In old Japan ,there lived a special type of horseback worrior, known as a samurai. Samurai warriors were fierce, fearless…and trained to hack their enemies to pieces without a second thought.You wouldn’t want to meet one on the battlefield…
Off the battlefield, it was another story. Samurai warriors weren’t thugs.They lived by a strict moral code, just like the knights who lived in Europ at the time.Most of them were highly cultured and courteous men-and they looked impressive
Too, in their elaborate battlegear and fearsome face masks.
Many of these warriors came from rich, powerful families, and the samurai title was handed down from father to son. Ordinary
Foot soldiers from poor backgrounds occasionally rose up join this warrior elite if they fought with outstanding bravery, or
If they married the daughter of a samurai but it was pretty rare.
Although they had servants, samurai didn’t expect to be pampered. Feasting on rich food or living in luxurious home was looked down on, because it showed that you were soft-indulgent.
In fact, the samurai moral code required warriors to live lives of service and obedience. The earliest samurai, who lived in around the 10th century, worked for the emperor. Some guarded his palace, in the city of Kyoto, while others defended remote villages from bandits and pirates. People believed the emperor was descended from the ancient gods of Japan, but that didn’t mean his divine blood gave him special powers.
Gradually, the richer, more powerful samurai families realized just how weak the emperor really was. There was on reason why they should do what he wanted any more.
So, instead of defending the emperor, they started fighting each other, to acquire land and power for themselves. Each samurai family, or clan, was ruled over by a local lord, also known as a warlord. By the 12th century, there were lost of these
Clans all over Japan and they fought almost constantly.
Most of Japan is too hilly to farm on, and in those days fertile fields were very valuable. Everyone wanted as much land as they could possibly lay their hands on.
It was a samurai’ s job to defend his lord’ s lands and win him even more by fighting with other clans. He had to swear an oath to be loyal for the rest of his life, and to be ready to fight at all times.Loyal to your lord meant more than life itself.
If a samurai had to chose between protecting his lord from an attacking army, or saving his own wife and children, there was no contest. He had to let his family die.
A warrior’s own life mattered even less, and samurai were trained from an early age to feel no fear in face of death.
The one thing that they were afraid of, though, was being thought of as a coward. There was nothing worse than being beaten in a battle then living to tell the sorry tale. If your side looked as if was losing, there was only one thing to do: kill yourself.
Samurai were expected to commit ritual suicide, known as seppuku, rather than face the shame and humiliation of being captured.