Samurai on horseback with his armor, saber and bow • WIKIMEDIACOMMONS 1. How did the samurai appear in Japan? The warrior caste of the samurai is linked to the history of the political organization of the country. In the middle of the IX th century, the Fujiwara family, supported by men-at-arms, seized power and relegated the emperor, a sacred figure and descendant of the goddess of the Sun, to the background. In the XII th century, the domination of the Fujiwara is contested. The warlord Minamoto no Yoritomo in turn seizes power and assumes the military title of shogun. For this, he relies on local lords, the daimyo, themselves surrounded by soldiers who are their vassals:the samurai. 2. Does the samurai have duties? The samurai must always be ready to go to war for his lord and he must perform guard duty at the palace. His ideal of conduct, bushido, is expounded in the Hagakure , collection of words of an 18 th samurai century, published in 1906. It is based on righteousness, courage, benevolence, politeness, loyalty and self-control. The true warrior must not show his weaknesses. The samurai are not all rich and, when they are hungry, they must never state it; on the contrary, they must pick their teeth ostentatiously, as if they had just had a good meal. Death is not shameful for the samurai, it is the way he must follow. “Suicide at the time of defeat was the last card the defeated samurai could play,” explains Pierre-François Souyri, a French specialist in the history of Japan. The Said of the Heike , a 14 th chronicle century, describes the death of Imai no Shirô in 1183:“He placed the point of his sword in his mouth, fell backward from the top of his horse and died pierced by his own blade. » 3. Did samurai rule Japan? Several warrior dynasties have ruled Japan since the erasure of the emperor. Unlike other Asian countries, traditional Japan was not ruled by scholars or by competitively recruited administrators, as is the case in China. Public power in Japan relied on the warrior caste. Several families exercised power from 1185 until 1603, when the last shogunate began, that of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Winner at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty managed to set up a stable and solid regime, which would last until 1868. He inaugurated a peaceful period, but during which Japan closed itself off to the rest of the world. Considered one of the greatest heroes in Japanese history, Tokugawa Ieyasu had an extraordinary mausoleum built in the mountain village of Nikko, which the Japanese dream of visiting at least once in their lives. 4. Did the samurai scare the rest of the population? The ethics of the samurai does not prevent him from being a character of extreme violence. When Portuguese travelers arrived in Japan in the 16th century century, they describe a society in the hands of violent men, dragging their rapier in the street. The samurai have a monopoly on violence, since it is forbidden for other categories of the population to carry the sword since the "saber hunt" led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1588. In 1629, an edict defines the rights of the samurai and requires of them the port of the sword. The common people must salute the forehead in the dust the procession of a daimyo. Some warriors behave so badly that they can be fired:these are the ronins (“floating men” in Japanese), wandering and masterless samurai. No longer having an assured subsistence, they indulge in looting and raids. The XIV th century also left traces of rogue samurai, the akuto ("rascals"). Their master being unable to reward them with land, they begin to sow terror among the peasants. However, in this traditional society, everyone accepts the inequality of status and the idea that one must remain in the place that fate has assigned to you. If the samurai must carry to the extreme his ability to rise above physical suffering, the common people must carry to the extreme the capacity to accept the aggressions perpetrated by the armed samurai, since that is how that social construction works. 5. Is the sword the attribute specific to the samurai? The samurai is characterized by carrying not one sword but two:the katana (or long sword) and the wakizashi (or short sword); the former is an attack weapon, while the latter is used to parry blows. The blades were forged by extremely skilled metalworkers. But the exceptional warrior also masters other techniques. You can still see horseback archery demonstrations on fixed or moving targets today, reminiscent of ancient combat techniques. In addition, martial arts that are practiced with bare hands or with a stick are also the specialty of the samurai, in particular kendo. On the other hand, the use of firearms, which existed when the archipelago bought arquebuses from Portuguese merchants during the Renaissance, disappeared between the XVI th and the 19 th century. 6. Is the samurai only a fighter? From the Tokugawa period, wars became less and less frequent in Japan. The samurai are gradually transformed into stewards of the great properties of their lord and are interested in the arts practiced at the court of the emperor:tea ceremony, art of arranging flowers, poetry, literature and Noh theater. At the time when the "way of tea" reached its peak, some great lords preferred to receive a valuable work of art as a reward for their victories rather than a vast territory. The clothing and attire of a fighter is also of great importance. The samurai must not be surprised by death in a neglected outfit. 7. Is the samurai necessarily a man? The whole samurai family belongs to the warrior caste. Moreover, in traditional Japanese society, only these bloodlines are allowed to bear a surname. As the samurai has to finance very expensive equipment, he often only has one child. It may be a girl. While they are rarely fighters, samurai girls are trained never to lose control of their minds or bodies, even while sleeping. They must lie on their backs, legs close together, their heads resting on a small wooden pillow. No way for them to stretch. Merchants try to marry off their son to a samurai daughter, as this allows their children to enter this more prestigious caste. In 1947, Yamakawa Kikue, granddaughter of a samurai and communist activist in the 1920s, became the first female high-ranking official in Japan. 8. Are castles the symbol of samurai power? To reward his vassals during military victories, the shogun granted them land on which they levied taxes in the form of rice. Thus the samurai obtain their subsistence from the daimyo on whom they are totally dependent. The fiefs are organized in a pyramidal fashion, under the authority of the great lords. The power of the latter is visible in the landscape through spectacular castles, at the foot of which towns appear. Some of these castles are still visible today, although most of the buildings have been rebuilt over time, as is traditional in Japan. Since the buildings are mostly made of wood, they are regularly repaired identically. Osaka Castle has been completely rebuilt. That of Matsumoto, recognizable by its black silhouette, is the oldest since it was completed in 1595. The castle of the White Heron, in Himeji, was built in the 16 th century by Toyotomi Hideyoshi according to a system so sophisticated that no one has ever dared to attack it. Its method of construction has even allowed it to withstand the most violent earthquakes, such as that of Kobe in 1995. 9. Is the ethics of the samurai reconcilable with the ideal of non-violence of Buddhism? According to Pierre-François Souyri, some samurai are convinced that they have inherited bad karma in the cycle of reincarnations, which compels them to kill, while others are fully aware of accomplishing the wrong. The warriors adopt the meditation techniques of Zen Buddhism, which also blurs the clear line between life and death. The religiosity of the fighters remains extreme. A legend tells that, in a palace, the negligence of a samurai led to a fire which endangered a famous portrait of Daruma, one of the figures of Buddha. The offending samurai cut his stomach open with his sword, wrapped one of his torn sleeves around the painted scroll, and slipped it into his gaping wound to shield it from the flames. The work was thus found in his charred body. 10. When did the samurai disappear? In 1868, Emperor Meiji regained power over the shogun. Japan is entering a new era. The capital settles in Edo, renamed Tokyo. In 1871, the fiefs, seigniories and principalities were abolished. The samurai, minions of the shogun, now appear dangerous for the central power. In 1876, samurai had to cut their buns, they were forbidden to wear swords in public, and they were no longer paid. The poorest of them join the Meiji revolution, in the hope that the new society will allow them to change their status and evolve. But a certain number of warrior intellectuals cultivate nostalgia for the ancient era and its traditional values, causing occasional revolts. 11. Are suicide bombers the last samurai? From 1868, Japan militarized itself on the model of the industrial European powers, in particular Prussia, which enabled it to win the victory of Tsushima over Russia in 1905, to the great surprise of the rest of the world . From then on, the place of the military increased in governmental spheres. Among the rulers and higher professions of the early 20 th century, there are many descendants of samurai. If, during the First World War, Japan chose the camp of the English and the Russians, it became closer to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the 1930s and attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in 1941. In this war against a powerful enemy, the ghost of samurai is called to the rescue of war propaganda. From 1944, the army resorted to suicide bombers, pilots who crashed into American military ships in the Pacific. Their name meaning "divine wind" originates from the Japanese victory won in the 13th th century on Kublai Khan's fleet thanks to a providential typhoon. The only thing in common between samurai and suicide bombers is the challenge to death. But the very young suicide bombers seem to have rarely volunteered for these suicidal missions. 12. Does the samurai always prefer death to dishonor? At the end of the Second World War, a number of foreign observers believed that the Japanese would never surrender and that a large part of them would prefer suicide. What is their surprise when they find that in August 1945, faced with Soviet troops, Japanese officers desert en masse, allowing the Red Army to take several hundred thousand prisoners in a few days. Once the defeat was accepted by the emperor, the Japanese complied with the constraints imposed by the American occupier with great good will, welcoming the GIs with a smile. The respect for the hierarchy inherent in the Japanese mentality then applies in all its logic. The Japanese having seen that economic power gave victory to the West and gave them the respect of the rest of the world, they decided to try to match them after 1945, as they had done in 1868, and they embarked on economic competition. Find out more The Way of the Samurai, Y. Tsunetomo, Presses du Châtelet, 2010.Warriors in the rice field. The Great Samurai Epic, P.-F. Souyri, Flammarion, 2017.Sekigahara. The Greatest Samurai Battle, J. Peltier, Pasts compounds, 2020. Glossary Akuto: “rascals”, errant samurai in the 14th th century.Bushi: warrior.Bushidan: horde of armed warriors.Bushido: the way of the warrior, the traditional Japanese driving ideal.Daimyo: great lord.Dojo: martial arts training room.Han: territory under the control of a daimyo, fief.Hoko: service owed by the vassal to his overlord, military service, watchtower.Ninja: shadow fighters, auxiliaries of the shogun in charge of low works.Rônin: "the one who floats", former warrior dismissed by his master, excluded from the order of samurai.Samurai: the one who serves.Seppuku (or hara-kiri): ritualized suicide of warriors.Shogun: general ruling Japan in place of the emperor.
