Samurai and Ninja: The Real Story Behind the Japanese Warrior Myth That Shatters the Bushido Mystique (12 page)

侍

Samurai

Generic term for the warrior class.

武士

Bushi

Alternative name for samurai.

武者

Musha

A term used to mean warriors in general.

武士

Mononofu

Alternative name for samurai used in poetry.

大将

Taisho

The lord-commander, or commander-in-chief, of a state or army.

旗本

Hatamoto

A samurai group around the lord. Normally sons from
fudai
families, which have served the same clan for generations, securing loyalty. However, the use of Hatomoto does have variations throughout history but should be seen as the command group or inner circle around a samurai lord.

母衣武者

Horomusha

High-ranking samurai who wear a
horo,
which is a form of arrow-catching cape; they are normally mounted.

軍法者

Gunposha

A samurai trained in military strategy.

軍配者

Gunbaisha

A samurai trained in astrology, divination, the observation of
chi
and auspicious dates and days.

騎馬武者

Kibamusha

A mounted samurai.

徒士武者

Kachizamurai

A samurai on foot.

譜代

Fudai

A fudai family is a family that has served the same clan for generations, giving loyalty generation after generation.

外様

Tozama

A
tozama
is a samurai or family who is “new” to service, i.e. they have less than one generation of service to a lord. They may have served for an entire lifetime, or they may have served for only a short time; the issue is that they do not have a record of generational service and are therefore considered “outside” the “trust” of the lord, even though they may be loyal in actuality.

小姓

Kosho

A kosho is a form of page or squire who serves a lord. The concept of squire is difficult to place in Japan. Samurai are born into the samurai class or are promoted through deeds of arms; there is no need for promotion from squire to knight as in the West and pages may be of any age, even though they are normally younger boys. They normally do not serve samurai themselves, mainly lords.

浪人／牢人

Rōnin

A displaced samurai yet still of the samurai class. They are samurai without land or fief and have no official employment. Considered vagabonds, however, the story of the rōnin is deep and interesting and shall be discussed later.

用心棒

Yojimbo

A personal bodyguard hired in times of peace to give close and personal protection.

渡り侍

Watari Zamurai

Wandering mercenaries, a form of rōnin for hire who would rent their services to different sides in times of conflict.

地侍

Jizamurai

Landed gentry as previously described, who later became half samurai.

土豪

Dogo

The dogo class are similar to the jizamurai, being land-owning families. In the Edo Period these were half samurai, and according to Charles J. Dunn in his book
Everyday Life in Traditional Japan
, they wore a single sword, a jacket and had bare legs and served within the cities.

徒膚者

Suhadamono

Half-dressed warriors, normally warriors on the field of battle who had bare legs and light armor.

無足人

Musokunin

A term from the Edo Period given to ex-samurai who had fallen from samurai status yet who had been given the title of Musokunin, so as to differentiate them from the peasant class.

古士

Koshi

Ex-samurai, similar to the above.

野武士

Nobushi, Yamadachi
, and
Sanzoku

Bandit samurai, groups of bandits who lived from pillaging but yet are considered warriors.

足軽

Ashigaru

Foot soldiers, just below samurai class but still considered military personnel.

忍

Shinobi

A commando-spy employed by the military to act in covert operations; also known as shinobi no mono and ninja.

間者

Kanja

A spy. The term is often interchangeable with shinobi no mono but has slight differences depending on the primary source used.

盗人

Nusubito

A thief.

盗賊

Tozoku

Thieves, normally in gangs, who break into property in organized teams but can be solitary; the term is often interchangeable with nusubito.

The Rōnin

By definition, a samurai either needed to be an independent landowner or employed by a lord. If the samurai were to lose either of these he would either drop in social class or become a rōnin. The term rōnin is thought to originally derive from
furonin
, which literally translates as “float-wave person.” This should be understood as “those people who float on the wave,” i.e., they have no fixed position. A different origin and use of ideogram has the same pronunciation as rōnin, but has the meaning of “imprisoned person.”

Remembering that samurai status in the pre-Edo Period was transient and that people could flow between the samurai and non-samurai class; this meant that becoming a rōnin was not career threatening. However, in the late 1500s laws were passed that stopped rōnin from gaining employment without the permission of their last employer. This created a dangerous mass of wandering rōnin who could not find employment for their military skills. In the Warring States Period, rōnin could hire their skills out to the next lord. However, on agreement of employment they would stop being a rōnin and become a samurai retainer—this means that a samurai was only a rōnin for the period he was not employed for. However, in the early Edo Period, a samurai had to remain as rōnin without the blessing of his previous lord. To make matters worse, in the early Edo Period some of the larger samurai clans fell and had their lands possessed, adding to the growing rōnin problem. From this emerged attempted coups, rebellions and incidents where the rōnin tried to force political matters and change. Eventually the ban on the re-hiring of rōnin was lifted and they could serve once more as samurai.

To imagine the rōnin and place him in the overall spectrum of the samurai, think of the Warring States period and of a samurai who was dissatisfied with his lord, or of a lord dissatisfied with his vassal, or even that the lord had died. This samurai would take to the road, move in samurai circles and present his credentials to new lords where he may find new employment and join the ranks of a samurai army once more. As peace came over the horizon, the re-hiring of rōnin became rigidly controlled and masses of rōnin start appearing on the map of Japan. They started causing trouble and became a force unto themselves. In response, the Tokugawa shogunate relaxed the rules and they were reabsorbed into society—the story of the rōnin has given birth to the iconic wandering samurai of modern cinema, the vagabond killer.

Kabukimono

The dandy of old Japan, this figure was a subculture of the samurai. At the end of the Warring States Period and the start of the era of peace came libertine-style dandies. They were warriors who dressed with flamboyance, were loud and caused a ruckus. They wore extravagant sword fittings, sometimes even female clothes, and bright colors, moved in bands and generally caused ample trouble.

The Knight Errant

A
Musha shugyo
is a samurai pilgrimage, where a warrior will wander the country in search of other combatants to test their skills against; pitting themselves in duels to the death and challenges to other schools, the most famous of these is Miyamoto Musashi—the legendary sword saint.

The Tools of the Samurai

Is the samurai sword the soul of the samurai? Well, not quite. The katana has been given a central place in the image of the samurai; however, as mentioned previously, the spear and the bow also have a claim to be the samurai’s principle weapon. The heightened glory of the sword is a factor from an era of peace, when armor was stowed away and spears were put to rest; but the samurai kept the sword. A samurai was a warrior and each could pick his own weapons. One samurai may favor the chain and sickle, another the bow and the next a long sword. If a samurai knows his opponent has a specialty with a specific weapon, then it is best to defend against that samurai by forcing him to fight with a different weapon, or alternatively to create distance between the enemy and to hit them with projectiles. A samurai may not carry his bow or spear but they must
always
have their swords.

To understand the samurai and his tools, consider the following list of weapons used by the samurai—they have been placed together according to their range capabilities:

♦
Fire rockets

♦
Bows: including fire arrows and gas attacks

♦
Muskets

♦
Hand-thrown projectile weapons and grenades

♦
Long chain weapons

♦
The spear and other pole-arms, including quarterstaffs

♦
Shorter chain weapons

♦
Long swords

♦
Short swords

♦
Daggers and dirks

♦
Truncheons, knuckle dusters and grappling tools

Samurai would have to utilize whichever tool or weapon that situation demanded and have proficiency in most, if not all, with the additional constraint or having to own and maintain most of the above. Many modern cinema adaptions from Japan would have the modern reader believe that poor samurai wandered the land, having to sell their sword blades or work as evil bodyguards to save their ailing wife. However, while it cannot be disputed that some samurai were poor, this image has been portrayed because of the audience’s love of the “underdog” story. In truth, a samurai who has been retained by a lord has lodgings or a house; they are furnished with a salary proportionate to their abilities or social status, and they themselves retain servants. The concept of the “poor samurai” image is heavily associated with the end of the period of peace. Peace had been in Japan for over two centuries and land grabbing through war was no longer an option. Samurai being hereditary positions in this period meant that land and income could be divided between sons—or given to the eldest—and over the generations retainer fees become smaller and smaller. The pressure of this reduction in monetary power was increased with the rise in wealth of the merchant class, and together they saw many samurai fall into poverty.

However, this was only
one
period of samurai history, the end. The actual periods of interest are in the warring years when a samurai could make a fortune, and fortunes were made and land and vast incomes were competed for. In these times the samurai supported a house complex, possibly horses, an array of martial weapons and armor, food stocks, slaves and servants. A retained samurai could afford these things—with only the horse being out of reach of some samurai—therefore it was not a case of “if they could afford a sword, etc.,” but was more of a case of what level of sword they could afford. Samurai would pass down family heirlooms; however, at times they would also have to purchase their own arsenal or add to their stocks and both a market for secondhand and new items existed. Remember, a samurai had an arsenal and in the main a samurai had a good life by the standards of the day and the katana was only a small part of that; and while some samurai fell on hard times it is not an image you should maintain as your primary image of the samurai.

A samurai called Arisawa Nagasada (1638–1715) from Kaga domain wrote about samurai arts and equipment in the seventeenth century in a manual called
Heiho Nukigaki Hippu no Sho
. His writings were made to educate other samurai. The following is a reduced list of topics from the manual: