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Samurai
Samurai (侍) were members of the warrior class who served as retainers to lords in Japan prior to the Meiji era. Samurai existed from the late 12th century until their abolition in the late 1870s during the Meiji era. They were originally provincial warriors who served the Kuge and imperial court in the late 12th century.
In 1853, the United States forced Japan to open its borders to foreign trade under the threat of military action. Fearing an eventual invasion, the Japanese abandoned feudalism for capitalism so that they could industrialize and build a modern army. The adoption of modern firearms rendered the traditional weapons of the samurai obsolete, and as firearms are easy enough for peasant conscripts to learn, Japan had no more need for a specialized warrior caste. By 1876 the special rights and privileges of the samurai had all been abolished.
The proper Japanese term for a warrior is bushi (武士) and the word buke (武家) meant "warrior family". Bushi was not applied to just any kind of fighter. For those who called themselves bushi, war was their way of life and often a family tradition, as opposed to conscripts or militia. It was also a term for elite warriors, particularly those who fought on horseback as cavalry was the backbone of Japanese armies. During the early Edo period, a warrior was only considered a member of the bushi class if he was a public servant, which among other things entitled him to a stipend.
In the Japanese language, the word samurai was colloquial and its meaning varied over the centuries. The word samurai originally referred to domestic servants and did not have military connotations. As the term gained military connotations in the 12th century, it referred to landless footsoldiers who served the gokenin. The gokenin were warrior vassals to the shogun. According to Michael Wert, "a warrior of elite stature in pre-seventeenth-century Japan would have been insulted to be called a samurai". According to Morillo, during the Sengoku period, the term "marks social function and not class, It means a retainer of a lord - usually, in the sixteenth century, the retainer of a daimyo", and was used to refer to "all sorts of soldiers, including pikemen, bowmen, musketeers and horsemen". In the Tokugawa period, the terms were roughly interchangeable, as the military class was legally limited to the retainers of the shogun or daimyo. However, strictly speaking samurai referred to higher ranking retainers, although the cutoff between samurai and other military retainers varied from domain to domain. Also usage varied by class, with commoners referring to all sword carrying men as samurai, regardless of rank.
At the start of the 8th century AD, Japan's government was highly centralized at the imperial court, whose bureaucracy was inspired by T'ang dynasty China. All land at first belonged to the emperor, i.e. in the public domain (kokugaryō), but in the middle of the 8th century, the government instituted a major reform which allowed individuals to claim private ownership of new farmland that they had reclaimed from the wilderness. This spurred wealthy people to start reclaiming farmland, which was necessary to feed Japan's growing population. During the 11th and 12th centuries, samurai became conspicuously involved in land reclamation, thereby becoming a landowning class.
Taxation during the 8th century was high but temples, monasteries, shrines, and certain aristocrats obtained tax exemptions through their connections to the imperial court. To evade taxes, many landowners in the countryside donated their lands to these tax-exempt entities. The land would be registered in the name of said noble or temple and would become part of their tax-exempt estate (shōen) but would still be used by the same person who originally owned it. The former owner, now a steward on his lord's estate, had to pay his lord an annual tribute that was less than what he would have had to pay the emperor in tax had he been the landowner. There was usually an agreement that when the steward died, his children would inherit his position. If the temple or lord cheated the steward somehow, the farmer could retaliate by exposing the scheme, which might have cost the temple or noble its tax-exempt privilege. The growth of the 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. These farmers often could not cope and abandoned their lands, which were bought up by the landowning magnates.
Up until the late 8th century AD, Japan had a national conscript army. As peace settled in, the imperial court began dismantling the system, eventually ending it by 792 AD. Conscripts were seen as unreliable and poorly trained, to be used only in emergencies such as when the Mongols invaded. Conscript footsoldiers proved to be particularly ineffective in the Japanese' war with the Emishi, an ethnic minority in the north that relied on mounted warriors and were thus highly mobile. The deciding factor in most battles had been professional mounted archers who came from the wealthy families. The government didn't bother training conscripts in horsemanship as it required years to produce a good cavalryman. So it instead recruited men who already had these skills, acquired through private training funded by their families' wealth. Similarly, soldiers in the imperial army were expected to provide most of their own equipment. Wealthy men who could afford horses and archery training were promoted to elite units, whereas the poor were consigned to being footsoldiers. The poor disliked military service for this reason, and because their farms often fell into decay with their absence, so there was popular support for ending conscription.
In the Heian period it was the habit of emperors to keep harems, and consequently the imperial family got so large it burdened the treasury. In the early 9th century AD, Emperor Saga expelled several dozen members from the imperial family, who formed two new clans: the Minamoto clan (814 AD) and the Taira clan (825 AD). Many wealthy provincial families married into the Minamotos and Tairas in order to acquire aristocratic status, gaining prestige and often tax exemptions. And so the Tairas and Minamotos became big and wealthy clans with lots of warrior retainers.
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Samurai
Samurai (侍) were members of the warrior class who served as retainers to lords in Japan prior to the Meiji era. Samurai existed from the late 12th century until their abolition in the late 1870s during the Meiji era. They were originally provincial warriors who served the Kuge and imperial court in the late 12th century.
In 1853, the United States forced Japan to open its borders to foreign trade under the threat of military action. Fearing an eventual invasion, the Japanese abandoned feudalism for capitalism so that they could industrialize and build a modern army. The adoption of modern firearms rendered the traditional weapons of the samurai obsolete, and as firearms are easy enough for peasant conscripts to learn, Japan had no more need for a specialized warrior caste. By 1876 the special rights and privileges of the samurai had all been abolished.
The proper Japanese term for a warrior is bushi (武士) and the word buke (武家) meant "warrior family". Bushi was not applied to just any kind of fighter. For those who called themselves bushi, war was their way of life and often a family tradition, as opposed to conscripts or militia. It was also a term for elite warriors, particularly those who fought on horseback as cavalry was the backbone of Japanese armies. During the early Edo period, a warrior was only considered a member of the bushi class if he was a public servant, which among other things entitled him to a stipend.
In the Japanese language, the word samurai was colloquial and its meaning varied over the centuries. The word samurai originally referred to domestic servants and did not have military connotations. As the term gained military connotations in the 12th century, it referred to landless footsoldiers who served the gokenin. The gokenin were warrior vassals to the shogun. According to Michael Wert, "a warrior of elite stature in pre-seventeenth-century Japan would have been insulted to be called a samurai". According to Morillo, during the Sengoku period, the term "marks social function and not class, It means a retainer of a lord - usually, in the sixteenth century, the retainer of a daimyo", and was used to refer to "all sorts of soldiers, including pikemen, bowmen, musketeers and horsemen". In the Tokugawa period, the terms were roughly interchangeable, as the military class was legally limited to the retainers of the shogun or daimyo. However, strictly speaking samurai referred to higher ranking retainers, although the cutoff between samurai and other military retainers varied from domain to domain. Also usage varied by class, with commoners referring to all sword carrying men as samurai, regardless of rank.
At the start of the 8th century AD, Japan's government was highly centralized at the imperial court, whose bureaucracy was inspired by T'ang dynasty China. All land at first belonged to the emperor, i.e. in the public domain (kokugaryō), but in the middle of the 8th century, the government instituted a major reform which allowed individuals to claim private ownership of new farmland that they had reclaimed from the wilderness. This spurred wealthy people to start reclaiming farmland, which was necessary to feed Japan's growing population. During the 11th and 12th centuries, samurai became conspicuously involved in land reclamation, thereby becoming a landowning class.
Taxation during the 8th century was high but temples, monasteries, shrines, and certain aristocrats obtained tax exemptions through their connections to the imperial court. To evade taxes, many landowners in the countryside donated their lands to these tax-exempt entities. The land would be registered in the name of said noble or temple and would become part of their tax-exempt estate (shōen) but would still be used by the same person who originally owned it. The former owner, now a steward on his lord's estate, had to pay his lord an annual tribute that was less than what he would have had to pay the emperor in tax had he been the landowner. There was usually an agreement that when the steward died, his children would inherit his position. If the temple or lord cheated the steward somehow, the farmer could retaliate by exposing the scheme, which might have cost the temple or noble its tax-exempt privilege. The growth of the 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. These farmers often could not cope and abandoned their lands, which were bought up by the landowning magnates.
Up until the late 8th century AD, Japan had a national conscript army. As peace settled in, the imperial court began dismantling the system, eventually ending it by 792 AD. Conscripts were seen as unreliable and poorly trained, to be used only in emergencies such as when the Mongols invaded. Conscript footsoldiers proved to be particularly ineffective in the Japanese' war with the Emishi, an ethnic minority in the north that relied on mounted warriors and were thus highly mobile. The deciding factor in most battles had been professional mounted archers who came from the wealthy families. The government didn't bother training conscripts in horsemanship as it required years to produce a good cavalryman. So it instead recruited men who already had these skills, acquired through private training funded by their families' wealth. Similarly, soldiers in the imperial army were expected to provide most of their own equipment. Wealthy men who could afford horses and archery training were promoted to elite units, whereas the poor were consigned to being footsoldiers. The poor disliked military service for this reason, and because their farms often fell into decay with their absence, so there was popular support for ending conscription.
In the Heian period it was the habit of emperors to keep harems, and consequently the imperial family got so large it burdened the treasury. In the early 9th century AD, Emperor Saga expelled several dozen members from the imperial family, who formed two new clans: the Minamoto clan (814 AD) and the Taira clan (825 AD). Many wealthy provincial families married into the Minamotos and Tairas in order to acquire aristocratic status, gaining prestige and often tax exemptions. And so the Tairas and Minamotos became big and wealthy clans with lots of warrior retainers.
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