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Bushido: The code of honor samurai lived and died by, and many would rather die than break this code. Prioritized loyalty, duty, and generosity. Jinbaori: The surcoat of a high-ranking samurai, protected them from the elements, showed their status on the battlefield, and proudly displayed the crest of their clan. Mon: The sigil of a specific clan or family, often soldiers would carry flags with their clans’ crest to show allies where they were on the field. Shame: Disgrace brought to oneself, family, or lord. One of the worst things a samurai could experience but all samurai were expected to know shame. Shogun: The leader of feudal Japan and chosen by the Emperor. He ruled through several lords named daimyo who each controlled their own prefecture. Seppuku: ritual suicide performed by samurai after a defeat on the battlefield, or after they brought shame to themselves. Kabuto: Name of the helmet worn by samurai, made of layered steel and often adorned with horns or other large protrusions to induce fear. Mengu: Mask worn by samurai which often donned a frightening mustached or demonic face. Tanto: A Short sword carried along with the samurai's katana typically reserved for close-quarters fighting or ritual suicide. Bushido is a very important term when it comes to understanding the samurai. In short terms, bushido was a moral code in premodern Japan that emphasized loyalty, duty, and honor but to the samurai, it was much more important than that. The samurai lived and died by this code and judged themselves based on how well they followed it. If there was a time that a samurai felt that they failed in the following of bushido it would bring them great shame and they sometimes found it necessary to kill themselves as penance to regain their honor. Honor was the most important part of a samurai’s life, honor to one’s family, lord, and self was held in higher regard than their own lives and there were many situations where they would rather give up their lives than risk damaging their honor. In the case of losing a battle samurai would rather perform ritual suicide, seppuku, than face the shame of being captured by the enemy force. This may seem very extreme to us westerners but to the samurai, it was just a part of life and those who performed seppuku were respected by not only their allies but by their enemies as well. Seppuku was typically performed in two ways. The first was by taking their short sword, a tanto, and stabbing themselves with it, then they would slice open their bellies to ensure their death. The second way followed many of the same steps but included a second person. This person was named a kaishakunin and their job was to decapitate the samurai after they stabbed themselves, allowing the warrior to have a much easier death. Being a kaishakunin was seen as a great honor to many samurai and they could be either an ally or an enemy who had defeated the samurai on the field of battle, either way, they saw it as a great honor to end the samurai’s life. Even though shame was a thing that samurai did everything in their power to avoid, all samurai were expected to know it. In the 1800s a samurai named Yoshida Shoin said that “Nothing is more shameful than not understanding shame.” Many samurai believed that knowing shame was the only way to protect themselves from it and this belief was fundamental in their lives and the lives of their family. A samurai’s equipment was more than just a suit of armor and a sword each piece had its own meaning and importance to every samurai. Their armor was one of the greatest ways a samurai could express himself, the color, etchings, and patterns on it all expressed the wearer’s personality. The helmet and mask, kabuto and mengu, were both a form of protection as well as a way to inspire both fear and awe in the enemy with many samurai wearing fearsome masks or sporting giant horns on their helmets. More high-ranking samurai would wear special surcoats that display their family crests and intricate designs to further express themselves. Then there were their weapons, unlike popular belief samurai didn’t just use katanas, they often carried bows, spears, or even halberds into battle and often only used their katana when the situation required it. The katana, however, was the weapon that expressed the samurai the most, these swords would be passed from father to son and often represented the leader of the clan, therefore it was extremely important that these swords represented the family and the wielder. The guard of the blade, the tsuba, would be engraved with symbols that held meaning to the samurai, the sheathe would often have intricate patterns on it or they would have the family crest engraved in it, and finally, the sheathe would have a special handle on it that was particular to the user. The samurai were more than just plain run-of-the-mill soldiers, they were artists, philosophers, and leaders, and their armor helped them express themselves while on the battlefield. This image (left) is of a samurai warrior wielding a spear. This samurai is clad in a full set of Japanese armor named yoroi, this armor consisted of a helmet (kabuto), mask (mengu), and a chest piece (do). As you can see in the image the samurai is also wearing two swords, a longer katana, and a shorter tanto. His swords would normally be used only after his main weapon, the spear, in this case, was either broken or no longer useful in the fight. As the swords were extremely ceremonial, as in royal families the katana would be passed from father to son as a symbol of leadership changing hands, on top of this the blades were also less durable than spears and other samurai weapons. Also, in the case of losing a battle, the samurai would typically commit ritual suicide, seppuku, using the smaller tanto blade to stab themselves, and occasionally having another samurai, termed a kaishakunin, cut off their head to ease their suffering. This image shows a samurai bowman. As seen in this picture samurai did not always wear the full set of gear, sometimes opting not to wear the helmet or mask for the sake of sight or accuracy with weapons like bows. Japanese bowmen, called kyudo, were highly trained in both grounded archery and mounted archery, yabusame, and they would use two different types of the bow the large daikyu, seen in the picture, and a shorter hankyu. These bows require a far different shooting form than typical English bows require, and it would take many years for a samurai to truly master the art of the bow. These bows also have the potential to have a larger This (Above) is a still from the movie Throne of Blood by Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa. In this movie the main character Washizu, based on Macbeth, is played by Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune who is most famous for his roles as samurai in various films by Kurosawa as well as other famous samurai movies in the mid to late 1900s. These movies are the reason that many people are so interested in the samurai and even inspired George Lucas to create Star Wars basing the Jedi on samurai and even having concept artists Ralph McQuarrie design Darth Vader’s helmet on the Japanese kabuto. These movies did a great job of catching one’s attention and showing the values of the samurai, as well as showing how different feudal Japan was from medieval Europe. These films are very important to the samurai genre and the genre owes a lot to Akira Kurosawa for creating the stories and to Toshiro Mifune for portraying so many great samurai, to the extent that when someone thinks of a samurai, they probably think of Mifune, even if they’ve never seen one of his movies. This illustration (Below) depicts Musashi Miyamoto, likely the most famous samurai in history. Miyamoto was what many of the samurai had strived to be, and always tried his best to live by the samurai code (Bushido). Throughout his life he went from a brash punk kid on the street, that was generally disliked in his town, to the idyllic symbol of honor and nobility people think of when they think of samurai, while at the same time being one of the greatest swordsmen of his time. By the end of his life, he was a model samurai, and the stories of his life have both been spread through books and films like the Samurai trilogy where he is portrayed by Toshiro Mifune. He was a good man in his time and is the inspiration behind many of the samurai characters in our shows, books, and movies today. This image (Above) shows a samurai commander or Shogun. The Shogun were leaders of the Shogunate in early Japan and while they were appointed by the Emperor, they typically held more power than the Emperor. In feudal Japan the Shogun ruled through several lords called daimyo, who would control the various prefectures of Japan, on the battlefield, the Shogun and daimyo would stand out by wearing surcoats called jinbaori as seen in the image above. These coats would allow the daimyo to stand out from the lower-ranking samurai, protect them from the elements, and represent their families, as their family crest (mon) would be sewn onto the back of the jinbaori. Also, the samurai’s helmet and mask were used as a form of intimidation, often featuring a frightening face on the mask or horns on the helmet, to cause their enemies to think of monsters or demons in the battle.