Rise of the warrior clans (700 - 1180 AD) 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 when there were not enough professional warriors to deal with a formidable enemy, such as when the Chinese 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 train conscripts to be mounted archers because that took years and conscripts were short-term warriors. 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. 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. In the middle of the 8th century, the imperial 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,
bushi became conspicuously involved in land reclamation, thereby becoming a landowning class. And like many landowners, the
bushi often donated their lands to a
shōen to avoid taxes. This had the effect of enriching the
bushi while simultaneously depriving the imperial treasury. 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. Thus with the downsizing of the national army and the decline in tax revenue, the emperors delegated the matter of security in the countryside to the burgeoning class of landed warriors. They had a personal incentive to suppress lawlessness in their own lands as it directly impacted their revenue.
The Genpei War (1180–1185) '' armor typical of the
Gempei War (1180–1185). Two leading warrior clans, the
Minamoto clan and the
Taira clan, had both gained court positions and became rivals. In 1156, the former emperor Sutoku attempted to take back the throne from his brother,
Emperor Go-Shirakawa, in what is remembered as the
Hōgen rebellion. It failed and Sutoku was exiled. Members of the Minamoto and Taira clans had fought on both sides of the rebellion, but the Minamoto loyalists received smaller rewards than the Taira loyalists, and the Minamoto rebels received worse punishments than the Taira rebels. All this angered the Minamotos, and consequently political factions in the imperial court began to reform around clan affiliations rather than personal allegiances. The next rebellion would be a direct Taira/Minamoto clash. The Minamotos took part in the
Heiji Rebellion of 1160 in the hopes that they could have the Taira leader
Taira no Kiyomori banished. This rebellion also failed, and in the aftermath the Tairas ended up with even more influence in the imperial court. Their leader,
Taira no Kiyomori, became the first
bushi ever to be given a senior rank in the imperial court (
chief minister in 1167). In 1180, Taira no Kiyomori installed his two-year-old grandson (
Emperor Antoku) on the throne, pushing aside older male heirs whose mothers were from the Minamoto family. This sparked a rebellion by the Minamotos, leading to the
Gempei War (1180–1185).
Minamoto no Yoritomo promised lands and administrative rights to warriors who swore allegiance to him. The Minamotos won the war and the Taira clan was effectively destroyed. In April 1185, the controversial child emperor was drowned by his own grandmother, who then committed suicide.
Kamakura shogunate The new emperor,
Emperor Go-Toba, was of Fujiwara lineage, which did not fully satisfy Minamoto no Yoritomo, so he decided to rule Japan through a parallel military government headquartered in Kamakura. It would be staffed by warriors who served the Minamotos during the Gempei War; they had to be rewarded. Yoritomo was appointed
sei-i taishōgun by the imperial regent (who didn't really have a choice in the matter). The emperor was reduced to a figurehead. In 1192, the shogun created the
gokenin class, who were his warrior vassals. They owed the shogun military service in exchange for various privileges. The service in question often included "guard duty" or apprehending criminals. This is how the
gokenin were defined in the
Sata mirensho, a 14th-century guide to shogunate laws and legal procedures: The samurai class, as the word was used during the Kamakura period, was the warrior subclass below the
gokenin. Some samurai were sub-vassals to a gokenin and therefore served the shogun indirectly. Like the
gokenin, the samurai were mounted warriors and had surnames. Below the samurai class was the
chūgen, footsoldiers who had no surname. The shogun created the offices of
jitō and
shugo. The
shugo and
jitō were typically members of the
gokenin class. A
shugo was a military governor and among his responsibilities was registering and managing the shogun's
gokenin. The
jitō were military stewards of the estates. During the Kamakura shogunate (1185 AD – 1333 AD), it was expected for a member of the
bushi class to own land where he had his ancestral home and from which he made a living, although this was not required by law.
Nanboku-chō and Muromachi period The Hōjō clan controlled the Kamakura shogunate as regents (
shikken) during the
Mongol invasions of Japan (1274–1281). Many samurai who fought the Mongols felt that they had not been properly rewarded by the regent, who favored his own clan too much.
Emperor Godaigo saw an opportunity to restore imperial power. In 1333, the emperor incited the disgruntled samurai to rebel against the shogunate and return power to the imperial court, leading to the
Kenmu Restoration. But Godaigo's policies proved unpopular, and in 1336 his top general
Ashikaga Takauji betrayed him and established a new shogunate, this time headquartered in
Kyoto. This shogunate is known as the
Ashikaga shogunate. The southern court, descended from Emperor Godaigo, and the northern court, descended from Emperor Kōgōn, were established side by side. This period of coexistence of the two dynasties is called the
Nanboku-chō period, which corresponds to the beginning of the
Muromachi period. The Northern Court, supported by the Ashikaga shogunate, had six emperors, and in 1392 the Imperial Court was reunited by absorbing the Southern Court, although the modern
Imperial Household Agency considers the Southern Court to be the legitimate emperor. The rule of Japan by the Ashikaga shogunate lasted until the
Onin War, which broke out in 1467. From 1346 to 1358 during the Nanboku-cho period, the Ashikaga shogunate gradually expanded the authority of the , the local military and police officials established by the Kamakura shogunate, giving the
Shugo jurisdiction over land disputes between and allowing the
Shugo to receive half of all taxes from the areas they controlled. The
Shugo shared their newfound wealth with the local samurai, creating a hierarchical relationship between the
Shugo and the samurai, and the first early , called , appeared. ,
Important Sword During the Nanboku-chō period, many lower-class foot soldiers called began to participate in battles, and the popularity of increased. During the Nanboku-chō and Muromachi periods, and became the norm, and senior samurai also began to wear by adding (helmet), (face armor), and gauntlet. Issues of inheritance caused family strife as
primogeniture became common, in contrast to the division of succession designated by law before the 14th century. Invasions of neighboring samurai territories became common to avoid infighting, and bickering among samurai was a constant problem for the Kamakura and Ashikaga shogunates.
Sengoku period The outbreak of the
Onin War, which began in 1467 and lasted about 10 years, devastated
Kyoto and brought down the power of the Ashikaga shogunate. This plunged the country into the
warring states period, in which
daimyo (feudal lords) from different regions fought each other. This period corresponds to the late Muromachi period. There are about nine theories about the end of the Sengoku Period, the earliest being the year 1568, when
Oda Nobunaga marched on Kyoto, and the latest being the suppression of the
Shimabara Rebellion in 1638. Thus, the Sengoku Period overlaps with the Muromachi,
Azuchi–Momoyama, and
Edo periods, depending on the theory. In any case, the Sengoku period was a time of large-scale civil wars throughout Japan.
Daimyo who became more powerful as the shogunate's control weakened were called , and they often came from
shugo daimyo, , and . In other words,
sengoku daimyo differed from
shugo daimyo in that a
sengoku daimyo was able to rule the region on his own, without being appointed by the shogun. These events sometimes led to the rise of samurai to the rank of
sengoku daimyo. For example,
Hōjō Sōun was the first samurai to rise to the rank of
sengoku daimyo during this period.
Uesugi Kenshin was an example of a
Shugodai who became
sengoku daimyo by weakening and eliminating the power of the lord. This period was marked by the loosening of samurai culture, with people born into other social strata sometimes making a name for themselves as warriors and thus becoming
de facto samurai. One such example is
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a well-known figure who rose from a peasant background to become a samurai,
sengoku daimyo, and
kampaku (Imperial Regent). In 1543, Portuguese explorers taught the Japanese how to make matchlock muskets. The Japanese took a quick liking to this new weapon. Initially, they were items of prestige wielded only by samurai, but certain daimyo noticed that muskets took only a week or two of training to master and therefore should be used in large numbers by peasant infantry. From this time on, infantrymen called , who were mobilized from the peasantry, were mobilized in even greater numbers than before, and the importance of the infantry, which had begun in the Nanboku-chō period, increased even more. When
matchlocks were introduced from Portugal in 1543, Japanese swordsmiths immediately began to improve and mass-produce them. The Japanese matchlock was named after the
Tanegashima island, which is believed to be the place where it was first introduced to Japan. By the end of the Sengoku Period, there were hundreds of thousands of
arquebuses in Japan and a large army of nearly 100,000 men clashing with each other. On the battlefield, began to fight in close formation, using (spear) and . As a result, , (bow), and became the primary weapons on the battlefield. The , which was difficult to maneuver in close formation, and the long, heavy fell into disuse and were replaced by the , which could be held short, and the short, light , which appeared in the Nanboku-cho period and gradually became more common. The was often cut off from the hilt and shortened to make a . The , which had become inconvenient for use on the battlefield, was transformed into a symbol of authority carried by high-ranking samurai. These changes in the aspect of the battlefield during the Sengoku period led to the emergence of the style of armor, which improved the productivity and durability of armor. In the history of Japanese armor, this was the most significant change since the introduction of the and in the Heian period. In this style, the number of parts was reduced, and instead armor with eccentric designs became popular. By the end of the Sengoku period, allegiances between warrior vassals, also known as military retainers, and lords were solidified. Vassals would serve lords in exchange for material and intangible advantages, in keeping with
Confucian ideas imported from China between the seventh and ninth centuries. He came within a few years of, and laid down the path for his successors to follow, the reunification of Japan under a new
bakufu (shogunate). Oda Nobunaga made innovations in the fields of organization and war tactics, made heavy use of arquebuses, developed commerce and industry, and treasured innovation. Consecutive victories enabled him to end the Ashikaga Bakufu and disarm of the military powers of the Buddhist monks, which had inflamed futile struggles among the populace for centuries. Attacking from the "sanctuary" of Buddhist temples, they were constant headaches to any warlord and even the emperor, who tried to control their actions. He died in 1582 when one of his generals,
Akechi Mitsuhide, turned upon him with his army. (1575)
Toyotomi Hideyoshi and
Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Tokugawa shogunate, were loyal followers of Nobunaga. Hideyoshi began as a peasant and became one of Nobunaga's top generals, and Ieyasu had shared his childhood with Nobunaga. Hideyoshi defeated Mitsuhide within a month and was regarded as the rightful successor of Nobunaga by avenging the treachery of Mitsuhide. These two were able to use Nobunaga's previous achievements on which build a unified Japan and there was a saying: "The reunification is a rice cake; Oda made it. Hashiba shaped it. In the end, only Ieyasu tastes it." (Hashiba is the family name that Toyotomi Hideyoshi used while he was a follower of Nobunaga.) Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who became a grand minister in 1586, created a law that non-samurai were not allowed to carry weapons, which the samurai caste codified as permanent and hereditary, thereby ending the social mobility of Japan, which lasted until the dissolution of the Edo shogunate by the Meiji revolutionaries. The distinction between samurai and non-samurai was so obscure that during the 16th century, most male adults in any social class (even small farmers) belonged to at least one military organization of their own and served in wars before and during Hideyoshi's rule. It can be said that an "all against all" situation continued for a century. The authorized samurai families after the 17th century were those that chose to follow Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu. Large battles occurred during the change between regimes, and a number of defeated samurai were destroyed, went
rōnin or were absorbed into the general populace. During the
Azuchi–Momoyama period (late Sengoku period), "samurai" often referred to , the lowest-ranking
bushi, as exemplified by the provisions of the temporary law
Separation Edict enacted by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1591. This law regulated the transfer of status classes:samurai (
wakatō), , , and . These four classes and the
ashigaru were and peasants employed by the
bushi and fell under the category of . In times of war, samurai (
wakatō) and
ashigaru were fighters, while the rest were porters. Generally, samurai (
wakatō) could take family names, while some
ashigaru could, and only samurai (
wakatō) were considered samurai class.
Wakatō, like samurai, had different definitions in different periods, meaning a young
bushi in the Muromachi period and a rank below and above
ashigaru in the Edo period.
Battle of Sekigahara , known as Before his death, Hideyoshi ordered that Japan be ruled by a council of the five most powerful
sengoku daimyo, , and Hideyoshi's five retainers, , until his only heir, the five-year-old
Toyotomi Hideyori, reached the age of 16. However, having only the young Hideyori as Hideyoshi's successor weakened the Toyotomi regime. Today, the loss of all of Hideyoshi's adult heirs is considered the main reason for the downfall of the Toyotomi clan. Hideyoshi's younger brother,
Toyotomi Hidenaga, who had supported Hideyoshi's rise to power as a leader and strategist, had already died of illness in 1591, and his nephew,
Toyotomi Hidetsugu, who was Hideyoshi's only adult successor, was forced to commit seppuku in 1595 along with many other vassals on Hideyoshi's orders for suspected rebellion. Most samurai moved from the land to the castle towns, with one town in each domain. With no warfare since the early 17th century, samurai gradually lost their military function during the Tokugawa era. Neo-Confucianism became very influential and the division of society into four classes was officially adopted by the shogunate. '' became the customary hairstyle for samurai during the Edo period. Following the passing of a law in 1629, samurai on official duty were required to wear
two swords. However, by the end of the Tokugawa era, samurai were aristocratic bureaucrats for their
daishō, becoming more of a symbolic emblem of power than a weapon used in daily life. They still had the legal right to cut down any commoner who did not show proper respect (
kiri-sute gomen), but to what extent this right was used is unknown. When the central government forced
daimyōs to cut the size of their armies, unemployed rōnin became a social problem. Theoretical obligations between a samurai and his lord (usually a
daimyō) increased from the Genpei era to the Edo era, strongly emphasized by the teachings of
Confucius and
Mencius, required reading for the educated samurai class. The leading figures who introduced Confucianism in Japan in the early Tokugawa period were Fujiwara Seika (1561–1619), Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), and Matsunaga Sekigo (1592–1657).
Pederasty permeated the culture of samurai in the early seventeenth century. The relentless condemnation of pederasty by
Jesuit missionaries also hindered attempts to convert Japan's governing elite to Christianity. Pederasty had become deeply institutionalized among the daimyo and samurai, prompting comparisons to ancient
Athens and Sparta. From the mid-Edo period, wealthy and farmers could join the samurai class by giving a large sum of money to an impoverished to be adopted into a samurai family and inherit the samurai's position and stipend. The amount of money given to a
gokenin varied according to his position: 1,000
ryo for a and 500
ryo for an Some of their descendants were promoted to and held important positions in the shogunate. Some of the peasants' children were promoted to the samurai class by serving in the office.
Kachi could change jobs and move into the lower classes, such as
chōnin. For example,
Takizawa Bakin became a
chōnin by working for
Tsutaya Jūzaburō.
Samurai in Southeast Asia , circa 1630 In the late 1500s, trade between Japan and Southeast Asia accelerated and increased exponentially when the Tokugawa shogunate was established in the early 1600s. The destinations of the trading ships, the
red seal ships, were Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. Many Japanese moved to Southeast Asia and established Japanese towns there. Many samurai, or
rōnin, who had lost their masters after the Battle of Sekigahara, lived in the Japanese towns. The Spaniards in the Philippines, the Dutch of the
Dutch East India Company, and the Thais of the
Ayutthaya Kingdom saw the value of these samurai as mercenaries and recruited them. The most famous of these mercenaries was
Yamada Nagamasa. He was originally a palanquin bearer who belonged to the lowest end of the samurai class, but he rose to prominence in the Ayutthaya Kingdom, now in southern Thailand, and became governor of the
Nakhon Si Thammarat Kingdom. When the policy of national isolation (
sakoku) was established in 1639, trade between Japan and Southeast Asia ceased, and records of Japanese activities in Southeast Asia were lost for many years after 1688.
Samurai as diplomatic ambassadors portrayed during his mission in Rome by
Archita Ricci, 1615 In 1582, three
Kirishitan daimyō,
Ōtomo Sōrin,
Ōmura Sumitada, and
Arima Harunobu, sent a group of boys, their own blood relatives and retainers, to Europe as
Japan's first diplomatic mission to Europe. They had audiences with King
Philip II of Spain,
Pope Gregory XIII, and
Pope Sixtus V. The mission returned to Japan in 1590, but its members were forced to renounce, be exiled, or be executed, due to the Tokugawa shogunate's suppression of Christianity. In 1612,
Hasekura Tsunenaga, a vassal of the
daimyo Date Masamune, led a diplomatic mission and had an audience with King
Philip III of Spain, presenting him with a letter requesting trade, and he also had an audience with
Pope Paul V in Rome. He returned to Japan in 1620, but news of the Tokugawa shogunate's suppression of Christianity had already reached Europe, and trade did not take place due to the Tokugawa shogunate's policy of
sakoku. In the town of Coria del Rio in Spain, where the diplomatic mission stopped, there were 600 people with the surnames Japon or Xapon as of 2021, and they have passed on the folk tale that they are the descendants of the samurai who remained in the town. At the end of the Edo period (
Bakumatsu era), when
Matthew C. Perry came to Japan in 1853 and the
sakoku policy was abolished, six diplomatic missions were sent to the United States and European countries for diplomatic negotiations. The most famous were the
US mission in 1860 and the
European missions in 1862 and
1864.
Fukuzawa Yukichi, who participated in these missions, is most famous as a leading figure in the modernization of Japan, and his portrait was selected for the
10,000 yen note.
Dissolution of
Matthew C. Perry (center) and other high-ranking American seamen. In 1853, the United States sent a fleet of warships under the command of Commodore
Matthew C. Perry to force the rulers of Japan to open their borders to foreign trade. The shogun had no choice but to comply. His samurai were no match for Perry's marines and as a pre-industrial society, Japan was no match for the United States. The Japanese were aware of how European imperialists defeated and humiliated the Chinese and they feared an invasion of Japan was soon to come. Japan had to modernize if it was to maintain its honor and independence. The Japanese began importing large quantities of European and American weapons and hiring European and American veterans to train their armies. The new weapons included modern rifles with
caplock and
breech-loading mechanisms. These new firearms were more versatile and deadly than the
matchlock arquebuses the Japanese had been using for three centuries. Their
rifled barrels gave them better accuracy and range, their mechanisms were less fiddly, they had a better rate of fire, they worked even in wet weather, and they could be fitted with
bayonets to double as spears. Whereas arquebuses had been used alongside spears and bows on the battlefield, the new rifles became the standard infantry weapon.
Revolvers and
derringers became the self-defense weapons of choice, supplanting knives and swords. These firearms were also much easier to use than the traditional weapons of the samurai, requiring about two weeks of practice to master as opposed to years. An army based on the gun does not require men who dedicate their lives to the martial arts, which is what the samurai essentially were. Commoners of any profession could be turned into effective soldiers on an as-needed basis. European armies relied on commoners. The development of firearms had done away with
knights and
men-at-arms. From their own history, the Japanese remembered that peasant soldiers had been just as effective with arquebuses as samurai. So even before the
Meiji Restoration, the shogun and the other feudal lords emphasized commoners when they set about rebuilding their armies. There were also political advantages to using commoners. Commoners tended to be more submissive as they came from humbler backgrounds, did not inherit any military tradition, and were easier to replace. They were less resistant to social reform because they had little to lose and a lot to gain. They typically came without any political baggage or conflicting loyalties, which became especially important later on when the Meiji government sought to create a national army that cut across feudal domains. During the Meiji era, conscription into the national army exposed men across Japan to nationalist indoctrination, a way to build unity and national identity. The Japanese realized that in order to match the industrial and military might of the Western imperial powers, Japan had to abandon feudalism for a capitalist economy with a strong central government. In November 1867, the unpopular shogun relinquished his authority to the emperor, who was seen as a unifying figure by the Japanese. Thus began the
Meiji Restoration. Between 1869 and 1871, the
daimyo (Japan's feudal lords) were stripped of their lands and titles. Their domains became prefectures subject to the authority of the imperial government. Some former
daimyo were given government jobs, but most retired with lavish pensions. The dissolution of the
daimyo class made the samurai defunct as a feudal retainer caste. The central government took responsibility for paying their rice stipends. is romanticized as the last samurai. He led a failed rebellion against the new government which saw his kind as obsolete and troublesome. The samurai were now defunct and obsolete, so the Meiji government began repealing their special rights and privileges. In 1869, the government reclassified high-ranking samurai as
shizoku (warriors) and lower status samurai as
sotsuzoku (foot soldiers). In 1872, the
sotsu rank was abolished and the
sotsuzoku were reclassified as
shizoku. In 1871, the government banned the samurai topknot (the
chonmage). From 1873 to 1879, the government started taxing the stipends and transformed them into interest-bearing government bonds. The main goal was to provide enough financial liquidity to enable former samurai to invest in land and industry. In 1876, the government forbade anyone outside the military to wear swords even if they were of samurai lineage, and repealed the right of a samurai to strike an insolent commoner with potentially lethal force (
kiri-sute gomen). Most samurai accepted these reforms. In fact the Meiji leadership was composed mostly of former samurai. Many were offered positions in the new civilian government because they were typically well-educated. Others were offered teaching positions in the new public education system. During the Edo period, many samurai lived in poverty because there were few jobs for warriors and they were barred from working as tradesmen or merchants. The Meiji liberalization allowed these men to seek better economic opportunities in other professions. For some samurai, the reforms were humiliating. The new military doctrine emphasized infantry, and samurai did not see themselves as infantrymen. Historically, the quintessential samurai had been a mounted warrior. Making effective use of firearms required drilling, and drilling was historically done by ashigaru, not samurai. The sword, namely the two-handed katana, was sacred to the samurai. It was not just a status symbol, it had spiritual significance. It was bad enough to be told that swords were obsolete and to stop training with them, but to be forbidden from even carrying them was intolerable. This led to sporadic samurai rebellions. The largest of these was the
Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. Many disgruntled samurai flocked to Satsuma where the radical samurai
Saigo Takamori had set up academies where he taught samurai the ways of modern war and his militant right-wing beliefs. The Meiji reforms of 1873 gave farmers ownership rights so that the government could tax them directly. This eliminated the traditional feudal role of the samurai landowners, of which Satsuma had an exceptionally high number. Saigo therefore found a lot of sympathetic samurai in Satsuma. The imperial government feared an insurrection and sent a task force to disarm Takamori's growing paramilitary force. In response, Takamori marched his army on Tokyo. The rebel samurai were defeated by the imperial army, which was composed mostly of commoners. Both armies were equipped with modern weapons. After this rebellion was quashed, the Meiji government faced no further challenges to its authority. In 1947, the
shizoku class was abolished. ==Martial traditions==