Historical sources on the Japanese Samurai

Excerpt A

“Bu-shi-do means literally Military-Knight-Ways—the ways which fighting nobles should observe in their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the “Precepts of Knighthood,” the noblesse oblige of the warrior class. Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets of the heart.”

Excerpt B

“Only as it attains consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be identified with feudalism. As in England the political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These were known as samurai, meaning literally, like the old English cniht (knecht, knight), guards or attendants. They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough breed who made fighting their vocation.”

Excerpt C

“Such loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant character of the samurai. To us the Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a Rechtsstaat, or even the Patron of a Culturstaat—he is the bodily representative of Heaven on earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy.”

Excerpt D

“Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to sacrifice, was the duty of loyalty, which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, with other classes of people, but this virtue—homage and fealty to a superior—is its distinctive feature.”

Excerpt E

“Bushido made the sword its emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed that “The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell,” he only echoed a Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a go-board and initiated into the rights of the military profession, by having thrust into his girdle a real sword instead of the toy dirk with which he had been playing.”

Excerpt F

“Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet Gishi (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls—of whom so much is made in our popular education—are known in common parlance as the Forty-seven Gishi.”

Excerpt G

“Open the biographies of the makers of Modern Japan—of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.,—and you will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and observation of the Far East, that the only respect in which Japan differed from other oriental despotisms lay in “the ruling influence among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious codes of honour that man has ever devised,” he touched the mainspring which has made New Japan what she is.”

Contextual information:

Inazo Nitobe (1862–1933) was a Japanese educator and diplomat who grew up in a samurai family during the last years of Japan’s feudal era. He wrote Bushido: The Soul of Japan in English in 1899, aiming to explain the samurai’s moral code to a Western audience. The book became internationally famous and was read by world leaders, including U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. In it, Nitobe draws on his own upbringing and on comparisons with European chivalry to describe the principles that governed samurai life: the meaning of the Bushido code, the origins of the warrior class in the twelfth century, the importance of the sword (katana), the samurai’s loyalty to his lord (daimyo) and reverence for the emperor, and the continued influence of former samurai in shaping the new Japan after the feudal system was abolished in the Meiji period (1868–1912). He also references the famous Forty-seven Gishi, the group of masterless samurai (ronin) who avenged their fallen lord and became national heroes.

Bibliographical reference: 

Nitobe, I. (1908). Bushido: The soul of Japan (13th ed., rev. and enlarged). Teibi Publishing. (Original work published 1899). Retrieved from Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12096

Copyright: Public domain.

“The bow was always the chief weapon of the fighting man in Japan. “War” and “bow and arrow” (yumi-ya) are synonyms. Men spoke of Hachiman, the God of Battles, as Yumi-ya no Hachiman; the left hand received the name of yunde (yumi-no-te, or bow-hand), by which it is still commonly designated, and the general term for “soldier” was “bow-holder.””

Contextual information:

Captain Frank Brinkley (1841–1912) was a British-born military officer and journalist who lived in Japan for over forty years, becoming one of the foremost Western authorities on Japanese history and culture. This passage, from Volume 2 of his eight-volume work Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature (1902), explains that the bow was the primary weapon of the Japanese warrior class for many centuries before the sword rose to prominence. Throughout their history, samurai were trained in both weapons, and the phrase “the way of the bow and the horse” (kyuba no michi) was an early term for the warrior’s code, later replaced by “Bushido.”

Bibliographical reference: 

Brinkley, F. (1902). Japan: Its history, arts, and literature (Vol. 2, Chapter 4). J. B. Millet. Retrieved from Wikisource, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Japan:_Its_History,_Arts,_and_Literature/Volume_2/Chapter_4

Copyright: Public domain.

“The feudal lords and the samurai class were offered a yearly stipend, which was later changed to a one-time payment in government bonds. [...] The samurai, being better educated than most of the population, became teachers, gun makers, government officials, and military officers. While the formal title of samurai was abolished, the elitist spirit that characterised the samurai class lived on.”

Contextual information:

This passage describes the period of the Meiji Restoration (beginning 1868), when Japan transitioned from feudal rule under the shogun to a modern centralised government under Emperor Meiji. During this transformation, the samurai class was formally abolished and the old feudal domains were replaced by government-controlled prefectures. Former samurai were compensated with stipends (later converted to bonds) and had to find new roles in Japanese society. Because they were the most educated class, many transitioned into the new government bureaucracy, the military, or into teaching. The passage is drawn from a widely used summary of Brinkley and Kikuchi’s public domain history of the Meiji era.

Bibliographical reference: 

Brinkley, F., & Kikuchi, D. (1912). A history of the Japanese people: From the earliest times to the end of the Meiji era (Chapter XLVI: The Meiji Government). Encyclopaedia Britannica Company. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27604

Copyright: Public domain.