10 Things People Don’t Know About Samurai

After all the movies and TV shows, it’s amazing to realize that there are 10 things people don’t know about samurai. Pop culture has taken what is attractive to viewers and shaded over the rest.

The term ‘samurai’ was not their original title

Bushi, or “warrior,” was the original term for these individuals, but the term was obviously changed at one point. Samurai is loosely translated as “one who serves.”

Bushido started as an unwritten code of conduct

Many warrior cultures have adopted unwritten rules of conduct that were eventually written down. This moral and ethical code was meant to convey how warriors were to conduct themselves around the nobility as well as the common folk.

Samurai were their own social class

The samurai had a class that stood above the common folk but below their masters. In some cases, they were the enforcers of law in their time and the lords that commoners were protected and ruled by.

Their swords were a big part of their life

This has been made evident in pop culture as well. A samurai’s sword was said to contain their essence or soul. This is one reason why these swords were handed down through a family for generations at a time.

Samurai trained with and used many different weapons

The katana is a symbol that many recognize in relation to the samurai. However, they utilized other weapons such as the bow, the naginata (a polearm with a fixed blade), heavy clubs, and other advantageous weapons on the battlefield.

Their armor was entirely functional

The crafting of this armor made it easier to move in and much more flexible than many other suits of armor. The overlapping sections allowed for increased mobility during a fight, allowing the samurai to utilize far more complicated movements against their opponents while remaining protected.

These warriors were extraordinarily literate and highly cultured

This isn’t to say that other warrior cultures were illiterate and vicious, but the samurai were at the top of their class. They could read and write and were taught how to present themselves in front of others to convey authority and command respect.

There were female samurai

You don’t hear about it that often since there were likelyn’t too many of them. However, some women were given leave to learn the ways of the samurai and were taught to use weaponry.

Foreigners were allowed to become samurai

Again, this is not something one hears about that often outside of Hollywood, but foreigners were allowed into the ranks of the samurai. Hollywood has likely exaggerated a few things, and there was likely a great deal of pushback by some, but not every samurai who ever held a sword was Japanese.

Seppuku was real and was committed in two different ways

There was obligatory seppuku and voluntary seppuku. The main difference between the two is that a ritual suicide such as this has to do with the idea of ‘death before dishonor.’ Obligatory means it was expected for a samurai to take their own life, which might mean that after a defeat, a samurai was expected to take their own life rather than suffer the dishonor of defeat. Voluntary means a samurai would commit the act after dishonoring themselves and possibly another person. It sounds brutal and pointless to many people, but it was a part of samurai culture.