What influence does the origin of Japanese samurai have on Japan?

What is a samurai? In Japanese, the word samurai means waiter and personal waiter.

A samurai should abide by the principles of fearlessness, loyalty, ability and courage.

But this principle only represents the ideal. A warrior's loyalty and bravery are based on the master-slave system in which his loyal lords can reward the samurai for their contributions.

Sources and courses

Samurai originated in heian period. From the mid-9th century, some local lords began to build private armed forces to defend themselves, and used their expanding power.

This armed force has gradually matured into an institutionalized professional military organization, based on clan and master-slave relationship.

By the tenth century, the imperial court was unable to suppress the rebellion of local forces, so it had to rely on the strength of samurai from all over the world, and the samurai was further recognized by the central government and became the privileged ruling class in Japan.

Some historians believe that one of the most important reasons for the decline of the China Dynasty was the long-term conflict between civil servants and military commanders, which repelled and belittled each other and caused serious internal friction.

Japan does not seem to have this situation. As professional soldiers, samurai are also managers in peacetime.

Therefore, samurai are required to learn culture, appreciate art, and be arty in tea ceremony and chess.

Before the Meiji Restoration, samurai was the dominant force in Japanese society, but in terms of system and function, it was more similar to feudal lords and knights in the west, but different from ordinary Asian countries.

This situation changed after the Meiji Restoration, and 187 1 was the most important year. Civilians are allowed to ride horses in June, warriors are allowed to "distribute" and "scrap knives" in September, and warriors and civilians are allowed to marry in June 10.

At that time, according to (1972) statistics, there were 425872 gentry in Japan, and the total number of their families was 194 1286. The salary they receive every year consumes one-third of Japan's fiscal revenue.

Meiji * * * took a gradual approach, gradually canceling the salary by issuing bonds or redeeming, and eliminating the samurai class.

In this process, some senior warriors gained titles and became China people second only to the royal family. However, with the defeat of World War II, the Japanese were forced to accept democratic reforms, and the China class became history.

Today, some Japanese still remember the samurai status of their ancestors, but this has no substantive significance.

Near the author's residence, a stone tablet stands at the door of a family, which is just a historical relic.

But the ideological legacy of samurai such as Bushido is still an important part of Japanese culture.

life

The complete symbol of samurai system is Tokugawa shogunate system. The ruling class of the whole Japanese society is composed of senior samurai represented by generals and famous soldiers to the lowest light (infantry) junior samurai. Since Toyotomi Hideyoshi's time, the system of separating soldiers from farmers has been implemented.

Samurai completely stopped production.

However, the living standards of samurai are quite different. Even if they are lords, Nagasaki's and Yamagata's are very different.

Samurai are mostly lower-middle-class people. If they can't rely on a rich and powerful master, their lives are often barely maintained in poverty.

A joke in the Edo era said, "In addition to the quilt and pot, the little warrior has a big stone at home, because when he feels cold, he can lift it to keep warm." If the attached master is dismissed for committing a crime, or the master has to reduce his manpower due to financial difficulties, then the junior soldiers can only become ronins, and some will become thugs of the underworld and other forces and become "heart sticks."

Although the "ronin" in modern Japanese refers to students who have not been admitted to a suitable university, at that time, ronin was an important unstable factor in Japanese society.

In order to avoid the intensification of domestic contradictions, officials often acquiesce or encourage ronin to commit armed aggression abroad.

The ronin is full of ambitions for foreign wars. Zheng Chenggong sent troops to Japan to fight against the Qing Dynasty and regain the light. Although the shogunate refused, the following ronin was very popular.

In the film and television works reflecting the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, the Japanese ronin wandered in China, which was the result of the Meiji Restoration reform hierarchy.

In Sai Bi at dusk, Sai Bi, a young warrior, wiped the soup bowl with rice balls while eating, which showed the poverty of life.

Edward zwick, the director of The Last Samurai, said that he likes reading the biography of Saigō Takamori, one of the "three outstanding reformers". Xixiang was born in the penultimate lower class warrior. When he was young, he had to do odd jobs in copying in order to supplement his family.

His hometown of Satsuma is a famous strong Japanese vassal. Among the 700,000 people, the samurai family accounted for more than 200,000, and the financial situation has been tight.

After the life of these low-level warriors was opened in Japan, the situation of poverty and poverty became worse and worse, and eventually became the main force of the reform.

After the reform, some of the upper-class warriors turned into bourgeois or bureaucrats, while the lower-class warriors gradually declined, creating a series of riots, including Xixiang.

Therefore, after the initial success of the modernization process, Japan immediately launched its external expansion.

It is worth mentioning that many junior samurai in life have no money to marry, and their military system and traditional culture of preferring sons to daughters make solving many samurai's sexual problems a social crux.

Therefore, the shogunate advocating Confucianism bypassed some family ethics advocated by Confucianism, especially the concept of female chastity.

Until Isoroku Yamamoto's generation and even today, the fooling around between samurai (male) and geisha (* * *) in pornographic places has been acquiesced, even tolerated by his wife.

think

The core of Japanese samurai thought is Bushido.

After decades of anti-Japanese aggression, this word is "notorious" for China people, but it is necessary to analyze it.

"The Last Samurai" summarizes Bushido as a series of abstract good moral norms, such as "courage, kindness, loyalty ...", but this is only the appearance, otherwise it cannot be explained that in more cases, samurai embodies cruelty, ignorance and madness.

This reason should be found from the ideological roots of Bushido, which is actually a hodgepodge with complex components.

Bushido began in the early days, and its main theoretical background is Zhu's Neo-Confucianism, but it has long been criticized by China intellectuals.

From the later period of Kamakura shogunate, samurai must abide by the virtues of "loyalty, shame, faithfulness and frugality". By the time of Tokugawa shogunate, some famous Confucian scholars systematized and standardized Bushido theory, and finally became an ethical model of the whole samurai society.

The repeated remake of the film Loyalist and Thief's Stolen Goods happened in this period, which is the "perfect embodiment" of the warrior's moral ideal of "till death do us part".

It is generally believed that although China's Confucianism was introduced into Japan, it has distinct autonomy and selectivity, just like any foreign civilization they absorbed.

Zhou Zuoren also pointed out that some dross cultures in China's history, such as eunuchs and foot binding, were not fully accepted by Japan.

As for Confucianism, the core of Japanese emphasis is "loyalty", while China is "benevolence".

Therefore, in order to be "loyal", Japanese samurai can make actions that violate human nature.

As a model of Bushido, China national heroes in the Southern Song Dynasty, such as Wen Tianxiang and Lu Xiufu.

In the edo period, these characters were called "the lessons of the samurai of the present dynasty", and they were warmly praised by the warriors for their spirit of "righteousness" regardless of life and death.

In the battle for many islands in Okinawa and the Pacific battlefield, the Japanese army and even ordinary people, in the case of hunger and thirst, still launched suicide charges again and again, and when they were defeated, they jumped off the cliff and jumped into the sea, just like Lu Xiufu and Zhang Shijie, who were defeated by the Yuan Army in Yashan.

After the Meiji Restoration, Japanese militarism discriminated against and belittled China's aggression, so the heroes who advocated "die a mortal" gradually turned their eyes to their own country, but the story of Wen Tianxiang was the content of Japanese textbooks until the end of World War II.

Another important core of Bushido thought is Zen.

Samurai live in war and are ready to die for their master. Japan's harsh geographical environment and frequent disasters make them have a strong sense of crisis, so they need the epiphany of Zen to reconcile life and death.

At the same time, the mysticism tendency and aesthetic taste of Zen also brought great influence to samurai and Japanese culture.

While Zen is in the hands of samurai, the empty and nihilistic outlook on life is magnified and becomes an excuse to ignore other people's lives and make anti-human behaviors.

In the end, Shinto, which is also called the three pillars of the wooden model system with Confucianism and Buddhism, turned Bushido into a tool of militarism. During the Meiji Restoration, Japanese populism flooded, deified the emperor, and designated Shinto, which advocated the superiority of Japanese nation, as the state religion, thus forming a transformation to a modern nation-state and an industrialized militarized empire, absorbing German nationalist philosophy, and finally completing the fascism of Bushido.

fight

As a professional military group.

Fighting is the first mission of a samurai.

The biggest fighting feature of Japanese samurai is that they wear unique armor and have their own fighting skills.

Because of his bravery and tenacity, he is a difficult professional soldier to deal with.

At the end of the shogunate, the British navy in the Qing Dynasty was easily defeated in the Opium War, and there was an "eagle war" with Samoans. Although the Japanese samurai with backward equipment suffered heavy losses, they also had to admit that the other side was "good at fighting."

Previously, the Yuan Army made an expedition to Japan, landed and fought against the Japanese army. The intensive firearms made the samurai who advocated a single duel suffer greatly, but they still could not break through the desperate interception of the Japanese army. They had to rest on the boat when they couldn't get a solid bridgehead, and as a result, they were caught in a typhoon.

Japanese samurai in the era of cold weapons, on the one hand, have excellent swords, on the other hand, they attach importance to combat training and have rich experience, so they are invincible enemies.

In the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea in the Ming Dynasty, the individual and small group combat capability of Japanese samurai was obviously higher than that of ordinary Ming army.

In particular, the samurai's sharp long knives and strange knife methods can often defeat the Ming army with a large number of troops.

Qi Jiguang invented the "Yuanyang Array", the comprehensive power of long and short weapons and firearms. Only by training soldiers can we contain the enemy.

The late great director Hu Jinquan has a film about War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression's martyrs, including a series of battles, which is worth seeing.

Although there is no samurai class in Japan now, the high-quality mountain city is still welcomed by collectors all over the world, and it is also called "the three famous blades in the world" together with Damascus Dao and Malai Dao.

As early as the Song Dynasty, Ouyang Xiu, a literary giant, wrote "Song of Japanese Knife", saying that "Bao Dao is close to Japan, and Guardian goes to Haidong".

As a matter of fact, Japanese sword-making technology originally originated from the steel-patterned sword of Han Dynasty in China, but after continuous improvement and processing, it has become the "second to none in the Far East" in terms of appearance and practicality.

However, China's sword manufacturing technology has been declining and lost. Even the original tangdao, which had a great influence on Japanese swordsmanship, has been lost, but it has survived in Japan.

In Japanese costume dramas, samurai's sword fighting is more common, and a professional fighting group named "kill array" has also been formed.

Because Japan attaches importance to fighting skills such as kendo, judo and karate in school education, many Japanese actors have quite basic skills and it is decent to perform actual combat in movies.

Those "kill array" designers are really experts in various schools of Japanese sabers. For example, in "Clearing the Border at Dusk", it is Godaji who is responsible for guiding Hiroyuki Sanada.

Kodachi (rib space) refers to the short knife besides the long knife commonly used by Japanese samurai, and it is also a tool for laparotomy.

Blade master Musashi Miyamoto is famous for creating two-handed long knives and Gotha double knives. However, the Japanese knife method is still dominated by holding a knife with both hands.

According to some experts' research, the two-handed knife method was introduced to Japan in the Han and Tang Dynasties, and then gradually disappeared in China. However, on this basis, the Japanese samurai gradually improved their two-handed knife skills and formed a kendo system. Its main feature is to abandon the disadvantages of China's pursuit of beautiful routines, and emphasize "concise and rigorous techniques, rich and smooth strength" in actual combat.

Of course, under the guidance of this idea, the sword fighting in Japanese movies is far less beautiful than that in China movies.