SAMURAI VS KNIGHT!

There were surprising similarities between Japan's famous medieval warriors and their European counterparts

From time to time I like to open up History, Etc to other historians working on Substack. Today’s post is written by Christopher Harding, who writes IlluminAsia - a newsletter and podcast all about the history, culture, traditions, food, film and… well, everything else of Japan.

I have been wondering whether there were any meaningful comparisons to be made between Japan’s ancient samurai warriors and the knights of medieval Europe. Below, for my education and your enjoyment, is the answer.

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Who said this?

Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.

If you're trying to place it somewhere in medieval Europe, then you're both a long way off and very close indeed.

A long way off because this beautiful precept in fact comes from a samurai and master swordsman by the name of Miyamoto Musashi, writing in the early 1600s.

Miyamoto Musashi

Close because despite their very different historical roots, knights and samurai are cousins of a kind, linked by an ethic of commitment and self-sacrifice. Built into both words, ‘samurai’ and ‘knight’, is an ideal of service – ‘samurai’ comes from the Japanese word saburau, meaning ‘to serve.’

The samurai started out as bodyguards, more than a thousand years ago, when Japan’s classical civilization was at its peak. Aristocratic men and women at the Emperor’s court in Kyoto spent their days penning delicate romantic poetry, holding incense-appreciation and tea-tasting competitions and striving to outdo one another in the colour and splendour of their dress. There was music, restrained laughter and the swish of expensive silk. Elsewhere in the city, crime was on the rise. It became so bad that nobles took to hiding their most precious belongings under the floor of their carriages when they travelled. If bandits waylaid them, they would claim to have been robbed that night already.

Enter the samurai. Where the unpaid conscripts of Japan’s imperial army rarely covered themselves in glory on the battlefield, out in the provinces there emerged families who became famous for their skill in fighting from horseback with bow and sword – and, when needed, on their feet and hand-to-hand.

An aristocrat of a particularly nervous disposition, or who had made one too many enemies, could, by the 11^th century, pay a burly and well-armed man to stand outside his bedroom door at night. If he feared for his land-holdings, far away from Kyoto, he could employ samurai to look after those, too.

Across the second half of the 12^th century, while knights were emerging in Europe as a clear social rank, the samurai found themselves being hired to settle disputes at court. Blood began to flow through the streets of Kyoto and severed heads appeared on spikes. By the end of the century, the Minamoto – one of the best-known samurai families – were running much of the country. Their leader became Shogun and for the next 650 years Japan's affairs were decided by the samurai and their code.

That code had close European parallels, from the sacred bond between vassal and liege-lord to the grubbier business of fighting for reward. Japan’s mountainous and forested topography meant that cultivable land was especially highly prized. Samurai hoping to extend their holdings would take the heads or noses of their enemies in battle, presenting these to their commanders as trophies after the fighting was done. Some went as far as employing artists to create a visual record of a battle, providing additional proof of their meritorious deeds.

Japanese armour presented to James VI and I, displayed in the Tower of London

Like European knights, samurai wore armour and colourful banners into battle, bearing their family crests. But samurai armour was generally lighter than its European counterpart, because Japanese horses were not as strong as those in Europe. And the samurai carried no shields. That was the job of the peasant foot-soldiers who, during the civil war (Sengoku) era of the 15^th and 16^th centuries, became an essential component of a feudal lord’s army. They were cheap, expendable and could be trained to fire a matchlock – borrowed and adapted from Portuguese models – with a fraction of the training it took to use a bow.

New technologies of warfare threatened the status of both knight and samurai alike. But in Japan, something remarkable happened. The samurai did not simply ride off into history’s sunset. They switched from warrior work to office work, running Japan during the long and peaceful Tokugawa era, from 1600 to 1868. They continued to wear swords in public and presented themselves as both a security force and society's moral guardians.

For a while, memories of past deeds and the writings of men like Miyamoto Musashi helped the samurai to maintain their high status in other people’s eyes. But as time went on, and an impressive suit of armour became more an object for display than something you’d likely need to don in a hurry before heading out to fight, Japanese commoners started to ask themselves what the samurai were for.

By the 19^th century, artists and satirists were depicting samurai as people who talked a big game about their honour, but who in reality spent their time toadying to superiors, hectoring the poor, writing bad poetry and shopping in Japan's great cities – all while receiving generous stipends from their lords. Lower-ranking samurai meanwhile found themselves struggling to make ends meet. Their homes became a testament to faded glory, with shabby tatami-mat floors and precious little food on the table.

The overthrow of the Tokugawa shoguns in the 1860s and a subsequent rush to modernise along western lines finally brought an end to the samurai’s sway over Japan. But you don't dominate a country's politics and culture for more than half a millennium without leaving some traces. The samurai remain inescapable in Japanese art, literature and drama. And a life lived in the way that Miyamoto set out seems as splendid a thing now as it did four hundred years ago.