Samurai Through 1,000 Years: Tax-Dodging Archers to Self-Abolished Elite

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In the eighth century, Japan's conscript peasant armies were useless against the Emishi, mounted archers of the north, so the court hired wealthy rural landowners who could afford horses and years of practice. The same families dodged imperial taxes by nominally donating land to tax-exempt temples and nobles under the shoen system. As revenue fell, they became the real power, and after the Genpei War the victorious Minamoto set up the first shogunate at Kamakura. The Sengoku period brought relentless civil war and wide social mobility, best shown by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a peasant sandal bearer who rose to rule Japan.

After the Portuguese brought matchlocks in 1543, the Japanese mass-produced them and drilled ashigaru in volley fire. Hideyoshi then ordered a sword hunt and froze the social order. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, samurai spent some 250 peaceful years as salaried administrators paid in rice, wearing the paired swords as a badge of rank and practicing the tea ceremony. Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival in 1853 ended isolation, and after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, former samurai abolished their own stipends, raised a conscript army and banned swords in public in 1876. Saigo Takamori's Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 was crushed.

• The katana, worn edge up for a fast draw, replaced the long curved tachi used by mounted warriors.
• A Japanese proverb says Oda Nobunaga made the rice cake, Hideyoshi shaped it, and Tokugawa Ieyasu ate it.
• The tiny nijiriguchi entrance of a tea room forced lords to bow and leave their long swords outside.
• Samurai women trained with the naginata and carried the kaiken dagger, and Yodo-dono came to command Osaka Castle.
• Yamada Nagamasa became a provincial governor in Thailand, and Hasekura Tsunenaga sailed to Mexico in 1612 and met the Pope in Rome.