Samurai
(侍), usually referred to in Japanese as
bushi (武士) or
buke (武家), were the military nobility of medieval and early-modern Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson:
"In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon
or accompany persons in the upper ranks of society, and this is also
true of the original term in Japanese, saburau.
In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean "those who serve
in close attendance to the nobility," the pronunciation in Japanese
changing to saburai. According to Wilson, an early reference to the word "samurai" appears in the Kokin Wakashū (905–914), the first imperial anthology of poems, completed in the first part of the 10th century.
By the end of the 12th century, samurai became almost entirely synonymous with
bushi,
and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons
of the warrior class. The samurai followed a set of rules that came to
be known as bushidō. While the samurai numbered less than 10% of Japan's population,
their teachings can still be found today in both everyday life and in modern Japanese martial arts.
The Term
samurai originally meant "those who serve in close attendance to nobility", and was written in the Chinese character (or
kanji) that had the same meaning. In Japanese, it was originally pronounced in the pre-Heian period as
saburau and later as
saburai, then
samurai in the Edo period. In Japanese literature, there is an early reference to samurai in the Kokinshū (
古今集, early 10th century):
Attendant to your nobility
Ask for your master's umbrella
The dews 'neath the trees of Miyagino
Are thicker than rain
The word
bushi (
武士, lit. "warrior or armsman") first appears in an early history of Japan called
Shoku Nihongi (
続日本記, AD 797). In a portion of the book covering the year AD 721,
Shoku Nihongi states: "Literary men and Warriors are they whom the nation values". The term
bushi is of Chinese origin and adds to the indigenous Japanese words for
warrior:
tsuwamono and
mononofu.
Bushi was the name given to the ancient Japanese soldiers from traditional warrior families. The
bushi
class was developed mainly in the north of Japan. They formed powerful
clans, which in the 12th century were against the noble families who
were grouping themselves to support the imperial family who lived in
Kyoto. Samurai was a word used by the Kuge aristocratic class with warriors themselves preferring the word
bushi. The term
Bushidō, the "way of the warrior," is derived from this term and the mansion of a warrior was called
bukeyashiki.
The terms
bushi and
samurai became synonymous near the end of the 12th century, according to William Scott Wilson in his book
Ideals of the Samurai—Writings of Japanese Warriors. Wilson's book explores the origins of the word
warrior in Japanese history as well as the
kanji used to represent the word.
"Breaking down the character bu (武) reveals the radical (止), meaning
"to stop," and an abbreviation of the radical (戈 ) "spear." The Shuo
Wen, an early Chinese dictionary, gives this definition: "Bu consists of
subduing the weapon and therefore stopping the spear." The Tso Chuan,
another early Chinese source, goes further:
Bu consists of bun (文), literature or letters (and generally the arts
of peace), stopping the spear. Bu prohibits violence and subdues
weapons ... it puts the people at peace, and harmonizes the masses.
The radical shi (士) on the other hand seems to have originally meant a
person who performs some function or who has the ability in some field.
Early in Chinese history it came to define the upper class of society,
and in the Book of Han this definition is given :
The shi, the farmer, the craftsman, and the tradesman are the four
professions of the people. He who occupies his rank by means of learning
is called a shi.
Wilson states that the shi, as the highest of the four classes, brandished the weapons as well as the books.
bushi
therefore translates as "a man who has the ability to keep the peace,
either by literary or military means, but predominantly by the latter".
It was not until the early modern period, namely the Azuchi-Momoyama period and early Edo period of the late 16th and early 17th centuries that the word
saburai was replaced with
samurai. However, the meaning had changed long before that.
During the era of the rule of the samurai, the term
yumitori (
弓取,
"bowman") was also used as an honorary title of an accomplished warrior
even though swordsmanship had become more important. (Japanese archery (
kyujutsu) is still strongly associated with the war god Hachiman.)
A samurai with no attachment to a clan or
daimyo (
大名) was called a
ronin (
浪人). In Japanese, the word
ronin
means "wave man", a person destined to wander aimlessly forever, like
the waves in the sea. The word came to mean a samurai who was no longer
in the service of a lord because his lord had died, because the samurai
had been banished or simply because the samurai chose to become a ronin.
The pay of samurai was measured in
koku of rice (180 liters; enough to feed a man for one year). Samurai in the service of the
han are called
hanshi.
The following terms are related to samurai or the samurai tradition:
- Uruwashii
a cultured warrior symbolized by the kanji for "bun" (literary study) and "bu" (military study or arts)
- Buke (武家)
A martial house or a member of such a house
- Mononofu (もののふ)
An ancient term meaning a warrior.
- Musha (武者)
A shortened form of bugeisha (武芸者), lit. martial art man.
- Shi (士)
A word roughly meaning "gentleman," it is sometimes used for samurai, in particular in words such as bushi (武士, meaning warrior or samurai).
- Tsuwamono (兵)
An old term for a soldier popularized by Matsuo Bashō in his famous haiku. Literally meaning a strong person.
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