Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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.
Minamoto no Yoritomo (源 頼朝, May 9, 1147 – February 9, 1199) was the founder and the first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate, ruling from 1192 until 1199, also the first ruling shogun in the history of Japan. [2]
The samurai had a choice: give up their sword and become peasants, or move to the city of their feudal lord and become a paid retainer. Only a few land samurai remained in the border provinces of the north, or as direct vassals of the shōgun , the 5,000 so-called hatamoto .
Most remaining samurai that did not become kazoku were designated as shizoku, a distinct class without class privileges that was purely a title on the government register. Commoners and the burakumin were merged into a single commoner class without restrictions or distinction for their occupation, though burakumin continued to face ...
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.”
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.