English summary:
Samurai is a well known buzzword concerning Japanese history and culture, and we can say, people associate positive meanings to it: courage, loyalty, honesty, self-sacrifice and so on. In this short lecture I try to clarify the history and development of this peculiar social class of old Japan.
To begin with, there is an ongoing debate whether samurai can be understood as a social class, a layer in Japanese society or something else? In the Edo period (1603-1867) majority of samurai was considered a distinct class in society, their status defined by laws, still even then differences between income, position and possibilities of high and low samurai were enormous. As of the ages preceding that era, the position of samurai had been even less definite, samurai being landholders owing military service to their overlord.
The samurai class had its foundation laid down in the end of 8th century when Japanese imperial government abolished provincial garrisons, trusting local landholders instead to organize their own militia forces in order to maintain public security. While members of these forces at the outset were peasants who divided their time between farming and armed service, as security situation (mainly at the borderlands) deteriorated they had to abandon their agricultural duties for the sake of military service. Accordingly, their self-consciousness had been changing from a farmer to a warrior – they were the forerunners of samurai.
Groups of warriors serving a local landholder were small first, but when co-ordination started among these groups they evolved into bigger organizations called bushidan (warrior group) in Japanese history. As their tasks grew more complex, these groups got to have their own officers and formed around well-respected figures of local aristocracy. In the middle of 12th century warrior groups became involved in the power and succession problems of the capital thus entering the scene of national politics – this led some of them directly to usurp the power of the court, introducing samurai rule, lasting for 700 years.
As mentioned above, medieval samurai were small and middle scale landholders with military duties toward their overlords who was the ultimate source of their fortune and wealth. This situation led to dramatic changes in their ethics: they were no longer part of the ancient imperial structure of power, their loyalty and service focused directly on their lord, losing its official nature and becoming personal, emotional. These changes of ethical thinkink contributed enormously to the forming warrior ethics, later known as bushidō.
In early 17th century, ending an almost 150 years of internal struggle and feudal anarchy the new shōgun, Tokugawa Ieyasu devised a new Japan where peace and order are maintained under his rule – in this process he separated samurai from land and peasantry, creating a distinctive samurai class within society. Tokugawa era samurai were thrown into a delicate situtation: they were first and most importantly soldiers in a world without war, without a chance to prove their usefulness. The upper echelons of this class had found employment as officials in the service of their lord, but minor samurai had nothing beyond their mere status – it understandably led them to over-emphasize their social standing, causing many excesses in ’samurai behavior’.
When the end of Tokugawa era had been approaching and Western nations were knocking on Japan’s door demanding the opening of the country for diplomacy and trade, the majority of samurai urged the shogunal government to deny those demands and go to war to fend off foreigners. For them the prospect of a war carried the promise of being able to prove themselves as warriors, and as a result, to rise within the strict samurai hierarchy, opening a new, bright future for themselves and their families. Anti-foreign sentiment among samurai led them to work for overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate that they saw as weak and frightened of the foreigners, succeeding in the end during the chain of events we call the Meiji restoration. To their much chagrin, the new government they worked and fought to bring upon, abolished the samurai class entirely – some samurai rose up in protest but it was too late: the history of samurai came to an end.