Talk:Samurai

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Borshellb.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 September 2020 and 14 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ANavalArch. Peer reviewers: Kasedori.

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Women samurai[edit]

Women weren't actually allowed to be samurai. Samurai is a masculine term, which means women couldn't be samurai. Women became Onna-bugeisha instead. Joshwada (talk) 01:38, 10 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese doesn't have grammatical gender. Unsure what you mean? The Japanese article at ja:武士 also explicitly states that the term bushi ("warrior") is not gendered, and that there were women who served as bushi. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 02:10, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Samurai or bushi[edit]

Given that samurai in Japan is never, ever used,and bushi is, samurai should redirect to bushi, not vice versa. 

Frank (Urashima Tarō) (talk) 05:39, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Don't know where you get that Samurai is never used in Japan. It's used all over Japan if you travel around. Whole museums with it in the name, districts named the Samurai District etc. Canterbury Tail talk 17:32, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
And even if it were true that "samurai" was never used in Japanese (which is not true), this is the English wiki. In English, "bushi" is almost never used. Tsuka (talk) 15:52, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Link to one of the most famous animes featuring samurai should be listed[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurouni_Kenshin

I think Rurouni Kenshin should be listed as well, especially since it happens during the transition of the samurai dominated era to the western era, with manga, anime, and live action films. It portrays a stylized view not often seen in most material, and similar to the setting in The Last Samurai. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.39.156.254 (talk) 19:18, 16 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Samurai are most interesting warriors. With thir battle prowess and capabilities for both ranged and close-assault attacks, they are a formidable force. Their armor is highly useful and even represents their wealth. Samurai were wealthy japanese warriors and therefore had the best training, armor, and weapons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Josh421 (talk • contribs) 18:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Asuka and Nara Period Misinformation[edit]

Officials of and under the sixth rank were called simobito, or "people on the ground", as opposed to tenjoubito, "people in the audience hall", for those fifth rank and above. Samurai seems associated with the verb saburau meaning "to attend". Uses of the word 侍 was not associated with Samurai until the Kamukura period; previously, it referred to a range of attendants including secretaries and notaries, but not samurai as we know it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Y11971alex (talk • contribs) 06:58, 21 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Semi-protected edit request on 5 December 2018[edit]

209.156.232.194 (talk) 14:15, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

samurai often used the stars to tell when to atack

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 14:22, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 22 November 2019[edit]

Please delete this duplicate word in the section "History" "of all all the classes during the Meiji revolution they were the most affected" 81.96.15.89 (talk) 10:22, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Done: please see Special:Diff/927415876. Thanks, NiciVampireHeart 10:46, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Clarify[edit]

At some point, samurai were forbidden from joining the military or serving in government. Has this changed?

Kortoso (talk) 11:20, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 21 September 2020[edit]

Under section "Women" there is a tense disagreement in the fourth sentence of the second paragraph. The sentence should maintain the past tense of the rest of the article. (i.e. "A woman could divorce her husband if he did not treat her well or if he was a traitor to his wife's family.") Ideally, a citation would also be introduced. 142.118.156.185 (talk) 16:25, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Done, I tweaked the tense as indicated and added {{citation needed}} to that paragraph. Thanks, ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 17:22, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

the "first" samurai[edit]

according to the guardian the "first samurai" in history was Taira no Masakado: "The tale of the ‘first samurai’ whose severed head still terrorises Tokyoites today is the story of the city itself" & "Eventually those rebels seized power for themselves through victory in combat, and Masakado was anointed the 'first samurai'." where does this source fit in the article? thank you Grandia01 (talk) 05:44, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Myths and Reality[edit]

The myth and reality section of the article could use some further elaboration to some points it has already made, and some minor corrections.

Firstly, samurai never followed any sort of stable rigid "honor code" prior to when Bushido was written long after the samurai were gone. Of course there were guidelines as to how a warrior should train, what kind of skills and tactics they should learn, and basic etiquette, but these were far from any sort of ritualized honor code. It should be further emphasized that samurai, especially the earliest samurai clans (particularly during the Heian Period) behaved no better than pillaging bandits.[1] They also functioned as tax collectors, and were hired to routinely squash rebellions. Samurai committed quite a few atrocities as well, like the Enryaku-ji Massacre, and were also quite treacherous/brutal towards one another (Minamoto No Yoritomo executing his brothers Yoshitsune and Noriyori, The battle of Sekigahara, and pretty much any other significant historical event revolved around betrayal or slaughter just like anywhere else.) Samurai were largely self-interested, and their only real motivation was to gain land, power, and income, nevermind "honor" This is a good source for further information (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6xgz4p2d60) --MountedSamurai (talk) 18:22, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6xgz4p2d60

Came here to say this. Personal philosophies, either clan or self-imposed, existed — but they were nor universal nor monolithic, as described in the Bushido article itself with 5 different sources. The way the section is currently written is prone to misinterpretations. Queen of Wa, friend of Wei (talk) 01:32, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hereditary[edit]

There is an ongoing discussion on the page for Yasuke concerning an inaccurate definition of the word "samurai". The term was repeatedly removed from his article because someone wanted to define the samurai as hereditary, despite it not being in the dictionary definition or any of the cited sources—and despite the fact that virtually every source refers to Yasuke as a samurai.

This article includes him in the "Foreign Samurai" section, but there were similar (unsourced) edits added there to cast doubt on his status, and the main intro to the article also included the word "hereditary"—again without citation.

I've removed these erroneous additions. natemup (talk) 11:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Responded on user talk page. This is simple user disruption, not related to article content. That samurai status was hereditary is so widely attested in reliable sources that it is practically a given within this field of scholarship. What's more, the matter of non-samurai in the Sengoku/Azuchi-Momoyama being granted or claiming samurai status is unrelated to this, as (if such status was successfully held onto until things settled down in the Edo period) this samurai status would be passed onto their descendants—hence, hereditary. There is no need to bring up obscure figures who do not even seem to have had family names: Toyotomi Hideyoshi is a well-documented example of this phenomenon. As the "someone" (or, rather, one of the five or six someones) alluded to above, I find this bizarre claim about the use of the word "hereditary" in the definition of samurai being the core of my argument frankly bizarre, and making what one is almost certainly aware is an unconstructive edit to a highly visible "core" Wikipedia articles in order to "win" content disputes on obscure side articles is totally unacceptable, and (ironically given this) is borderline vandalism. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:58, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Question, what is to be made of this statement within the article:
  • The Sengoku jidai ("warring states period") was marked by the loosening of samurai culture, with people born into other social strata sometimes making a name for themselves as warriors and thus becoming de facto samurai.
The argument over on the other page, mentioned above, is I believe someone of this so-called "de facto samurai" grouping. Should this wording in this article be modified? I suppose there are two ways to conceptualize at this, either
  • (1) as an asterisk on the lead's definition
    • "Samurai (侍) were the hereditary* military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the 12th century to their abolition in the 1870s." *with brief exception during the Sengoku period.
  • or, (2) as an asterisk on this "de facto" group (which is how the article is right now)
    • thus becoming samurai.* *de facto, or otherwise "not true" samurai
I am not proposing footnote or anything, just thinking about what assumptions are being made in definition. — Goszei (talk) 08:24, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On most any Wikipedia page, you would not put in the front of the lead a claim not found, supported, or sourced in the rest of the article—especially one that has such obvious exceptions and that is thus absent in the dictionary. It makes way more sense to mention later in the lead or in the article that samurai were more or less hereditary at a certain point. And it remains a fact that the Yasuke section has been modified by you-know-who with original research. natemup (talk) 11:23, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I will note that not only "hereditary" but also words like "clan" and "family" appear dozens of times throughout this article. And no, if you were at all interested in Japanese history you would know that, throughout the history of Japan, with a few brief interludes, occupation and social class were, as a rule, hereditary. Moreover, this is completely irrelevant to the topic you are interested in since the buke title being hereditary has nothing to do with whether a non-buke can be granted the hereditary title and pass it down to his descendants. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:46, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, yes, this article does have insufficient sourcing in places (maybe throughout the article -- I haven't read it), and yes, it would technically be "original research" to look at all the early references to the so-called "Yasuke", assume they all refer to the same person, extrapolate from the fact that he is never identified as a samurai in any way that he was not a samurai, and add that extrapolation to the article, but no one has actually added such a claim to this article, it is substantially worse to insert positive historical claims based on dubious sources however "secondary" they are (as you have been doing), and you have just accused yet another user, Belevalo, of sockpuppetry without any evidence. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:03, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have added a string of WP:LEDECITEs. This is not a controversial statement, and it is supported by both sourced and unsourced content in the article body, so my edit should be reverted as soon as possible. @Natemup: Are the sources I have added sufficient to convince you? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:19, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
BTBTW, I don't like Goszei's proposed compromise either, since (i) the origins of "the samurai" in earlier periods are a bit vague (the famous ones were all of, or claimed to be of, imperial descent, but the rank and file soldiers who we call samurai and were closer in rank to that word's original meaning?) and (ii) "Sengoku" under the current definition employed by the Wikipedia article is not what that used by most mainstream encyclopedias (including Japanese Wikipedia) and therefore will probably need to be changed; the specific person under discussion, "Yasuke", did not arrive in Japan until after the end of the Sengoku period, and his documented activities all took place in the Azuchi-Momoyama period, while popular Japanese consciousness has always assumed Miyamoto Musashi "became a samurai" at the beginning of the Edo period. During all of these periods, it was assumed that "samurai" status, once gained, would be hereditary: the most notable example of this is neither Yasuke nor Musashi but Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:03, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This topic is in desperate need of an RfC. natemup (talk) 14:35, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! Your funeral. You haven't presented a single source in support of your position. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:35, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Natemup: Would you mind explaining this? I Ctrl+Fed both Edo and Edo period for "Duus" and "hereditary" and couldn't find what you were referring to: are you talking about a different article? Anyway, if you have not actually consulted the cited source but are instead copying information from within Wikipedia, it is inappropriate to include an inline citation of a separate source: you have been citing Wikipedia, not Duus. Courtesy pinging @Goszei and Nishidani: What do you two make of this? (Sorry for bothering you with this, Nishidani; you're the one experienced Japanese history editor who I trust to disagree with me if you think that I'm wrong. Others might just assume that I'm right given my "qualifications" in this area, agree with me without looking into the matter carefully, and thus cause a concern of canvassing.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Edo Society. It's a single word, so I think it's within the rules. natemup (talk) 02:23, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Edo society article says Positions within the samurai class were largely hereditary (emphasis added). This appears (to me as someone with a general awareness of pre-modern Japanese history but who has not read Duus) to refer to posts like chamberlain, master of arms, etc., not to shi status itself (which is referred to as being hereditary several times throughout the article). Do you understand how this is different from what your edit says? Anyway, citing a poorly-sourced article based almost exclusively on a source discussing a different period of history is even worse than citing just the average Wikipedia article. I will revert you in nine hours if you do not provide a source that actually supports your claim. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:31, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And in what sense does what "appears" to be the case to you qualify as grounds for a revert? It appears to be the case to me that idiosyncratic edits have damaged this and other articles that previously referenced non-hereditary samurai. Should I proceed with such edits? natemup (talk) 02:44, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It appears to be the case to me that idiosyncratic edits have damaged this and other articles I could not agree more.[1][2][3] In all seriousness, the first "samurai" of which we have record are members of warrior clans of imperial ancestry, primarily the Minamoto and Taira. Later various figures of uncertain origin who may have originally been commoner peasants emerged and claimed to be of Minamoto or Taira ancestry, and if they managed to gain and hold on to political/military power, they invariably passed this down to their descendants. The fact that some or most of such individuals almost certainly were not of imperial or noble ancestry is irrelevant, since they claimed to be and they passed their status to their descendants. You have not cited a single reliably-sourced instance of someone possessing non-hereditary "samurai" status. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Scotsman returns. RfC. natemup (talk) 02:57, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please refrain from racial/ethnic hatred. Yes, I am a descendant of the ancient Scotti, but I do not see how that is at all relevant, and moreover it is incredibly offensive to refer to contemporary Gaelic-Irish as "Scotsmen" even if you are referring to the aforementioned etymological connection: you are, according to your user page, no more ethnically Japanese than I, and failing some kind of "blood" connection to the people under discussion (whether or not one considers that relevant), the racial/ethnic background of us as editors is completely irrelevant. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unless you have some other reason to suspect that they know about and are dismissive of your personal background, I think it's safe to assume they're referring to No true Scotsman, which, as far as I know, is not generally interpreted to be ethnically hateful. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 03:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My ethnicity is disclosed on my user page, here. I previously asked Natemup not to talk about "Scotsmen" and focus on content here. I was not familiar with the phrase No true Scotsman, but having now checked the linked Wikipedia article (thank you, by the way), I fail to see how it is relevant here; if anything, Natemup is indicting himself, since he obviously [has] not publicly retreat[ed] from the initial, falsified assertion that "samurai" status was not hereditary, he has now offer[ed] a modified assertion that [the "samurai" status was only "sometimes" or "often" hereditary] (I admit I'm fudging a bit here: the burden is not on me to demonstrate that Natemup is himself completely guilty of the exact logical fallacy he has baselessly accused me of), and the "no true Scotsman" thing is itself using rhetoric. Yeah, there's a lot of fudging there, but I'm not the one making the positive claim here: none of this applies to my assertion, backed up by all reliable sources that address the matter, that in pre-modern Japan social class and occupation were, with few exceptions, hereditary, and that "samurai" status should be presumed to be the same pending at least one source that indicates otherwise. (I am not, mind you, presuming anything: I've read hundreds of sources supporting this assertion, and cited four inline[4] that I had to cherry-pick because Natemup was rejecting any source that didn't explicitly use the exact words "hereditary military aristocracy".) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:57, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break[edit]

The WP:LEDECITEs seem to still be necessary, so I've restored them, moved slightly to follow "nobility", since most of them also explicitly support not only "hereditary" but also "military nobility". I personally hate LEDECITEs in general, especially in cases like this where they expose, to this article's roughly 3,000 daily visitors, the fact that there is a dispute among Wikipedians (or, rather, between one Wikipedian and everyone else) regarding a fact that is uncontroversial outside of Wikipedia and was even uncontroversial here until a few weeks ago. The formatting is largely a result of me not wanting to format four templates for an ultimately temporary solution, but it also serves the purpose of keeping the lead "clean" of any more than one number and two square brackets; I would like to see this "dispute" resolved as quickly and cleanly as possible and the LEDECITEs (which I have formatted as a single citation of four ELs) removed or WP:COMMENTed out. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:13, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Typo needs to be fixed[edit]

The word “predecessor” is misspelled in the first paragraph, but I don’t have the ability to edit it. Kashmirton (talk) 00:51, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. Canterbury Tail talk 01:18, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Disagreement with Japanese sources[edit]

The English Wikipedia article here and the Japanese Wikipedia articles at ja:侍 and ja:武士 diverge in worrisome ways. The English article starts off by conflating "samurai" and "bushi", two distinct groups in Japanese history, and claiming that this munged-together group has been around since the 1100s. The Japanese sources I've looked at instead describe the "samurai" as a hereditary nobility class, and the "bushi" as a warrior or soldier class. There was apparently overlap, but these were distinct groups.

Considering the subject matter, I find the Japanese content more credible. Notably, the Japanese article at ja:武士 explicitly states that the word "samurai" is not synonymous with "bushi".

As additional evidence of the distinction between the two terms, the 1603 Nippo Jisho entry for "saburai" (archaic form of modern samurai; see here, left column, halfway down) defines the term as follows:

  • Saburai. Fidalgo, I, homem honrado.
"Nobleman, [that is], honored/honorable person."

Distinct from any "warrior" or "soldier" sense. I cannot find any instance of the term guerreiro ("warrior") in the Nippo Jisho, but it does have other entries defined as soldado, Portuguese for "soldier". I've copied the Nippo Jisho entry headline on each bullet point, with my transliterations, translations, and comments on the following two lines.

  • Buxi. Soldado.
武士. Soldier.
The "buxi" spelling is the then-current Portuguese orthography for bushi. Entry in the right column, halfway down: https://books.google.com/books?id=TFJAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q&f=false
  • Mononofu. Soldados.
武士. Soldiers.
Both bushi and mononofu are spelled the same way in kanji. Entry in the left column, fifth from the bottom: https://books.google.com/books?id=TFJAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA166#v=onepage&q&f=false
  • Muxa. Taqei mono. Soldado armado.
武者. 武い者. Armed soldier.
Entry in the left column, fourth from the top: https://books.google.com/books?id=TFJAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA172#v=onepage&q&f=false

It would appear that our English-language article is in need of an overhaul. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 02:08, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding...Samurai, originally meant "the man who serve" indicate specific class of bushi. Shodaifu(諸大夫) was the upper class, like daimyo and perhaps shogun, aristocrats of Japan. Samurai "served" shodaifu, and were themselves seen as noble people. Bushi of lower lank, such as kachi(徒士) were not samurai. They wore katana but were prohibited to ride horses, to meet and talk to their lords directly. After Edo period ends, people gradually confuses the term bushi with samurai, and even most of modern Japanese people can not say the difference between them because they use this two words interchangeably. They will be embarrassed knowing that lower bushi were not samurai. It is too dissociated from modern meaning of the term, the article should be arranged carefully, I think.Sacchisachi (talk) 16:32, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Sacchisachi: Agreed that there seems to be much conflation of bushi and samurai in both English and Japanese after the end of the Edo period.
Historically, the word first appears as saburai (possibly saburafi in the phonetics of that time) in the early 900s, if this entry of the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten is anything to go by. It also appears that these early samurai might not have necessarily been bushi at all, and instead were fifth- or sixth-ranked nobility serving in the imperial household and other higher-ranking houses.
As you note, the article could use some careful rearranging. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 19:10, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Bushido article repeated this same factual mistake, but in a way that was less structurally integrated into the rest of the article -- so I was able to just fix the text directly, as in this diff. Might be a useful reference for fixing this Samurai article. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 23:00, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Separate section needed for claimed foreign samurai[edit]

Under the heading "Foreign samurai" the lede states "Several people born in foreign countries were granted the title of samurai." What follow are five paragraphs with one or more persons described in each. William Adams and Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn are both well attested-to by contemporaneous documentation. But the two names mentioned after them -- Yasuke and Giuseppe Chiara are decidedly not. The claim made for Chiara is rather fanciful -- that he married the widow of a samurai and thereby assumed her late husband's status as such. That is completely ahistorical. I have never been able to find any evidence that such a profound ascension in a person's caste status could automatically occur through marriage. As a vassal-at-arms to a daimyo, being a samurai was a position of great responsibility and considerable power, and one could not simply "marry into it". More often, things went in the opposite direction; a samurai could be disgraced and his entire family could lose their status.
The second claim -- that of Yasuke -- is no less problematic, since there is absolutely no contemporaneous record of him having been a samurai. He was a weapons-bearer to the daimyo, but he was not permitted to carry the daishō, nor is there mention of him having any of the other privileges that went with being a samurai (such as kiri-sute gomen -- the legal right to kill a commoner who insulted them). According to the article on Yasuke, he "was given his own residence and a short, ceremonial katana [dubious – discuss] by Nobunaga. Nobunaga also assigned him the duty of weapon bearer." The source cited for this is "...a variant text of the Shinchō-ki (信長記) owned by Sonkeikaku Bunko (尊経閣文庫), the archives of the Maeda clan" -- something not accessible via the internet, and therefore not possible to verify. I am not interested in disputing whatever claims are made in inaccessible sources, but even taking them as gospel, the source conspicuously does not claim that Yasuke was a samurai; it describes him as a "weapon bearer" who was granted a residence and possibly a short sword.
As it is dubious that these last two persons were actually samurai, they would not belong under a heading which describes "people born in foreign countries...granted the title of samurai". If they must be listed at all, they should be below a sub-heading labeled "Claimed foreign samurai" or some similar distinction from verified ones. Bricology (talk) 03:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed -- a "samurai" in historical terms was not simply someone in Japan who was allowed to walk around with a sword, it included specific rights and duties and hereditary status. This is notably missing from any account of Yasuke that I've read, likewise for Chiara.
Looking at the JA WP article for Chiara at ja:ジュゼッペ・キアラ, I see the following:

...そのまま岡本三右衛門の名を受け継いだ。幕府からは十人扶持を与えられたが、切支丹屋敷から出ることは許されなかった。

... and thus he took on the name of Okamoto San'emon. The bakufu granted him a stipend of ten person's-worth of rice, but he was not allowed to leave the Christian yashiki [a specific manor or enclave in Edo where various Christians were effectively imprisoned].

He was never a samurai if he was imprisoned in the Christian enclave. So far as I can tell, he stayed there until he died.
Also notably, the JA WP article on Chiara does not include the word samurai anywhere (no instances of the kanji 侍, nor does it describe Chiara as taking on the status of the former bearer of the name Okamoto San'emon.
Granted, the JA WP itself is not a reliable source, but for purposes of a quick look around, it provides a decent starting point for our analysis.
‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 18:29, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In my very personal opinion (only for reference, not sourced, but these are common-sense matters).
Social Structure in the Edo period
There is the upper-hand pyramid social structure figure. But this may give large misunderstanding. Rather the following scheme is preferable.
Ruling Class in the Edo Period
- Kuge Lord (公家領主) Buke Lord (武家領主)
- Emperor and his Court (Various Daimyo) 諸侯・諸大名 Head Tokugawa Daimyo (Shogun and Bakufu)
- Sekkanke (摂関家) Outsider Daimyo (外様) Insider Daimyo (譜代) Tokugawa family Daimyo (親藩) Hatamoto (旗本) Bugyō
- Upper class Kuge Houses Upper class Bushi (上士, Jōshi) Upper class Bushi Upper class Gokenin Yoriki
- Lower class Kuge Houses Lower class Bushi (下士, Kashi) Lower class Bushi Lower class Gokenin Dōshin
- (Komono - Servants) (Komono 小者 - Servants of Buke) (Komono) (Komono)
  • Emperor is a kind of Daimyou, special Daimyo in the Edo period. Kuge lord have almost no power and have very poor income.
  • Komono, that is, Servants of Kuge and Buke are not included both in Kuge and Buke, they are common class peoples.
Common Class in the Edo Period
- Gun-bu (郡部) - Kōri area Toshi-bu (都市部) - Machi (Town area)
(Lord) Nanushi (名主) Machi-Nanushi　(町名主)
(Officers) Mura Yakunin Machi Yakunin (町役人)
Occupation Farmers (農民) Merchants (商人) Craftsmen (職人・工人) Special*
Chief Shōya (庄屋) Shōka no Aruji (主人) Oyakata, Kashira, Tōryō etc. (various titles)
Upper class Jikanō (自家農)# Bantō (番頭), Tedai (手代) Hira Shokunin (平職人)
Lower class Kosakunō (小作農)# Minarai (見習い), Decchi (丁稚) Minarai Shokunin (見習い)
Non-registered Mushuku (無宿)*
Lowest, Untouchable Hinin (非人)
  • Special: As special occupations, Isha (doctor), Shrine and Temple peoples, Scholars etc are. They have special position among the Edo social order. Nearly, sometimes, between ruling class and common class. When they are in jail, they are treated specially, like bushi class people.
  • (#) Jikanō is a farmer who has his own land. But Kosakunō hasn't his own land, in other word, he is a peasant. Kosakunō lend land from Shōya.
  • Mushuku(nin) : All the peoples in the Edo period, in principle, are a member of some social community. Even Hinin are a member of the Hinin community. But a common class person who does not belong to any social community is mushuku-nin (person belonging to no community). There are many bushi who hasn't his master and has no roku. These bushi are called rōnin. Rōnin are not Mushuku-nin.
  • Common class peoples even could become lower class bushi. And lower class bushi sometimes were demoted to common class people.
Samurai in the right usage, are Upper Class Bushi or higher. Lower class Bushi (Kashi) are generally not Samurai. But common peoples call lower class bushi as O-samurai-sama, etc. In one standard, Samurai should have 150 koku (rice salary per year) or higher. Usual lower class bushi has roku (income per year) of 15 to 50 koku per year. In principle, Samurai should have his own horse. Yoriki (与力) is high class officer in Machi-bugyōsho. Yoriki was originally 寄騎 (yoriki). For instance, 彼らは与力二騎と同心五名であった is "They are two horse Yoriki and five person Dōshin". In the case of Yoriki, "Bushi and his horse" ia considered as One Yoriki. This is the same as Samurai. Samurai is the unit of "Bushi + Horse". Bushi who usually rides on horse is Samurai.
(Famous 4 social classes in the Edo period are Shi-Nō-Kō-Shō (士農工商), but it is not "Ji-nō-kō-shō". Not Samurai (侍), Nōmin (農民), Kōjin (工人), Shōnin (商人). Bushi (武士), Nōmin, Kōjin (Shokunin), Shōnin.
In this criteria, Yasuke is not Bushi, of course, not Samurai. Chiara is Bushi, but not Samurai in the right usage of terms (10-nin-buchi is too small roku as Samurai status). --Flora fon Esth (talk) 02:56, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ultimately this comes down to, what do multiple reliable sources say? If multiple reliable sources say they're samurai, then they're samurai. If the reliable sources disagree on this then we can say that. At the end of the day our interpretation and research is not relevant to the topic only what the reliable sources state. Canterbury Tail talk 12:22, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Canterbury Tail: Granted, so long as we are clear (both in our understanding and in our description in the article) about how such RSes define the term "samurai". There has been much confusion on this score, and that is where a lot of the ambiguity lies.
For instance, according to a looser (more recent) definition of samurai as "a pre-modern Japanese warrior", then Yasuke was a samurai. According to the definition in currency at the time Yasuke was in Japan, as "a member of a hereditary nobility, with specific status, rights, and responsibilities", then no, Yasuke was not a samurai. Any RS that talks about Yasuke as a samurai must be evaluated for how they are defining the term.
See also the #Disagreement_with_Japanese_sources thread above. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 17:33, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment on samurai terminology[edit]

Comments needed concerning the historical figure Yasuke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yasuke#Request_for_comment_on_samurai_terminology natemup (talk) 03:38, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Overhauling this page[edit]

I have edited this page some, and I think it could use some fixing. Especially with the small section I put about ninja leaders being samurai.

The creator of the video does claim to have a history PhD, but I would like sources from a book about this and for the section to be expanded.

I also have a question. Did I cite the video correctly? I would like to know what the way to in-text cite a video, TV show, or film is for future edits on other pages. I could not find it. GoutComplex (talk) 17:39, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Arts content[edit]

In the arts section of this article, the first paragraph is of St Francis Xavier. Besides being initially unclear who “Francis” is, this should be moved to the religion section and updated with a full name reference. Thoughts? I did not want to arbitrarily edit this article as I have no connection to it other than as a reader. Fax10 (talk) 15:42, 17 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Error in weapons section[edit]

In the weapons section there is a photograph captioned 'antique Japanese Katana'. The image is almost certainly of a Tanto, a dagger length blade. As per the main page on Japanese swords, a Tanto is any blade under 1 shaku (about 30cm) long. A Katana is over 2 shaku (60cm) long. The blade in the image is undoubtedly not 60cm long, although it is not impossible it is marginally over 30cm long which would make it a wakizashi. But its far too thick for a wakizashi so I am certain it is a Tanto.

Either way, it is definately not a Katana. Can someone with edit power fix this, or find a different image of a Katana from the main page. 82.21.177.242 (talk) 21:52, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually it's a wakizashi. Though technically it's still a katana as in the strictest sense as katana is simply the Japanese name for a single edged sword with no specificity to length etc, not a particular type of sword as westerners have attached to it. What westerners call a katana is actually a uchigatana. Canterbury Tail talk 23:48, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Edo period[edit]

I have removed the hierarchy chart, which is completely wrong. Such a hierarchical chart dividing peasants, craftsmen, and merchants into classes is based on an old academic theory from decades ago, and it has become clear in recent years that peasants (hyakushō), craftsmen, and merchants (chōnin) were equal in Japan. Such hierarchical charts have already been removed from Japanese textbooks.[5][6][7][8]--SLIMHANNYA (talk) 08:28, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Successive shogun held the highest or near-highest court ranks and outranked most court nobles.[9]--SLIMHANNYA (talk) 11:49, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was surprised to see that various pages still describe explanations based on the pyramid-shaped social hierarchy chart of the Edo period, which is based on theories from more than 30 years ago. Even elementary and junior high school students know that samurai, peasats, craftsmen, and merchants are not a social hierarchy if you are Japanese. I think many Japanese probably know that it is an occupational classification, although it is possible that people in their 40s and older who are not interested in history may not have updated their knowledge. Of course, the Japanese Wikipedia version of the ja:士農工商 page mentions at the top of the page that it is a mistake to say that it is a pecking order.--SLIMHANNYA (talk) 19:39, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Culture[edit]

Removed statements that have nothing to do with samurai culture. In addition, these descriptions give inappropriate weight to the actions of some samurai at one time and their evaluation, and the source and the explanation based on it are quite inaccurate. For example, the explanation based on this source is inappropriate because it synthesizes information about tsuji-giri, a crime committed during the Sengoku period, and kiriste-gomen, a right of samurai in the Edo period that required various conditions for its execution.　In addition, the description of "commoners and their village cultures, where pacifist movements flourished" is a strange explanation when it comes to historical facts. Furthermore, there is no source for the statement that the general public compared the actions of ninja and samurai and judged both as dishonorable. The general public's cultural views of the ninja were formed in the Edo period, beginning in the 17th century, and to describe them in combination with the behavior of the samurai during the Sengoku period is an inappropriate synthesis of information. In any case, this is not something that should be written in the section on samurai culture, so it has been deleted.--SLIMHANNYA (talk) 18:41, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have also removed some of the explanations in the Sengoku period section that contain the same thing as above. The user[10] who made these edits was repeating explanations on various pages that were not in the sources at all, or were perverted, or based on improper weighting, or synthesized information, and the same was true of the posts in the Sengoku period and Culture sections of this page. Since the Sengoku period section already states that the samurai code was loose during this period and that there were repeated instances of infighting within clans and betrayal of the lord by the samurai, it is perfectly acceptable without the explanation of the incorrect or improper source citation added by this user.--SLIMHANNYA (talk) 10:54, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Establish a clear distinction between Bushi and Samurai[edit]

(Reposting this from Talk:Yasuke due to being related here, apologize if this is the wrong way to do it. I know the distinction is made in the Wikipedia article, but the term still gets confusion due to its use in other articles, see Yasuke and William Adams (pilot)).

For those who don't study Japanese history, it should be established that the Japanese language is highly contextual, where the same kanji symbols can mean different things based off of how they're pronounced as an example. Samurai, Bushi, and Ashigaru are terms that have been used interchangeably in the Japanese language, but they mean different things based off of the context. It would not be fair at all to use modern, loose definitions of "samurai" when they do not apply in its historical usage of the term.

It's already been said in this Talk Page that the concept of bushi and samurai are very distinct, but I don't think it offers enough explanation for those unfamiliar with the system. Therefore I think it should be a mission for Wikipedia to solidify this distinction by using the strict definitions that are based off of the historical tradition of the Japanese nobility during this time.

To be more clear: The warrior aristocratic class known as the samurai began to rise in power with the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate under the Minamoto lineage. Every single clan claims to be a descendant of an imperial lineage, whether it be the Minamoto, Taira, Fujiwara, or smaller noble families like the Tachibana. This goes the same for samurai as well: The most popular example of a peasant becoming a samurai, Toyotomi Hideyoshi well established himself as a trusted retainer of Oda Nobunaga after the Battle of Okehazama and was given many privileges, but Nobunaga had never made him a "samurai". He officially became a samurai when he married his wife One, who came from a Minamoto background.

A "samurai" is not a rank. It is a social class, and there are plenty of examples of lords and samurai, such as Imagawa Yoshimoto, who did not practice martial arts extensively like warriors would typically do. Imagawa Yoshimoto was very well versed with practicing renga poetry and mastering tea ceremony, and spent little time on martial arts.

There seems to be no actual example of a warrior being "promoted" to samurai anywhere; even William Adams could be argued as not actually being a samurai, because he was given the rank of Hatamoto, which is more of a rank than a social status like how a samurai is, and also that the Japanese woman he married was not from any noble lineage (And this is particularly the case following Toyotomi Hideyoshi who ironically made it harder for peasants to rise to the status of samurai). Arguably - unless they have been adopted into a samurai lineage or married someone from that lineage (I can only speak for Yasuke and William Adams, let me know if I'm wrong on others) - "foreign born samurai" have never existed; they were all "bushi".

Fiefdom isn't enough to consider someone a samurai either, jizamurai (name is confusing of course) are land-owning "peasant" warriors, specifically warriors who are NOT samurai, these people were still subjects to samurai above them. If we want to get technical, William Adams would be considered a jizamurai, but not a samurai. It doesn't matter how many privileges you are given, how much you are paid, or how much land you have, you can't be a samurai unless you are part of a samurai lineage.

William Adams is a particular case because from what I know, the Japanese don't seem to care for him either just like they do with Yasuke, at least before 2020. The thing with Yasuke is that he only became mainstream since 2020/2021 which is where all this sparked interest came from, and then the pop articles that claim he was a "samurai" when he was not. Unless there is any proof that Yasuke had married a Japanese noble woman, he cannot and will not ever be considered "samurai", no matter how many battles hes in, the most he can claim is "bushi", same case for William Adams. The reason why this matters so much is because the Japanese feudal system was obsessed with ancestral claims and ties, and titles that they could claim based off of that. Ieyasu changed his surname from Matsudaira to Tokugawa so he could claim to be a descendant from the Niita clan, a legendary clan that destroyed the Hojo regents and paved the way for the Ashikaga to take control. This was so he could have a stronger claim on the title of Mikawa-no-kami or "Lord of Mikawa [Province]".

The imperial court, despite being weakened during this period, was still very influential and that never really went away; these clans relied on the imperial court to give them these prestigious titles to further their own legitimacy, and sometimes they had to change names, be adopted into influential families (Toyotomi Hideyoshi threatened the Konoe clan of their destruction if they did not adopt him, he did this so he could claim Kampaku, the "Emperor's Chief Advisor" or regent), or make political marriages. The imperial court may not have had military power to back up demands, but they had the de jure legitimacy for it as backed by the Emperor.

The idea that the social structure fell apart during the Sengoku period is blatantly made up. It's simply the result of the conflation of the word "samurai" in place of the word "bushi", which are both synonymous but also distinct in the Japanese language. It is partially the fault of the Japanese language for being a very convoluted language, but it is also the fault of the English language for not recognizing this as such. These words have meanings and cannot be changed to fit a narrative.

Therefore, I ask that it be a mission for Wikipedia to make these two terms distinct in order to establish the true nature of our understanding of Japanese history, much of it is incredibly misunderstood in the English language and this is just one of many examples. Hexenakte (talk) 16:25, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a Japanese, I can say that most Japanese and even experts today do not make a clear distinction between samurai and bushi. Although detailed definitions vary from period to period, bushi originally referred to people who made their living by fighting with weapons, and of these, the relatively high-ranking bushi who served the nobility or the shogunate were called samurai. However, during the Edo period, when most bushi served the shogun or daimyo of various domains, and bushi and the lower social classes of townspeople and peasants were more strictly classified, the line between the definitions of samurai and bushi became blurred, and the terms have since been used interchangeably. Since the definitions of samurai and bushi differed in the Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi, and Edo periods, writing a distinction between samurai and bushi would be incomprehensible to most people. Therefore, unless the exact definitions of samurai and bushi, which differ from period to period, can be clearly explained to readers, we should be cautious about writing about the two terms strictly separately.--SLIMHANNYA (talk) 06:40, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have added a new explanation of the definitions of Samurai and Bushi in the Terminology section. It would be very difficult to explain the exact difference between samurai and bushi in every period section, and even if we could, most readers would probably be confused. Therefore, I decided that it would be best for the reader to have the definitions of the two terms explained in the first section of the page.--SLIMHANNYA (talk) 08:33, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can only really speak for the Sengoku period, but during this time where the caste system supposedly fell apart I just do not find to be true. The de jure caste system was always present, but it was just de facto easier to take advantage of where you could join noble families or get titles for much easier than would be in the past. For example, the Imperial Court during this period was very poor and in need of money, so they were willing to sell court titles in exchange for money to lords and samurai alike, when they were not likely to do this in the past. The example I listed with Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Konoe family also highlights this. If anything, I find evidence of a pattern showing that every known samurai has some connection to an imperial lineage (Minamoto, Taira, Fujiwara, Tachibana, etc). I don't think this is fair to diminish.
The fact that a warrior caste is recognized yet the term referring to it (samurai) is constantly changing and used synonymously for any soldier/warrior (Bushi, Ashigaru, Retainer, Hatamoto) is bound to lead to confusion, when these terms can mean completely different things depending on the context. This can lead to the idea that there was no caste system in some periods when this is just wrong. I could not find a samurai who did not join or was not part of a noble family, but only the contrary (examples have been named to me such as Konishi Yukinaga, Katakura Kojuro, and the Kuroda clan, these all have some noble connection whether through claim as a descendant or adoption/marriage (for Yukinaga's case under Toyotomi)). And it makes sense for a feudal society, since Europe largely operated like this too, so I don't understand why there's opposition to this? Everything points towards nobility. I think the confusion lies with this broader definition or idea of a samurai, which is why it is seemingly changing between periods, but it really isn't. Hexenakte (talk) 16:32, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not the place for authoritative definitions nor for original research, both of which you are advocating for here. This is a fundamental misuse of the platform and should be strongly opposed by those that want Wikipedia to retain its consensus-driven nature and goals. Please refrain from bad faith discourse due to current events (the Assassin's Creed raciality controversy over Yasuke) intended to shape public opinion, and stick to summarizing and collating information from properly cited reliable sources, as per WP rules. 74.104.130.145 (talk) 12:06, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see what I am saying is in bad faith, and it has nothing to do with the AC game, it has to do with wrongfully conflating terms to individuals such as Yasuke who were never samurai, this is real person with real history. There is no evidence to suggest this, the most that we can attribute to Yasuke is that he was an attendant for an unknown role, as it does not specify what kind of tools he carried (it could range from weapons to armor to food to lanterns, there were many different roles for different attendants), so a Kosho (小姓, page) title is inappropriate since no such title is mentioned in any of the primary sources that talk about Yasuke. There is also no evidence to suggest that he was a trained warrior or that he was suppose to fight, the only incident where he is confirmed to be fighting is in Honno-ji, but we don't even know the specific details of what happened, and once again isn't proof that he was a full-time warrior, even attendants could fill in combative roles as described in Zōhyō Monogatari (I can't find a link to it so apologies for that, but there is a English translated section on it in "Samurai War Stories: Teachings and Tales of Samurai Warfare" if you want to check), they just weren't trained or armored like Bushi. Keeping it up in the air that he was a samurai or a warrior is lying by omission, and that is in bad faith.
So instead of providing commentary on the lack of evidence (since that was the issue last time), his actual title should be changed accordingly to "attendant" or "attendant retainer" since it is factual based off of the evidence we do know about him, and it makes it more clear as to where he stood rather than the interchangeably used terms of Bushi, Samurai, Retainer (as a standalone title), Hatamoto, etc. Hexenakte (talk) 16:53, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yasuke was never sworn as a Samurai.[edit]

Stop spreading misinformation. Don Basura (talk) 05:21, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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