Samurai: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #675

by Michael Wert

The idea of the sword-wielding samurai, beholden to a strict ethical code and trained in deadly martial arts, dominates popular conceptions of the samurai. As early as the late seventeenth century, they were heavily featured in literature, art, theater, and even comedy, from the Tale of the Heike to the kabuki retellings of the 47 Ronin. This legacy remains with us today in countless renditions of samurai history in anime, manga, and video games. Acknowledging these common depictions, this book gives listeners access to the real samurai as they lived, fought, and served. Much as they capture the modern imagination, the samurai commanded influence over the politics, arts, philosophy, and religion of their own time, and ultimately controlled Japan from the fourteenth century until their demise in the mid-nineteenth century. On and off the battlefield, their story is one of adventures and intrigues, heroics and misdeeds, unlikely victories and devastating defeats. This book traces the samurai throughout this history, exploring their roles in watershed events such as Japan's invasions of Korea at the close of the sixteenth century and the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. Coming alive in these accounts are the samurai, both famed and ordinary, who shaped Japanese history.

Genres: History, Japan, Nonfiction, Audiobook, War, Japanese History, Martial Arts

144 pages, Paperback

Published June 22, 2021

About the author

Historian of Japan, East Asian, and World history. Currently working at Marquette University in Wisconsin.

Here is an interview with me about my book: http://newbooksineastasianstudies.com...

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samurai: A Concise History is perfect for the reader with a strong interest in applicable Japanese history, but who comes to it knowing relative little. It's Samurai 101. I don't mean to suggest that it isn't historically spot-on or a light read because it isn't. Endnotes abound and Wert is careful and precise in his statements. What Wert has done with Samurai, though, is meet the need for a college-level foundation class in Samurai culture and history - end-to-end - in a highly condensed format. American Japanophiles, in particular, will love it. I'd like to think I'll read another 500+ page history book on this topic, but actuarial odds suggest otherwise. The reader who isn't truly interested in the topic might consider it dry. I deemed it perfect, but then I brought my intense interest in the topic to my read of Wert's text. Highly recommended to similar situated readers or as a gift for similar Japanophile readers.

Thanks to Oxford University Press and Edelweiss+ for offering me a free Kindle copy.

[Kaleb · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short history of the samurai in Japan. Writing is dry, but lots of interesting material. Wert spends a lot of time criticizing the stylized, popular conception of a samurai, which was annoying because it sounds like he wanted to make samurai sound as lame as possible.

Samurai were the military class in Japan, who often ruled over or alongside the nobility. Their role/perception changed over time, they had a lot of power until the Meji Restoration.

Interesting events like the Imjin War,(Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s), the failed Mongol Invasions, and the persecution of Japanese Christians

2.5

[Sato · Rating 2 out of 5]

A concise history? You bet. A fun read? Not really no.

This books is more or less a race through large parts of general Japanese history. This goes without saying in a way, simply because through large periods of its history Japan was de facto under the rule of the shogunate and therefore Japan's warrior class held a lot of power. Because of this Japanese history can't really be separated from the samurai.

That being said, Wert actually sets out to clarify some misconceptions about the samurai that exist nowadays. The picture many have of them today is largely idealized, influenced by legends and texts from the Edo period, such as the Hagakure, which were actually written in times of peace.

During the hundreds of years of their existence, what it meant to be a samurai was subject to change. Wert touches on this, but I wished he leaned more into it. He mentions the problem to define the term 'samurai', since it mostly refers to someone who serves nobility and is initially not necessarily a warrior, but even though he writes that he wants to clear up some of the false beliefs, there actually isn't that much in the book. Instead, you get a speedrun throughout history, which is not bad per se, but there are many other books that do the same. I would have preferred to learn more about the samurais' change of standing in society as time went by.

In this way, not the worst pick to learn a few things about the samurai, but to be honest it is not that different from reading a very elaborate Wikipedia article.

[Alessia Scurati · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cosa non mi ha convinto di questo libro?
Allora, può sembrare assurdo, ma innanzitutto direi: è troppo condensato.
Mi rendo conto che questo è precisamente l’obiettivo del libro, non dilungarsi troppo trattando il tema come se fosse un testo accademico. Eppure, soprattutto all’inizio, ho avuto l’impressione di essere bombardata di informazioni senza avere la possibilità di digerirle. Una sessantina di pagine in più, ma anche un centinaio non penso facessero male (sono appena 160 in questa edizione).
Andando avanti nella lettura la sensazione migliora, ma ovviamente non mi ha reso la lettura una passeggiata all’inizio.
Inoltre devo dire che proprio la prosa non mi ha coinvolta. È molto neutra, mi rendo conto che lo scopo del libro non è certo l’intrattenimento, ma alla fine un bel saggio poggia anche su una scrittura che sappia coinvolgere il lettore tanto da fargli ricordare la maggior parte delle informazioni contenute.
Ci sono degli spunti molto interessanti, ma in generale, siccome l’argomento mi interessava molto, mi aspettavo di più.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

For at least 20 years I have had a fascination with samurai; as a kid one my favorite shows was; samurai jack, likewise as a teenager one of my favorite games was Shogun II total war, I have a samurai inspired tattoo (which given the general Japanese frowning upon tattoos is a bit ironic in a sense). The point being that I fully agree with Michael Wert when he talks about the samurai as an iconic fabricated concept.

The fabrication of what samurai or warrior in Japanese History was supposed to be at different times in contrast to the reality of the day, forms the core of this book and study. My biggest gripe with the book is that perhaps concise is a bit too concise, with a 109 pages many topics have to be condensed quite rigorously for it to fit in, which, as one can imagine, comes at a cost of depth. Usage of gunpowder, the contacts with the Ainu, Edo culture, Heian Japan, Women samurai, the mejii restoration. I can imagine it might be tricky for those who know little of Japanese history not to be overwhelmed.

Despite it's conciseness, I do still recommend this book that is a great jumping on point when it comes to History of Japan and or warrior culture in general but do also recommend not to stop here and read some more. For me, I already knew that the popular image of the samurai is a fabrication so discovering the same dynamic of fabrication based on selected historical memory was a factor from the very start of Japanese warrior culture and identity. It has made me reflect on my own tattoo and what my idea of a samurai was, affects me.

I wasn't entirely sure about Michael Wert closing line though; wondering whether the salary man of modern Japan is a byproduct of the idealized idea of what a samurai was supposed to be; loyal until death and unquivering bravery in the face of death and wondering if a more historical accurate or nuanced image of the samurai might affect Japanese society. That is a really bold statement to make, especially when throwing it out there at the last moment and to me is giving a bit to much weight to one aspect of Japanse history and collective memory surrounding it. It reminds me a bit to much of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict, a study on the nature of the Japanse people commissioned for the American war machine in WWII, it reeks just a bit to much of essentialism and given the aim of his book until that point, it felt a bit out of place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iBU_...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y-PM...

[Max Gwynne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Concise is right. Facts and figures ... sure, but no narrative soul sadly.

[Harooon · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Samurai, Michael Wert traces the warriors of Japan from the early Heian and Kamakura periods to the emergence of a formal samurai class in the Muromachi and Warrior States periods, their Tokugawa-era decline, and finally Meiji-era dissolution. This is not just a book about military history, but the social, cultural, and political life of the samurai, including the very idea of what it meant to be a samurai.

The first thing to note is that until the Tokugawa period, there wasn’t a formal class of warriors and no single model for how warriors organised themselves. Some were patronised by noble families, to whom they provided a variety of services, including warfare, law and order, and administration. Others became pirates, brigands, or strongmen in a power vacuum. Familial and regional feuds might draw men into picking sides. But there was no shared warrior identity; of these early warriors, the general term bushi is more appropriate than samurai.

During the Gempei War, the Miniamoto and Taira clans fought each other for dominance over the imperial court in Kyoto. Miniamoto no Yoritomo emerged victorious in 1185. Shortly thereafter, the emperor conferred the title of shogun upon him. Because of this, as well as his military prowess, his practical ability to keep law and order, and his personal charisma, warriors flocked to Kamakura to pledge themselves as his retainers, as which they were obliged to fight his enemies. Thus they began to develop a shared sense of identity based on their role as warriors. Many warriors were opportunists and scoundrels; some pocketed money from their tax-collecting duty. Other regional strongmen outside Kamakura “declared” themselves as retainers of Yoritomo as a means of legitimating their ambitions..

After Yoritomo’s death, his wife’s family - the Hōjō - exerted de facto control over the shogun as his regents. Their actions consolidated power in a nascent warrior-managerial class. First of all they appointed warrior-managers across Japan. When the Mongols attempted to invade Japan, these warrior-managers were allowed to levy taxes on their own to raise money to fight the Mongols. The Hōjō also tried to standardise tax and rice collection in a legal code. While the shogun’s reach was never particularly strong outside Kamakura, this legal code was an influential blueprint which demonstrated the primacy of the shogun - who drew his authority from his feudalistic bonds - over that of the emperor. Lastly, the Hōjō popularised primogeniture, according to which all land would be inherited by the eldest son, instead of being distributed among all children; this allowed clans to concentrate power in one branch, instead of diffusing it across multiple.

The emperor grew resentful of the Kamakura shogun’s powers. This led to a war in 1331 between those loyal to the emperor and those loyal to the shogun. This event was tremendously important, particularly as it provided a basis on which power could be legitimately transferred back to the emperor later in the 19th century. Thanks to the efforts of the Ashikaga clan, the emperor re-established himself as the supreme political authority, but not longer after this was usurped by Takauji Ashikaga who installed himself as shogun.

The Ashikaga owed their success to their ability to build personal relations with the regional warrior families outside Kamakura. They promised to redistribute land, wealth, and power after the overthrow of the Kamakura shogun. It didn’t stop there though; far-flung governors and clans - such as in Kyūshū and Kamakura - assumed rights to levy taxes, enforce laws, and collect fees, through which they were able to establish bigger armies with which to enforce their power. Out of this emerged the regional daimyo (warlords).

Up to this period, the supreme weapon in battle was the bow. Battles were often more like skirmishes, dominated by horsemen armed with bows. This is even reflected in the traditional term for the military arts: kyūba no michi - way of the horse and bow. Swords were either small side-arms or large cleavers designed to smash and break horses’ legs. Armour reflected the dominance of the bow: it was mostly heavy padded cloth covered with lacquered wood. Warriors would paint their armour bright colours and wear terrifying masks, in emulation of the warrior-heroes in traditional plays. Wert compares this to the yakuza, whose outfits and mannerisms and outfits often followed the example set in yakuza films, rather than the other way around.

Warriors were never wealthy. They had to petition their lords for compensation after killing his enemies. This was done by collecting heads, a practice which emerged out of hunting down criminals, but which carried over to the battlefield, where warriors attempted to collect the heads of famous or high-ranking warriors. This made them vulnerable, so some lords started a “cut and toss” system, where the details of who-killed-whom was to be figured out after the battle. Some lowly, shameful warriors would attempt to cheat this system; it was considered absolutely disgraceful to be doing this!

The Ashikaga were the pre-eminent daimyo until they had a bad run of leaders. A succession crisis triggered the Ōnin war. The ensuing chaos left a power vacuum for the next century and a half. While the Ashikaga were nominally the supreme political authority, in practice daimyo did as they pleased. There was also an important shift in military tactics. Blocks of men moved in rows, armed with pikes. The musket was reverse engineered by a local warlord when a Portuguese ship washed up on the island of Tanegashima in 1543, offering a powerful advantage to those warlords who could incorporate it into their military tactics.

Nobunaga Oda, emerged as the pre-eminent warlord. He first killed most of his family members, who could be rivals to his power. Then he dissolved the Ashikaga shogunate. To consolidate his power, he massacred the Ikko-Ikki, a confederation of peasant leagues and temples who followed the Jōdo Shinshū branch of Buddhism, which opposed the rule of daimyo. Nobunaga was betrayed by one of his retainers, Mitsuhide Akechi, and succeeded by one of his closest followers, Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Hideyoshi failed to unify Japan; he squandered many of his resources in unsuccessful campaigns against Korea, which served as an opportunity to send his enemies - regional warlords and Christians - to their death overseas. After his death, another of Nobunaga’s followers, Ieyasu Tokugawa, established himself as the pre-eminent daimyo. He established a new shogunate in 1600 after defeating his enemies at the Battle of Sekigahara.

The Tokugawa established a new warrior class, to whom the word samurai became firmly attached. Their surveys classified everyone as commoner or warrior, and this was a fixed category; if your parents were samurai, so were you. The samurai were both the warriors and administrators of the domains of the lord under whom they served. Only samurai were allowed to carry weapons. Since the times of Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Nobunaga Oda, “sword hunts” would be carried out by the shogun in order to confiscate any weapons held by commoners, which was a way of preventing any kind of uprising by peasants, monks, or commoners.

The borders of these domains were not fixed. The Tokugawa established and dissolved domains for various reasons, usually to consolidate power and weaken their rivals. They often moved daimyo to new territories to weaken their power base. Samurai might be elevated to daimyo to prevent the concentration of power in one particular region. The shogun also enforced primogeniture everywhere and had to personally approve all marriages of daimyo and all heirs. If a daimyo died and the shogun didn’t like his heir, he could dissolve the domain and redistribute it.

The shogun also engaged in a practice known as “alternate attendance”. His followers had to visit Edo (the shogun’s capital) every year. This flowed out of an ancient tradition known as the hostage exchange, wherein the wives and heirs of daimyo had to live in the capital. They were allowed to visit their families and domains, but only under strict conditions. The system carried over to the Tokugawa period to prevent rebellions from forming. The travel and living costs were also a huge drain on the daimyo, with 50% to 75% of their budget being spent on alternate attendance.

The lords immediately under the shogun were classified according to whether they were vassal lords (fūdai) or outer domains (tozama). Fūdai were those who fought for the Tokugawa at Sekigahara; tozama were those who did not. The tozama were treated unfairly and excluded from political decision-making. The shogun drew his advisors from the vassal lords, especially the shimpan, who were from clans with kinship ties to the Tokugawa.

While the Tokugawa exercised enormous power, in many ways theirs was a truly feudalistic system. Domains had the power to raise their own taxes, establish their own currencies, and write and enforce their own laws. Freedom of movement across domains was rigorously controlled by the shogun to prevent the formation of regional armies that might challenge his authority. If a samurai crossed domains after committing a crime, only the shogun had the authority to order his arrest. Sometimes this played against the shogun: during the Shimabara rebellion, some daimyo refused to mobilise their armies for fear they might be punished for leaving their domains.

Foreign affairs were different. These were conducted by the clan closest to the country in question, which made Tsushima and Satsuma domains important, for they were the closest to Ryūkyū (Okinawa) and Korea. The Tokugawa did monopolise foreign trade though, which was limited to the port city of Nagasaki on an extremely strict basis.

Samurai were loyal to their immediate lords, not to the shogun or to Japan as a whole. If the shogun issued an order, it was to the lord immediately beneath him. If that lord refused to obey the order, his samurai would not override him in following the shogun’s order. Such was the loyalty of samurai that if their lord died and their domain was dissolved, samurai would become masterless (rōnin), loyal to their lord even in death. Rōnin were often a cause of social and political unrest, particularly towards the end of the Tokugawa period.

Being a samurai was a hereditary affair. They had privileges the commoners did not. They took surnames, which identified themselves as belonging to a particular clan. They had to live in specific castle towns, which were regional centres of political power. They grew up in households staffed by commoners, and had to maintain a retinue whose size was in keeping with the reputation of their clan; the samurai took their reputation very seriously. Maintaining a household they could not afford impoverished them though, especially those from minor clans who did not have easy pathways to guaranteed employment. Large families were a hindrance more than an asset; abortion and infanticide were common.

As part of their upbringing, samurai learned how to read and write, immersed themselves in the classical texts - especially the works of the Chinese school of Neo-Confucianism - and trained in the martial arts in private dōjō or special schools established by individual daimyo. Early friendships were important, as this would determine who you could count upon in later life. Young boys might be romantically courted by older boys, who established themselves as mentors.

Entrance into the samurai class was difficult but possible. Rich merchants who made donations to the domain might be made samurai so they could be taken on as economic advisors. Commoners could also marry into a warrior family and become its heir; despite the shogun’s strict inheritance rules, families often lied about who was the eldest son to get around it, and the rules were later relaxed and finally abolished. A poor samurai might also “sell” his status by adopting a wealthy commoner.

The Tokugawa period was peaceful, and with only a finite number of administrative jobs that usually fell to certain privileged families, many samurai struggled to make ends meet. They usually had some kind of hereditary stipend/allowance, but this was not enough, particularly when they were in alternate attendance. Some wanted their allowance gambling, drinking, or touring famous pilgrimage sites when they were bored. Others stopped being samurai to become teachers, poets, scholars or priests. Despite their hereditary privileges and aristocratic self-image, most samurai were as likely to be impoverished drunks, scoundrels, poets, labourers, and menaces. Wert mentions a particularly funny stereotype of this in Lust, Commerce, and Corruption, a memoir by a Samurai called Buyō:

They head for guard duty wearing outfits that they have conned the pawnbroker into temporarily restoring to them. Once they have come back from guard duty, they return the outfits directly to the pawnbroker. Their servants mock them for this.

Samurai had become “sword-wearing bureaucrats”, hardly prepared for war, and often not even involved in catching criminals - this lowly task was often done on an ad-hoc basis by outcasts or other marginalised commoners.

According to Neo-Confucian texts, the samurai were to be well-versed in both the scholarly arts (bun) and the martial arts (bu). But in an age of peace, other than the ritualised performances of martial arts, there were no real opportunities for samurai to illustrate their martial prowess and live up to their heritage. The martial arts were more of a social and cultural activity, a chance for them to reconnect with an idealised warrior past: “They idealized the legacy passed down from the Warring States-era predecessors and honored fictitious ties to famous clans such as the Minamoto or Kyoto nobles like the Fujiwara.” (78).

Many people - both commoners and samurai - acknowledged that samurai fell far short of the idealised picture of perfect loyalty and aristocratic virtue. If a samurai brought dishonour or shame upon himself, ritualised suicide (seppuku) - popularised by a famous drama called The 47 Rōnin - was a way to stop the shame spreading to his family and clan. Samurai who took themselves too seriously were often mocked in the arts, especially through toilet humour: the samurai might belong to a superior class, yet all people had the same biological urges. This was a way to cut across class divisions in a way that belittled the samurai. Teacher and writer Hiraga Gennai did exactly this in a satirical essay, pointing out that only a samurai would be so uptight that he’d rather kill himself than be caught farting in public.

Others were worried about the decline of virtue among the samurai. They connected the spiritual impoverishment of the samurai to economic decline and the influence of commoner values on the samurai culture. The Tokugawa tried to promote the image of the samurai - frugal, pure, and virtuous - by censoring texts, restricting merchant activities, and encouraging the samurai to reconnect with their rural origins, away from the sordid immorality of the city.

They couldn’t stop the co-option or manipulation of samurai culture by commoners though. The commoners were exposed to samurai through plays, books, and manuals. Common culture invented and re-invented the samurai. The wealthy emulated samurai culture, reading their manuals, adopting their codes of honour, and learning martial arts. The prohibition on commoners bearing arms was relaxed. This prohibition was never fully stamped out, but it had to be relaxed during the 1800s, when social and economic disorder caused an increase in unrest. Local headmen formed their own peasant militias so villages could defend themselves.

And then in 1853, Matthew Perry, an American commodore, appeared off the coast of Edo. He demanded an end to Japan’s isolationism and the establishment of new commercial and diplomatic ties with the United States. He would return in one year with a fleet of ships to await the shogun’s answer.

This scared the Tokugawa. Their ruler, the sickly and ineffectual Iesada Tokugawa, deferred to his senior adviser Abe Masahide. For the first time, all daimyo were asked for their opinions on how to proceed. When Matthew Perry returned, the shogun accepted his demands and the country was opened up to the west. But this action revealed the weakness of the Tokugawa, not only by their surrender to Matthew Perry, but also in the fact that they sought advice from their traditional enemies, the tozama lords.

Around this period, a new theory of sovereignty became popular. It viewed Takauji Ashikaga as an usurper and held that the shogun ruled only at the behest of the emperor. One reason for this view was the popularity of an influential history of Japan at the time. Written in Mino Domain, it chronicled the past according to the reign of the emperors, in emulation of the Neo-Confucian style from China. This framed history in a way that gave primacy to the emperor, who had been a neglected political figure since the Ashikaga shogunate.

Another reason for this view of a sovereign emperor was that he had been willing to speak up against the shogun’s humiliating dealings with the west. In 1863, he ordered the shogun to expel all foreigners. It was very popular. Samurai from across Japan flocked to his court in Kyoto, especially rōnin, low-ranking samurai, and those from the tozama (outer) domains. This was an alarming development to the Tokugawa. A genuine political threat had emerged, exacerbated by the opening of trade and borders. Money, technology, and new military methods flooded into the country in ways the Tokugawa could not control. The tozama, bitter about their treatment by the Tokugawa, developed new standing armies with European technology and western training. Amid a backdrop of soaring political violence, they pledged their allegiance to  the emperor.

[Evren · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short read but not an easy one. Not entirely because of the complexity of the subject-matter (although that also is a significant factor) but also because of the style. As underlined by many commentators, the writing often gets dull, there is few word arts and as an intellectual engager humor is employed sparingly at best. The chain of thoughts are not always easy to follow because of the flow of consciousness, which admittedly does not always go well with academic writing. I have had moments of concentration deficit, having to re-read some paragraphs, because the topic is so charged and too dense to be easily handled within a hundred or so pages. And lastly, consider yourself warned that you have to possess at least a basic and nominal knowledge about the Japanese history and culture, such as what roughly differentiates an Emperor, a Shogun, a Daimyo, a Samurai and a commoner. Because these are the walls that the author aims at bringing down, you should assume there are barriers in between.

All these being said, I have to admit to drawing a lot of information that is new to me. At some point or other, I read something about these names: The Tairas and the Minamotos, Kamakura, Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, Ieyasu Tokugawa and the like. And now I have been able to put these all in good perspective.

I think the book does very well one thing it sets out to do: It successfully demystifies the Samurai class and brings them down to the eye-level. As with many things Japanese, there has always been a cloud of mist around the concept of Samurai, and their (evidently) much exaggerated discipline to an (apparently) inexistent or otherwise incomplete code of conduct.

And the second thing it does well is to provoke more reading on Japan, especially with regards to the Meiji era.

See you when I get there!

Here is a small chronography of the timeframe the book covers:

1156: Hogen Rebellion (保元の乱)
Allied Taira Kiyomori and Minamoto Yoshitomo emerge victorious. Taira and Minamoto are now the principal actors. Not for long.

1159: Heiji Rebellion (平治の乱)
Allies turn against each other. Taira no Kiyomori vs Minamoto no Yoshitomo. The former defeats the latter and executes some of his sons. Yoritomo (son of Yoshitomo) survives along with two other half brothers. They’ll come back.

1180-1185: Genpei War (源平合戦)
Between Minamoto (源) and "Taira" (平) clans. Dan no ura Battle ends the War (壇ノ浦の戦い) Minamoto Yoritomo is the winner.

1185-1333: Kamakura period (鎌倉時代)
The winner of the Genpei War, namely Yoritomo becomes the first Shogun (death: 1199).

1221: Jokyu War (承久の乱)
Emperor Go-Toba loses against Hojo, agents of Kamakura. Kamakura Shogunate's authority reinforced.

1274 and 1281: Mongols under Kublai attack Japan; unsuccessful. (神風)

1333: Emperor Go-Daigo along with other clans (such as former Hojo ally Ashikaga) attack Hojo and takes back control but not for long.

1336-1573: Muromachi Shogunate a.k.a. Ashikaga Shogunate (室町幕府 or 足利幕府)
Ashikaga Takauji becomes the first Shogun
The first appearance of daimyo (大名) literally "great names"

1467-1615 - Warring States Period (戦国時代)
Starts with the Onin War. The country is under a power vacuum. Period of anarchy

1467-1477 - Onin War (応仁の乱)
War of succession.

1573: Oda Nobunaga defeats Ashikaga Yoshiaki, who becomes the last Shogun of the Ashikaga.
Nobunaga becomes the Great Unifier of Japan (Oda were a branch of Taira clan.)

1582: Oda Nobunaga is assassinated (Honnoji incident) Toyotomi Hideyoshi will avenge him.

1582-1598: Reign of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (of obscure origine; no aristocratic lineage) Continues to uphold Nobunaga’s legacy

1600-1868: Tokugawa Shogunate a.k.a. Edo Shogunate (徳川幕府 or 江戸幕府)

1600: Battle of Sekigahara (関ヶ原の戦い)
After Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s death, those loyal to him backed a Hideyori (age: 5) reign. Tokugawa Ieyasu was a powerful daimyo on the other side. The latter is victorious.

1612: Tokugawa Ieyasu forbids Christianity

1615: Tokugawa Ieyasu sieges Osaka Castle and kills Toyotomi Hideyori.

1868: Meiji Restoration (明治維新)

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overview:
When you think of Samurai you may think of many things but one distinct feature is that they use a katana and are dependent on it. Samurai: A Very Short Introduction brings up myths you might tend to hear and know about the Samurai. Well also teaching you the history of how it got there.

Thoughts:
I found this book to be very informative. And it has definitely cast a light for me on the myths of the Samurai that we see in art, manga, film, anime and video games.
I liked that the author chose the term warriors from the ninth through sixteenth century. And then used samurai for the seventeenth and nineteenth century. Which split the two groups from each other, which makes sense why when you read the book.

I learned things from this book I never knew before and I am happy I learned what I did.
In the start, specifically Chapter 1, I didn't understand it very well. I found there was A LOT of names to remember and I just couldn't remember or keep track of each person. So I ended up confused most of Chapter 1.
But past that, I understood it and I enjoyed this book.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one is particularly difficult to write... it could have been so cool and interesting but ended up as a total dud.

I felt like this was harder to get wrong than right, it overshot the requirements for a short intro book on samurai which resulted in grossly misplaced details and annoying tangents. Unfortunately, this book majored in historical Japanese politics and minored in economics... and whatever was left discussed how samurai fit into all that. It just simply did not scratch my samurai itch.

[Isaac McIntyre · Rating 1 out of 5]

Homework for Shôgun and One Piece: Wano Country. Feels a bit harsh judging a short book for being low on meaningful content but this was just so boring after the first 30-40 pages; there is so many better ways to tell the already well-known history of anything than this dry, short telling.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

please let me do well on this final exam

[Jonathan Oosterhouse · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book sets out and accomplishes exactly what it intended to; a compact, overall history of the samurai. In so doing, however, the author loses any sense of structure and repeatedly goes back and forth between centuries when the focus of a chapter is on one or the other. The book is written like a high school essay and lacks any and all enthusiasm or genuine interest of the subject and leaves much to be desired. Did I learn something new? Of course. But I feel less interested in the samurai history because of this lackluster attempt.

[Alan M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does exactly what it says: a concise history of the warrior class in medieval and early modern Japan, which also functions as a good, brief history of the times. The text is accompanied by some excellent woodcut illustrations and references modern interpretations of the samurai in book and especially film to set our understanding in context. For anyone with an interest in the country and its history, this would be an excellent book to keep on your shelves to dip into again and again.

[Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting how different modern pop-culture views the Samurai versus how history went down and what not. There are definitely some periods in Japanese history that I want to look more into but this was a great introduction into the "real" samurai and warrior-culture of Japan, starting around 1100 and going to 1860s or so. It was a little hard to follow the names if listening on an audiobook. Either way, very interesting and informative read!

[César · Rating 2 out of 5]

Conciso não devia ser atabalhoado. O autor não parece ter um verdadeiro rumo ou planificação. Há artigos de Wikipedia bem melhores.
A reforçar a debilidade do original, o editor achou por bem oferecer uma tradução fraquíssima e uma revisão de estagiário. Ficava bem à Esfera dos Livros mais consideração pelos seus leitores.

[Alex Pler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una narración escueta, objetiva y desmitificadora, casi implacable, de quienes fueron en realidad los samuráis. Sin fantasía ni romanticismo: la Historia pura y dura. Leerlo es como abrir la cortina que escondía al Mago de Oz.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great short introduction to a popular topic, challenging common myths in a way previously mostly restricted to academic work

[Nicolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, a bit dry.

On the positive side, it achieves successfully its goal of demystifying samurai myths.

On the negative side the book is too short for the amount of subjects and characters it introduces, which makes it hard to follow in some points.

[Dave Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

NO NOT READ if you are dedicated to the romantic image
I loved this book, but the author demolishes the fictional notion of the fearless warrior and Bushido code.
I was forlornly hoping that this book might have some history on how the samurai came to be. No system so complex arises overnight out of nothing. Boy did I hit pay dirt with this one, and I got a hell of a lot more than I bargained for.
Turns out almost everything I thought I knew is an exaggeration or a fictional distortion. Much of what we think we know is straight up political propaganda from the 1920s and 30s when Japan's fascist government was trying to forge national unity based on a racial identity of military prowess, dedication to authority, and a unquestioning willingness to die for a cause.
The historical / archeological facts are quite different.
Funny thing here is that so much of the fictionalizing came from Japanese peasants and merchants way back in the day who had no fondness for real life samurai, but couldn't get enough of fictional ones, Like we are with pirates.
If you love the fanciful dream and thought this book would have even more amazing tales to geek out over, -RUN! the hell away!
But, if you'd like to know the actual factual and still amazing, but less romantic truth, I've never encountered better.

[Martin A. Brennan III · Rating 1 out of 5]

Waste of Time

This is a very sad approach at trying to be an actual book. It was very poorly written, and even worse researched. Do not waste your, money, time, brain power.

[Dana Nourie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been reading Very Short Introduction books for a long while, as the series has a book on about every topic you can imagine, so search your favorite topics. I’ve read books in this series on geology, mineralogy, physics, astronomy, chemistry, etc.

I became interested in samurai because of my favorite video games, The Ghost of Tsushima, and Rise of the Ronin, as well as the movies and series such as The Shogun, The Last Samurai, and 47 Ronin. All the above are worth your time.

I was curious about the accuracy in these and wanted to read a history of the samurai without diving in too deeply with a much longer book. Samurai: A Very Short Introduction was just the book for me. The author pulled me in the very first paragraph with mention of the my favorite video games and movie.

The book is well organized, nicely written, with plenty of information. Japanese history is messy, like all other countries, and explaining the history of samurai was sorted from the warrior classes in general, and explained in context of the rest of Japans history and where samurai fit in.

The reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is probably more my own failing in understanding and having some confusion in places. I suspect this is more due to the difficulty in explaining Japan’s history, rather than the author’s writing, and just my reading comprehension in general to an area that is new to me. I do recommend this book to anyone interested in samurai or Japan’s warrior history.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was interested in info on codes of honor, hierarchical relationships, what constitutes offense and proper deference, ritual suicides, "disrespect killings," beheadings (honoring the victim by allowing a second to behead), the system of loyalty and alliances (via hostage taking and marriages), and status displays (who was allowed to carry a sword, and whether one or two; the "aristocratic pastime of the tea ceremony"). Though the book was brief, I got lost in its details.

Probably the following - what happened to Rikya, the tea master - summarizes all of the above: "Rikya oversaw the installation of a statute to himself over the gate of an important Zen temple. This was regarded as an insult to Hideyoshi, who might pass under Rikya's feet. In 1591, Hideyoshi ordered Rikya to kill himself. After writing a death poem and piercing his abdomen with a short sword, he was shown the mercy of decapitation by a warrior in attendance. Whatever reasons Hideyoshi might have had for executing Rikya, the tea master nonetheless represented a challenge to Hideyoshi's authority in the world beyond politics and war - people obeyed Hideyoshi but they listened to Rikya."

[Matt Ely · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's important with this book to take its title seriously. It's about the idea of "samurai" and it's short.

While the text discusses many relevant historical events, it's not primarily a history of those events. It's a history of how the concept of a "warrior class" evolved over time. In keeping things short, the book only cares about historical events insofar as they affect how the meaning of warrior/samurai has evolved.

So there's lots of name dropping that can be hard to keep up with, but the names aren't really the point. Wert spends sufficient time on the ideas at the core of his book, and if you have more questions about the Satsuma Rebellion or the Onin War or the Ryukyu Kingdom, well, Wikipedia exists for a reason.

The text reads pretty well, but because it's concise it does require your attention. Ideas build quickly and the author doesn't wait for you. Still, I learned a lot and this synthesized many disparate ideas and images I'd internalized over time.

[John R · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly well-researched, but not particularly well-written.

I’m guessing this book is an adaptation of an academic paper. It attempts to tell a story, but undermines itself with time jumps and references to future and past events without always providing hard(or even estimated) dates, instead referring to people or periods the reader may or may not clearly remember (or may or may not have encountered yet).

Most of the issues I have with this book probably could be resolved by the inclusion of a timeline clearly laying out when and how the various actors relate to each other.

There are also passages within which the author seems to contradict the point they are trying to make.

Overall, I am glad I read this book as it clarified and corrected multiple incorrect notions I had in my head about Japanese history. I only wish the book had gone on a little longer to further discuss the perception and role of the samurai in modern Japan.

[Eddie · Rating 1 out of 5]

DRY read. Not well written. YET ANOTHER (seems like) AI 'written' book of fact dump. The ONLY reason I finished it was because it was a short Audiobook. NO WAY should anyone actually read this. I don't think I got anything out of this book. Trust me you'll learn more and enjoy more watching a History Channel Samauri documentary online. Author almost made Samuri out to be not as big a deal as they were. Emotionless book. This was like a bad dry history textbook from a lame professor in the 70s (most college textbooks are God Awful).

I'm tired of these AI 'written' FACT DUMP non-fiction books. This now makes like 7 in a row.

You are 1000% better off watching a youtube documentary on Samurais than listening to this.

This isn't even worth 1.5 stars. It's not something I'd bother listening to again. Don't waste your time.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good broad sketch of the major periods in the existence of samurai as a social class and a myth-dispelling exposition of their shifting roles in a broader sociopolitical context. I found the bits about how the romantic notions of the samurai and their bushido honor code are largely products of polemic and historical revisionism to be most interesting. The love affair with the samurai as a heroic figure is largely in hindsight whereas the reputation of the warrior caste was more sour during the periods when they were active, although it was in flux as their influence within society shifted from one dynasty to the next, a progression through various phases which the author does a solid job of documenting and explaining.

[Carlos Ribeiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livro que desmistifica esta classe social do então Japão Feudal. Os samurais não eram mais que o braço armado de Senhores empossados pelo imperador que geriam diversos territórios no Japão pre-moderno. Apesar de o termo “Samurai” só começar a ser utilizado a partir do século XVII, uma vez que antes eram denominados de Guerreiros, associamos o mesmo a uma certa mistica e código de conduta honoravel.
Livro interessante e que, de forma concisa (conforme o título indica), mostra como estava organizado politica e geograficamente o Japão entre os séculos XII e XIX.
Para mim que sou um entusiasta da cultura japonesa, gostei bastante do livro e descobri coisas que desconhecia. Infelizmente, também destruiu completamente a imagem que tinha dos samurais…😞

[Madison McSweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A myth-busting, non-romanticized account of the development of warrior culture in Japan.

Very information-dense; certain chapters (especially those dealing with the complex politics of various historical conflicts) are a lot to take in, particularly for readers without prior knowledge of Japanese history. However, the prose is engaging throughout. The writer does an excellent job contextualizing the historical debates around the evolving role of samurai, and exposing how reverence for a mythologized past is not merely a modern phenomenon.

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring due to too many details. This book will teach you which son of what samurai was illegible for the shogunate leadership because he was the son of that concubine but he fought a war in that prefecture so that he united the families of... get the picture?

Ocassionally, between paragraphs, the author would give a brief overview of Samurai history and culture, which is what I was after.

Boring.