The Samurai: Part 1 - The Who and When

I write these blogs with the intention of giving brief, to-the-point histories of subjects I find interesting without having the intense length and depth of books or, to be honest, a lot of wikipedia articles. The inherent issues that come from that are so much gets lost along the way; the samurai existed in all their glory from (very roughly) the 700s to the mid 1800s, and that stretch of time is going to see a vast array of changes in their styles and practices. It also can really bog you down in time periods, names, political climates and any assortment of high school test-esque information that may one day save you in Trivial Pursuit, but likely never again. Therefore, I acknowledge that this entry on the samurai is going to very, very lightly touch on the idea of the samurai, but... such is life.

A samurai demonstrating his
"sparse fern camouflage" clothing
option.

Early (and by early I mean 700 A.D. kind of early) Japan was centralized in the capital, the place where the money and power resided most heavily with the provinces on the outskirts hanging off the coattails. The warrior caste represented these differences as well; the warriors in the capital saw themselves as these educated, reformed and refined soldiers while looking down on the lowly brawlers of the outer provinces. This is likely when the term samurai began to take hold, and contrary to what you may believe, it means something a lot closer to servant than soldier. The samurai were the warriors outside of the capital, closer to the drunken pub brawler you see after Newcastle loses rather than the image of the top of the line warrior the word conjures up - at least that's what the capital's soldiers felt about them. I'd like to note that this is just how they originated - the samurai later became a ruling elite class of nobles while still maintaining their warrior nature. It was a clearcut case of "might makes right" in ancient Japan.

Absolutely terrifying, except for what
appears to be a lemon wedge on his head.

The manner in which they fought was what really defined a samurai, though, not their origins or the location of their battles. Their fighting style and unwritten code (yes, unwritten, unless you're considering Bushido, but more on that later) was rather defined and seemingly followed by pretty well all of the truest of samurai. Individuality was a central tenant; there was plenty of grandstanding, forcing the onlookers of both sides to know who was doing the actual fighting so they could make a name for themselves. When yelling wasn't doing the trick, they would wear brightly coloured armour to signify who they were and once again make them more immediately recognizable, similar to the character creation premise of Soul Calibur down the historical line. In addition to the armour, they would also craft a number of fearsome and unique headpieces to be all the more memorable.

A photo - yes, a photo - of some samurai.
The man on the left and the two on the right
are part of the "Fashion Police Clan", posing
after having successfully captured an enemy.

Much of samurai warfare was based around becoming the biggest name you could be, and one such way you could find notoriety was, well, killing those who had a greater notoriety than you. While today a way to prove you're victorious in a competition is a medal or some other form of recognition (or in the case of Starcraft a league promotion - I can brag to all my friends that I was once in Masters, and brag I shall) they went with the much simpler solution of simply removing the head of those they've defeated and keeping that, instead. If you thought you were going to lose, and you make the rather reasonable decision to run rather than have a critical piece of anatomy severed from the rest of you, your distinctive, brightly coloured armour is going to look all the more foolish as you get the heck out of there. Oh, and if they catch up to you and take you as a prisoner? The reason seppuku arose (the manner in which samurai commit suicide) was because offing oneself was a much, much less painless way in losing your life than at the hands of your captors. While seppuku started as a rather small group of samurai who practiced it - although I'll note that it doesn't really seem like the kind of thing you can pass down from generation to generation - it later became integrated in most samurai as a way of accepting defeat upon the loss of their lord they're meant to protect, or when in the face of certain defeat. Despite the fact that it at first sounds like a coward's way out to kill yourself instead of going down fighting, it was seen as an honourable act. While the Samurai Jack movie is yet to be created, I really hope he chooses the 'fight to the end' option rather than an incredibly depressing seppuku ending.

In the next part of the series, I will discuss how the samurai were used in wars and how they matched up against other civilizations. Mongols, Koreans and Chinese? I'm talking about you!