What was the most popular weapon among the ancient Japanese aristocrats? How sophisticated were the samurai? We check popular myths for strength.
The samurai is one of the favorite cultural heroes of our time. A man with a katana in his hands and in fancy armor wanders from book to book, from film to film and from game to game. During this time, of course, it has changed a lot compared to real prototypes. Samurai could be very surprised to know how their descendants would represent them.
Arrogant aristocracy
Samurai – educated and trained in military affairs aristocrats – were very different from the peasants and townspeople, fit only to test a new sword on them. A familiar picture. And completely wrong.
Samurai feuds were indeed extremely bloody. On average, no more than a third of the offspring of noble houses survived to middle age. There were clans where for several generations not a single man died at all. In such conditions, no aristocracy could not attack a big war, so the social elevators worked without interruption. The ashigaru infantry was recruited from the peasants – they were much lower than the samurai in status, but each ashigaru knew that a capable and successful fighter would be noticed and could rise one step higher. Chronicles cited the success stories of such people: a peasant who got a couple of heads in battle and ended his life as a respected person with a good income was quite a life character. Even the heads of large clans could have the lowest origins. One of the most famous anti-heroes of the Warring States era, Dosan Saito, nicknamed the “Mino Viper” for his spiritual qualities, started out as a monk and later became an oil merchant. This did not stop him from becoming one of the most powerful samurai. Even Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the unifiers of Japan, was born into a peasant family and began his journey to fame and power among the ashigaru.
Not only a peasant with a katana, but a samurai with a hoe was common. The country was poor, so peasant labor or petty trade was common for a poor warrior in between campaigns. However, a set of weapons and armor was kept in the house of such a farmer, so that if something happened, the fighter could return to duty. There were whole intermediate classes, like the “dzidzamurai”, such warriors, rice growers. The only end to this practice was the “sword hunt”: the massive seizure of weapons from non-warriors under Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Then there was a clear demarcation: the already recruited ashigaru were consolidated as samurai, but they stopped recruiting new warriors from the lower classes. In the legendary “Seven Samurai”, where defenseless peasants can only rely on stray warriors, it happens just after the “hunt for swords.”
By the way, such peasants posed a threat not only to bandits. After each major battle, the village fighters made their way to the battlefield to hunt lone individuals and small groups of the losing side. The fate of those caught was sad, and if they kept their lives, they continued to flee naked and barefoot.
Of course, even such peasants could not compete with the daimyo units in the quality of armor, organization and number. Hunting for people was the most common practice: driving the peasants to their fields was often more important than seizing land. The peasants themselves were not at all happy about this state of affairs, and many villages had caches in the forests, or even full-fledged fortifications. Often, farmers also paid the local samurai leader for helping the squad in the event of the arrival of the people stealers, and on the approaches to the village there were announcements about who was protecting it and why it was better for slave traders to go elsewhere. However, the capture of people was still common. Once, the Portuguese envoys were reproached for buying up the Japanese as slaves, to which they replied in amazement that the Japanese themselves were selling people. Not only small-earth samurai, But even the largest clan leaders did not disdain such trade: even such examples of chivalrous behavior as Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen, after successful campaigns, began big sales, where you could buy anyone at a discount. Only Ieyasu Tokugawa, who unified Japan, ended the slave trade.
Bloodthirsty aesthetes
Because of such perturbations, true samurai of the Middle Ages were far more practical and less obsessed with ceremony, manners, and aesthetics than is often thought. Classical treatises on samurai virtues like “Hagakure”, which are so abundantly quoted in our time, appeared at a time when samurai wars had died down for many decades, even the sons of people who found legendary samurai alive died long ago, and the warrior was happy if he succeeded get a job at least in the fire department. Therefore, morals became more and more sophisticated and less and less attached to real life, and the samurai class gradually turned into a club of fighting hipsters. To the well-known advice to ointment your hair and watch your appearance because the enemy can see the severed head untidy and feel contempt, the heroes of antiquity themselves would not have taken it so seriously. They were more often than not as refined people as their descendants wanted them to be.
Because of this, various incidents arose. For example, the genre of the dying poem was extremely popular, but many of the poems of the famous samurai of the times of the Fighting Provinces were actually written already in the 18th, or even in the 19th century by enthusiastic fans who were very upset that the respected warrior did not leave a single overwhelming three-line. Such fan art was created with attention and love for the primary sources and the object of adoration, so it is not always possible to clearly separate authentic compositions from later hoaxes.
In the real era of samurai wars, affairs with aesthetics were ambiguous. Kato Kiyomasa, one of the greatest daimyos of the time of the end of internecine wars, generally forbade his subordinates not only to compose, but even to read poetry, because he believed that excessive grace could make a woman out of a warrior. This indomitable samurai made an exception only for the tea ceremony – in his opinion, it was the most acceptable form of art for a warrior. Kiyomasa himself took the preparation of tea extremely seriously and somehow was going to hack to death a servant who accidentally broke an especially rare, expertly crafted cup. The poor man was defended by his comrades, who rightly noted that a good servant can save the master’s life in a moment of danger, but a cup, even the most precious one, is unlikely.
Kato Kiyomasa meets a tiger at a snowy waterfall
Even such a seemingly obvious virtue as loyalty to the master belongs to the era of withering samurai. On the one hand, devotion was encouraged and glorified, on the other, life made its own adjustments. There was even a saying about warriors “Samurai is a migratory bird”: changing the master was a matter of everyday life. One such figure consistently changed eight daimyo, and many times fought against his own recent comrades, but did not have the slightest trouble about this: he was hacked too well for someone to bother him with such questions. A typical situation was when a daimyo, who had successfully started a war, went in droves to the service of the loser’s vassals, together with squads and fortresses. When Toyotomi Hideyoshi tried to conquer Korea, he was very surprised that the Koreans did not do that.
True, it was not forbidden to go over to the side of the winner only before the assault or battle. If a warrior decided to defend himself, this should have been done to the end, but in a hopeless situation, still commit seppuku. Here the legend of the samurai is true. However, this norm concerned only commanders, they did not expect anything like this from ordinary soldiers, but they admired if a low-ranking soldier was capable of such a step. The last big armed conflict of the time of strife, the uprising of Japanese peasants in the Shimabara principality, culminated in the mass suicide of the losers. Thousands of people, mostly peasants, including women and children, voluntarily entered the fire when the buildings of the Hara Castle, the last stronghold of the rebels, caught fire. Daime Hosokawa, a participant in the assault, remarked on this occasion: “Words cannot express my admiration!” Which, however,
Samurai interest in heads is by no means a myth. In medieval Japan, the heads of especially prominent opponents were thoroughly washed, decorated, and as a sign of special respect they could be sent to relatives. Sometimes, on the contrary, the loser bequeathed his head to the winner with the expectation of indulgence to family and friends in exchange for such a generous gesture. Headbags were included in the standard equipment of the samurai, and accounting and control was carried out in the most careful way: the number of enemy heads allowed judging the valor of a warrior. Some leaders even forbade the collection of heads until the battle was over: otherwise the warrior, carried away by the hunt for awards, could lose his head himself. Sometimes, however, samurai limited themselves to noses. So, during Hideyoshi’s campaign against Korea, transporting heads to Japan for reporting was a difficult task: the volume of the cargo was too large. Therefore, barrels with noses were sent to Japan, and about 20 thousand Korean noses were buried in one of the mass graves on the islands. True, a shameful detail soon emerged: many commanders cheated with reporting and crippled the peasants.
Peak Forest, Jolly Roger and Jesus
When talking about Japanese weapons, the katana most often comes to mind. However, this beautiful sword was not the main weapon of the samurai. The Japanese warrior usually grabbed the katana after losing his spear and bow. Tactics also gradually changed, and from the noble fights of the samurai, they gradually moved on to organized fights. During the invasion of the Mongols in the XIII century, every samurai just tried to get close to the enemy as quickly as possible and chop off at least one Mongol head – especially since the samurai had not seen such rivals until now, and it was not known when such an opportunity would turn up. However, during the wars for the right to unite Japan, it was already about organized battles – massive horse attacks and the actions of archers and arquebus gunners under the cover of pikemen. Let’s say the legendary Takeda Shingen was a fan of knight-style cavalry attacks. However, when he died, the heirs could not develop his ideas: the “knights” of Takeda were defeated by the arquebusiers of Nobunaga. However, in late samurai tactics, Europeans would see a lot of familiarity: pikemen, skirmishers and cavalry had to cooperate to win in the interests of common success. The composition of the army that the Date clan sent to help Ieyasu Tokugawa is characteristic: 420 horsemen, 1200 arquebusiers and 850 spearmen.
By the way, besides guns from Europe, Christianity was also brought to the islands. The history of Catholicism in Japan has been extremely dramatic. At first, the new religion won a mass of adherents. During the unification of Japan, even daimyos like So Yoshitoshi, one of the greatest samurai of the late 16th century, who bore the name Darius, professed Christianity. It should be noted that these people really took the new faith seriously. For example, So Yoshitoshi’s father-in-law scandalized others by refusing to commit seppuku suicide after defeat. When Christianity was banned, many refused to change their faith by order, and people like Pedro Sukejiro went to the cross. However, the largest uprising of Japanese Christians – the uprising in Shimabara – ended with the rebels being first of all Japanese, and secondly – Christians: having lost, they committed mass suicide.
Mercenaries and piracy were also no strangers to noble samurai. In times of fragmentation in Japan, there were too many armed people with an adventurous disposition. And next to it lay the huge coast of the richest China. Tsushima in those days was a real Japanese Tortuga, and the “coastal brothers” even swam into the Yangtze Delta. They were knocked down by the Chinese expeditions and the unification of Japan, when a single government appeared in the country.
We owe some amazing collisions to the pirates. For example, one of the brightest Spanish adventurers, Blas Ruiz, started a seizure of power in Cambodia with the help of a detachment of conquistadors and … Japanese mercenary ronins and pirates. In 1597, the conquistadors in the same ranks with the samurai became the actual owners of Cambodia for two years. Almost in the same years, samurai and conquistadors met in battle against each other: on the Cagayan River (present-day Philippines), Japanese pirates, led by ronins, started a fierce battle with the Spanish musketeers. The Spaniards secured the status of the best soldiers of their era: despite their numerical superiority, the ronins were utterly defeated. So For Honor with knights and samurai is not as far from reality as you might think.
The image of the samurai, as we know him thanks to the same “The Last Samurai”, was strongly romanticized. However, the same can be said about the Western European knights – they were also idealized by many. But we will tell about the myths associated with them another time.
