Samurai

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-Samurai-

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Samurai - The Ultimate Japanese Warrior!!

This Group Is Dedicated To The Worship Of Samurai..

Samurai is a common term for a warrior in pre-industrial Japan. A more appropriate term is bushi, which came into use during the Edo period. However, the term samurai now usually refers to warrior nobility, not, for example, ashigaru or foot soldiers. The samurai with no attachment to a clan or daimyo

Samurai were expected to be cultured and literate, and over time, samurai during the Tokugawa era gradually lost their military function. By the end of the Tokugawa, samurai were essentially civilian bureaucrats for the daimyo with their swords serving only ceremonial purposes. With the Meiji reforms in the late 19th century, the samurai were abolished as a distinct class in favour of a western-style national army. The strict code that they followed, called bushido, still survives in present-day Japanese society, as do many other aspects of their way of life.

The samurai used various weapons, but the katana is the weapon that is synonymous with samurai. Bushido teaches that the katana is the samurai's soul and sometimes a samurai is pictured as entirely dependent on the katana for fighting. They believe that the katana was so precious that they often gave them names and considered them as part of the living. However the use of swords did not become common in battle until the Kamakura period (1185–1333), where the tachi and uchigatana (the predecessor to the katana) became prevalent. The katana itself did not become the primary weapon until the Edo period.

A samurai was expected to read and write, as well as to know some mathematics. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a great samurai yet originally a peasant, could only read and write in hiragana and this was a significant drawback for him. Samurai were expected, though not required, to have interests in other arts such as dancing, Go, literature, poetry, and tea. Ōta Dōkan who first ruled Edo wrote how he was shamed to realize that even a commoner had more knowledge of poetry than he.

The philosophies of Buddhism and Zen, and to a lesser extent Confucianism and Shinto, influenced the samurai culture. Zen meditation became an important teaching due to it offering a process to calm one's mind. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation and rebirth led samurai to abandon torture and needless killing, while some samurai even gave up violence altogether and became Buddhist monks after realizing how fruitless their killings were. Some were killed as they came to terms with these realizations in the battlefield. The most defining role that Confucianism played in samurai philosophy was to stress the importance of the lord-retainer relationship; this is, the loyalty that a samurai was required to show his lord.

Bushidō ("way of the warrior") was a term attached to a samurai "code of conduct" or way of life enforced during Edo period by the Tokugawa Shogunate, so that they could control the samurai more easily. Its deceptive simplicity led to countless arguments over its interpretation.

Most samurai (during the Edo period) were bound by a strict code of honor and were expected to set an example for those below them. A notable part of their code is seppuku, which allowed a disgraced samurai to regain his honor by passing into death. Despite the rampant romanticism of the 20th century, samurai could be disloyal and treacherous (e.g., Akechi Mitsuhide), cowardly, brave, or overly loyal. Samurai were usually loyal to their immediate superiors, who in turn allied themselves with higher lords. These loyalties to the higher lords often shifted; for example, the high lords allied under Toyotomi Hideyoshi were served by loyal samurai, but the feudal lords under them could shift their support to Tokugawa, taking their samurai with them. There were, however, also notable instances where samurai would be disloyal to their lord or daimyo, when loyalty to the emperor was seen to have supremacy.

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7/21/09
StAmakusa
excellent group. Can't wait to talk about the history and culture of the age of Samurai
5/29/09
bheypunk
hi group! ^^
4/16/09
heartless_katana
i loooove samurai !!!!!!
3/4/09
lorddawa09
samurai captain <^>
1/7/09
shinsonic23
This is a Tight Group I love the Samurai My Code in Loyalty
1/1/09
jinyu
Happy New Year of 2009!!!
12/29/08
darkrider
WOW awesome group, and cool pic of the Scorpion Champion "Bayishi Paneki" hahaha and yes i play the L5R card game that several of this groups pics are from, and fyi im a Spider player XD
11/4/08
Ice_Blue_Eyes
Is this group dead?
10/26/08
Christo_2992
Howdy people!!!
10/20/08
-missy-hunter
hello everyone and lady-knight thanks for invite to this group I love -Samurai-
7/29/08
Kage-Warrior
Hehe, it seems to be a little dead lol...
7/27/08
Ryukon
Just checkin' up on things
7/20/08
kiluanne93
i learned to love samurais in koei's warriors series
7/16/08
kira0060
omg.. samurai are so cool in jap show.. ^^