Japanese Samurai warriors.. (from my recent work)

My article on the origins of the Samurai warriors of Japan has been published by Historical Quest, an online history magazine. Unfortunately, it is all in Greek! So here is the gist of it in English.

The image of the Samurai warrior has been distorted not just in the West but in Japan as well, due to romanticism in Japanese literature and modern media. Novels and movies tend to distort our perception of history, and, in Japan, the Samurai is just another victim.

The Samurai is something nostalgically reconstructed in the Edo era from the 17th century until 1868, during which Samurai warriors formed the ruling elite, but, since they successfully ruled the country in peace, there was no war, either externally or internally. Samurai warriors became bureaucrats. The colourful image of the Samurai was invented for popular consumption and also for the self-image of those officials who had lost all combat skills and ethos of those free spirited warriors of the olden times who had valued the idea of self-help in the chaotic medieval period.

So, what sort of people were Samurai warriors in reality?

Some people seem to believe that these warriors practically died out with the coming of western warfare to the east. Yet, these warriors were actually quite flexible, learning new art of warfare and adopting new weapons when necessary; they did not have to don those armours and wield that Samurai sword. The sword was not the weapon of the Samurai – it was a part of the image created in peacetime.

In the ancient and medieval period, Japan’s wars were usually precipitated by attempts of the early kingdom of Japan to spread its domain to the rest of the Japanese island chain. They met considerable resistance, and, conscript armies of the ancient Japanese state had hard time conquering the eastern and northern parts of Japan. The Japanese state was a rice-farming based sedentary society, whereas in the north, where it was too cold for rice farming, people preferred hunter-gathering life style (hence Sushi).

Court nobles often sought chances of promotion by serving the Emperor by organising armies of conquest. It is a little like the Western knightly class forming compagnie to wage wars for self-advancement. But, fighting in the countryside, they often went native: merging with the local strongmen, some were forming their own power base in the wild countryside, complimented by their own private armies.

The conquered, too, sought to help themselves by taking up practice of forming their own companies. Sometimes they were nothing but bandits, while others might be engaged in legitimate businesses. Some notable, powerful warlords would emerge, curving up territories, ostensibly as loyal subordinates of the Emperor.

As the old Japanese state was in decline by the 12th century, some powerful warlords began to seek ultimate power. They did not dare destroy the state. Rather, they sought to obtain positions reserved by the traditional, land-owning nobles at the court. Some warlords favoured marriage alliances with high nobles to win positions; but in the end, some tried brute force to gain recognition and appointment as high officials, including the coveted office of ‘Shogun’, the high commander of the Emperor’s army.

By the end of the 12th century, some warlords led by the Genji clan had become so powerful, they opened a government in Kamakura, which ruled the entire country on behalf of the Emperor, opening an era of dual government, which lasted until 1868.

So how did these Samurai warriors fight?

We think that they were sword swinging barbarian warriors. Even the Japanese themselves believed in this myth; during WW2, some soldiers and officers took their swords (many of them were actually made for decorative purposes and could not be used effectively apart from beheading captured enemies soldiers) to remind themselves of their traditional ethos and value of the Samurai.

But the early Samurais were more like horse archers of Central Asian nomads. They apparently learnt the style from the Mongols, most likely via the Chinese. They used the bow as the main weapon, not the sword. The sword was for the final coup de grace, which usually meant beheading of the fallen foe, so that a warrior can display that he had won. Horse archery skills were highly prized and they preferred close-range ambushes and skirmish type combats. Wars between rival bands of warriors might be decided by single combat.

This is due to the fact that the Japanese had to develop such skills against the native inhabitants of the Japanese island chain, who were hunter-gatherers and hence skilled archers. The early Japanese armies were a little like Roman legionnaires, equipped with short swords and shields, and fought in a massed formation of infantry. Against the mobile enemies of north, they were often beaten badly, so, naturally they adopted their more mobile combat styles.

Many contemporary drawings show warriors on horseback, shooting arrows from their long wooden bow or composite bows; apparently they were capable of making Parthian shot.

As the conquest of Japan was completed, however, fighting style began to change. Power struggles between rival warlords provoked more local wars, usually aiming at acquiring more territories, commercial rights, and, in some cases, satisfying personal honour. Winning a single combat with a strong rival often resulted in winning both material gains and prestige; the sword, the weapon suited for single combat with a decisive result, became the weapon of Samurai.

Fighting styles varied accordingly, but, as the whole country was plunged into free-for-all fray for land-grab, combined armies began to develop. By the high period of the so-called War Lord era of the 16th century, Japanese armies tend to be large with tens of thousands of infantry conscripted from the peasantry, led by high-ranking warriors, who were usually mounted. They were capable of adopting quickly: it did not take long for them to develop an effective massed tactics utilising muskets only a few decades after Portuguese merchants introduced them.

So it is a little wonder they disarmed quickly when the period of endless wars finally ended at the beginning of the 17th century (the last one was the uprising of Japanese Christians, which was brutally suppressed); then, in the middle of the 19th, faced with the threat of European colonialism, they quickly rearmed, learning new techniques and tactics from the West.

Samurais are essentially warriors who fought in spirit of free and self-help. This quality gave them flexibility and adoptability that made them such formidable warriors.