their defense and used them to expand their power. By the tenth century, the imperial court was unable to suppress the rebellions of local forces and had to resort to the power of the local samurai, who were further recognized by the central government as the privileged ruling class of Japan.

The Kamakura Shogunate in Japan was the birthplace of Japanese bushido, but it did not take shape, but later absorbed Confucianism by the Edo period before finally taking shape. But as a product of the feudal shogunate era politics of bushido, it simply can not be absorbed into the true essence of Confucianism and Buddhism, but the Japanese people inherent Shintoism, make up for the Confucianism and Buddhism in the idea can not satisfy some of the shortcomings of bushido.

In 12th-century Japan, as the aristocracy began to lose its power to dominate politics, the rise of the military aristocracy, organized into "koku," was accompanied by a new system of political authority and control of land. As the struggle between the imperial family and the Fujiwara clan intensified, a new group of samurai began to enter the political arena.

The formation of the samurai clique was inseparable from the collapse of the centralized system of power headed by the emperor and the development of the manor system. As a result of the widespread establishment of manors, there was an increasing number of conflicts and struggles between manors. In order to expand their territories, the owners of the manors often had to take over other people's land by force. As a result, a part of the people of the manor were armed, and at the beginning they were still both farmers and warriors, mainly farmers; later they became professional warriors.

The decline of the centralized administrative and protective organs made it common for private individuals to carry weapons for self-defense. Moreover, because of the conscription system, members of the Kokuji family or the shogun class also carried weapons privately when they served in the military. Gradually, the Kokushi nobles themselves became a warrior class, receiving military training and participating in warfare to serve the existing authority system to curb local unrest.

As they were called upon to take part in intensive military operations, the samurai had a tendency to gradually form groups and units. Most of them clustered around a particular leader - a man whose prestige in the "state" came from a combination of his martial prowess and his position. They moved out of the capital to the local area in search of opportunities to serve as local officials. The prestige of the Fujiwara clan, the Minamoto clan, and the Heike clan was the most prominent among the new group of samurai.

Monasters of temples and shrines organized their own "monks and soldiers" to join in the disputes of the world. The monks used the power of the gods and the Buddha to take what they wanted, and even joined the samurai groups in the power struggle against the imperial court. The nobles, unable to resist the violence of the monks, had to rely on the power of the samurai, who were stimulated by all these factors to gain access to the centralized political arena.

When the samurai emerged, they gradually moved from dispersal to centralization, gathering under the banner of the most powerful nobles in a region to form samurai groups. The samurai groups were bound by both family and patriarchal ties, with strict discipline and absolute obedience as their top priority, and gradually developed the so-called "Bushido" ethic of loyalty and devotion to duty.

A Westerner described Bushido from an observer's point of view as follows: "To kill for honor, to be lenient to the punished and the defeated, to show no mercy to the mean and the profitable, to appreciate chiefly the artificial poetic artistry of life and the moonlit world of the underworld of the afterlife, this is Bushido." The samurai group was eventually centralized under two large families, the Minamoto clan and the Heike clan.

The Minamoto and Heike clans were both descended from the imperial family. The Minamoto clan originated in 814, when Emperor Saga bestowed the surname Minamoto Asamune on the sons of the Emperor. Since then, 14 emperors, from Junwa to Sanjo, have bestowed the name Minamoto on their children and grandchildren. The most famous of the many Minamoto clans is the Seiwa Minamoto clan, which began in 961 with Minamoto Keiki, grandson of Emperor Seiwa, and has long been based in the Kansai region.

The Taira clan was also a surname given by the imperial family, and there were four Taira clans, including the Huanwu, Inmei, Buntoku, and Gwanghyo clans. Among them, the Huanwu Hei clan was the most powerful, with its founder originating from Emperor Huanwu's great-grandson, King Takamang, who had lived in the Kanto region for generations.

Baidu Encyclopedia - The Samurai of Japan