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A samurai in his armour in the 1860s. Hand-colored photograph by Felice Beato. Samurai or bushi (武士, [bɯ.ɕi]) were members of the warrior class in Japan.They were most prominent as aristocratic warriors during the country's feudal period from the 12th century to early 17th century, and thereafter as a top class in the social hierarchy of the Edo period until their abolishment in the ...
This is a list of foreign-born people who became samurai in Japan. During the Edo period (1603–1868), some foreigners in Japan were granted privileges associated with samurai, including fiefs or stipends and the right to carry two swords.
William Adams (Japanese: ウィリアム・アダムス, Hepburn: Wiriamu Adamusu, 24 September 1564 – 16 May 1620), better known in Japan as Miura Anjin (三浦按針, 'the pilot of Miura'), was an English navigator who, in 1600, became the first Englishman to reach Japan.
Samurai did not actively seek an honorable death. [5] However, it was honorable to die in the service of a daimyo only while furthering the daimyo's cause. [5] Samurai had dark customs, the most notable: Kiri-sute gomen was the right to strike lower class who dishonored them. [5] Seppuku was ritual suicide, to die honorably or restore one's honor.
Yasuke is the first known African to appear in Japanese historical records. Much of what is known about him is found in fragmentary accounts in the letters of the Jesuit missionary Luís Fróis, Ōta Gyūichi's Shinchō Kōki (信長公記, Nobunaga Official Chronicle), Matsudaira Ietada's Matsudaira Ietada Nikki (松平家忠日記, Matsudaira Ietada Diary), Jean Crasset's Histoire de l ...
Many Japanese people, including members of the samurai, began to blame the Tokugawa for Japan's "backwardness" and subsequent humiliation. A modernization movement which advocated the abolition of feudalism and return of power to the Imperial Court eventually overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
Indeed, Clavell once revealed that his hugely successful novel had been inspired by a single line he read in his daughter’s textbook: “In 1600, an Englishman went to Japan and became a samurai.”
The Japanese people and the government with Emperor Meiji realized that in order to preserve the independence of Japan it had to modernize to become an equal of the western colonial powers. In 1868 Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned which ended the Tokugawa dynasty and the last shogunate .