The samurai are a subject of endless fascination in the West. At once foreign and familiar, inscrutable yet intuitive, the Japanese warrior-monk holds a special place in the Western imagination. The idea of a feudal warrior caste harkens to the knights of European history, but there’s a deep uniqueness to the samurai. They seem to take the archetype of a knight and go further, to extend it to its limit, for better or worse.

This is a common thread in Japanese culture when viewed from a Western perspective. There are endless similarities between the two civilizations, but there’s just something different. The British and the Japanese both enjoy tea, but the Japanese take it a step further, with their intricate tea ceremony being an art form in itself. Westerners respect hierarchies, but the Japanese more so, with a great level of ritual around deference to elders and superiors. European knights put their lives on the line for God and country and were always willing to die for a cause; however, the samurai were willing to die over any dishonor, to advance any goal.

It is the practice of seppuku, ritual suicide, that is the most inscrutable in the West. The Western warrior ethos is to conquer, then live to fight another day; the samurai, however, saw the act of dying as intentional and even beautiful. For any reason and at any time, a samurai was ready to die in spectacular fashion, leaving behind only a haiku in remembrance. Everything in a samurai’s life was codified and ritualized, from drinking tea to speaking to creating art, and his death was no exception to this rule.

In America, the samurai (especially the ronin, a masterless samurai) is often likened to the cowboy of the Wild West. In fact, many Westerns borrowed their plot points and themes from samurai movies. This similarity was noticed by both cultures; today the cowboy archetype is common in Japanese media. Though the samurai’s strict adherence to ancestral tenets is quite foreign to the cowboy’s untamed freedom, they are spiritually one and the same: warriors driven by strong principles, setting off into the untamed distance to bring order by force.

Yet unlike the cowboy, samurais were not an anomaly in Japanese history, and the caste remained a feature of Japanese society for 700 years. Beginning in the Kamakura period (1192-1333), the samurai arose out of provincial warrior-bands and began to formalize their arms and armor, training, and code—an initial foray into the creation of a unified warrior culture. But it was in the Muromachi period (1338-1573) that the modern image of the samurai arose. During this time, Zen Buddhism spread among the warrior class, and bushido developed as their unwritten moral code, emphasizing duty, martial prowess, cultural refinement, and honor. Bushido evolved past a set of rules and into a unique lifestyle: one of commitment, loyalty, and a life without regrets. In short, “death before defeat or dishonor.” This culture would last in varying forms until 1871.

Due to the rigorous training needed to become a samurai, the class became necessarily hereditary, an element which would be formalized during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868). Beginning at a young age, samurai would start to learn martial arts and swordsmanship from their father or a local fencing master.

To learn fighting alone was a monumentally long curriculum; samurai carried two swords, one short (wakizashi) and one long (katana); they also fought with polearms (naginata, yari), two-handed swords (nodachi), and bows—all of which had to be mastered on foot and on horseback. Physical strength was developed through hard exercise, with early forms of weightlifting preparing trainees for the armor they’d wear on the battlefield. Samurai had to run, ride, climb, swim, and jump in armor, and all of these skills were developed starting in childhood.

At the same time, young samurai were instructed in culture and philosophy, immersed in a particular blend of Zen Buddhism and traditional Shinto. Day-to-day actions like tea ceremonies, etiquette, and language—samurai were expected to be eloquent yet terse and speak only what was meaningful—were an important element of their education. Samurai were also taught literature, art, and poetry; many would go on to pursue painting, writing, and calligraphy throughout their lives. Traversing between battlefield fury and courtly composure required a great deal of tutelage, and their education would continue well into their teen years.

While these cultural elements were important, the primary goal of training a samurai was to initiate him into the warrior religion; martial instruction took up most of the day, beginning early and ending late. As trainees grew in age and martial prowess, they would move from wooden swords to metal blades. At this point they’d begin to learn cutting, a deeply ritualized and technical element of Japanese swordsmanship.

Partially due to sword and armor development and partially due to the philosophy of Japanese martial arts, samurai weapons were expected to be wielded with a certain sense of authority—the goal was always to cut completely through a target on the first stroke. Weapons technology itself intertwined with this idea: the katana is a brittle blade, but incredibly sharp and strong along its edge, lending itself to these powerful slashes.

Unlike the Western knightly tradition, samurai fighting was meant to be quick, explosive, and decisive. This was aligned with Japanese armor technology as well: often made of bamboo, wood, and leather, good armor could withstand solid strikes or glancing cuts, but a proper slash could cleave straight through.

The development of war technology and the techniques countering them is a chicken-and-egg situation; no one knows which came first, but both elements advanced within that framework for centuries. As a result, battlefield engagements were meant to be decided in a few strokes, with none of the hack-and-slash of Hollywood fight scenes. To win, one would have to create an advantage and execute a near-perfect strike, and most Japanese swordsmanship techniques were built around these goals.

Today, Japanese sword arts prioritize cutting rolled tatami mats to demonstrate one’s ability. This is something of a modern adaptation. Historically, samurai often preferred to practice on dead bodies or convicted criminals for the sake of realism. Witnessing and participating in this method of training began quite young, to desensitize trainees to blood and gore. Hardening the body was seen as almost secondary to hardening the spirit, and a familiarity with brutality, as well as a closeness with death, was encouraged by such training.

The samurai obsession with death is a truly unique element of their culture, one that begins with surface-level desensitization but actually runs much deeper. In fact, death was their single most important philosophical focus; it pervaded every action, every thought. The Hagakure, an eighteenth-century work on bushido, summarized it unceremoniously: “The way of the warrior is death.” In a sense, this was completely accurate: the samurai was meant to see himself as a figure of living death, a long-dead man who propels himself forward only through courage and moral rectitude. The samurai was a man condemned, an executioner of enemies who himself was always teetering on the brink of destruction. Many have called samurai culture a death cult, and they’re not too far off.

However, this can lend itself to certain common misinterpretations, so it should be clarified further. The samurai ideal wasn’t some beaten-down notion of following the rules to avoid dying. Rather, it was a culture so steeped in death that meeting one’s end was like meeting an old friend. This familiarity with death was meant to bring a sense of freedom, deeper purpose, and vitality. Musashi summarized it well: “Beneath the raised sword lies Hell, which you dread; but if you move ahead, you will find the Land of Bliss.”

If one is always ready to die, he necessarily lives a more vital, rich life—this was the true goal of the samurai obsession with death. The Hagakure describes this element of their ethos as “conquering immortality by dying without hesitations.” From this, we can see that the samurai were no death cult; rather, they were a life cult, one fixated on the ephemeral nature of everything good and beautiful.

Beauty is another particular focus of Japanese warrior culture, elevated especially for its ephemeral nature. Cherry blossoms are the classic example; blooming for only two weeks each year, they are beautiful partly because they are temporary–doomed, even.

Samurai saw an appreciation for beauty, intertwined with ancestral superstition and religion, as central to warrior life. Take their armor as an example: ornately decorated, it was custom-made to align with the wearer’s astrological alignment–a holdover from the Shinto tradition. Weapons were much the same, and their design was so important that later Christian samurai would take the risk of hiding crosses in their swords’ handguards, even though the punishment for such belief was death. The samurai tradition was to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve, even when it was dangerous.

Yukio Mishima, a modern samurai revivalist in a sense, found great similarities between ancient Greek and Japanese notions of beauty: natural splendor, the human form, and an honorable death were valued highly in both cultures, to the point that Mishima considered them sister civilizations. Despite being worlds apart, they evolved towards the same pinnacle: a focus on honor, beauty, and vitality.

The Japanese notion of vitality is perhaps the most difficult to elucidate, as it grew from a different framework than Western analogues. It isn’t the devil-may-care youthfulness of Hippocleides, the wanton disregard of Diogenes, or the free-wheeling ambition of Alcibiades; nonetheless, the samurai valued the “divine carelessness” that characterized the higher men of Greece. It was just expressed differently.

Take, for example, folk heroes like Miyamoto Musashi. Early in his life, Musashi was challenged by the respected swordsman Sasaki Kojiro–a bitter rival of his, who had mastered dozens of complicated techniques and wielded a sword so long it was called the “Drying-Pole.” They were set to duel on a small island at dawn, and Kojiro was expected to deal with him handily. But on the day of the duel, Musashi overslept and showed up three hours late, in no visible rush.

To add insult to injury, Musashi was wielding a boat oar instead of a sword. At the sight of this disrespect, Kojiro threw his scabbard to the side in anger. HIs opponent further enraged him by commenting “if you have no more use for your sheath, then clearly you have already lost.” Enraged, Kojiro charged him… and Musashi proceeded to dominate the fight, killing his opponent with only the oar. Later in life, he would take challengers under similar circumstances, beating all comers with only a wooden sword.

The values in this story come from different roots than those of Greece, but the vitality and audacity are the same–in Musashi’s duels, are there not echoes of Achilles? Is that not the same daring audacity of the Greek hero?

The key difference here lies in the origins of Japanese warrior culture; its uniqueness came from its adoption of Zen Buddhism. The samurai arose at around the same time as the other notable group of warrior-monks—the knightly orders of the Crusades—and had fascinatingly similar views on asceticism and morality. But while Christian warrior-monks focused on piety and prayer, the samurai developed a different method of spiritual actualization: meditation, both in the traditional sense and in a way specific to combat. This is where the obsession with death crystallized into everyday actions; a life on the brink of death had to be vital and noble, but it also had to be one of extreme discipline.

It is here that Eastern (especially Zen) thought often proves troublesome to Westerners, as the language is surrounding it is intentionally vague and somewhat esoteric. Talk of “realizing the true Way” and “achieving emptiness” was meant to be exclusionary when it was written, only to be truly understood by those who came from the right pedigree and had achieved the minimum levels of physical proficiency.

The foundational texts of samurai Zen Buddhism were meant to be vague and inaccessible–and today, that means they tend to sound like generic New Age garbage. Despite this element, there are certain writers who have cut through the esotericism and presented the samurai warrior-religion as it was. In Zen: The Religion of the Samurai, Julius Evola summarizes the samurai view on meditation: “The bow and the sword become the vehicles for ‘active meditation,’ in which action is the foundation of an eminently spiritual path. Action eventually becomes spontaneous, unhindered, flowing from the remote center of one’s being in the perfect harmony of spirit, weapon, and body. When this harmony is achieved, one goes beyond technique, leaving behind hatred as well as love, and one’s action becomes irresistible.”

This goal was at the core of samurai spirituality: to master the body and external world as a path towards internal, spiritual mastery. Martial prowess became a way to build this internal mastery. The ideal samurai was therefore one who had mastered the external world via warfare and had also mastered himself. To the samurai, these goals were one and the same.

The ultimate goal of this mastery was to reach a state of “perfect spontaneity,” a state in which actions are not decided upon, but merely happen, exactly as is necessary. Some today would call this a flow state, though this is a dubious descriptor, as it wasn’t just meant to happen in the heat of battle. Rather, the samurai aimed to exist in this state at all times, never concerned with the minutiae of life, always building toward something higher; always on the offensive, both literally and metaphorically.

Here, the analogy to the knightly orders deepens. Through ascetic life and faith, the Templars, Teutonic Knights, and Hospitallers aimed to live an existence exactly in line with God’s intent: a state in which their piety would carry them through battle, as though they themselves were merely a vessel. Similarly, through self-discipline and meditative training, samurai aimed to eliminate desire and internal strife, reaching a state of spontaneity in which their actions in battle and in life merely flowed from them, rather than being actively decided upon.

This notion is quite foreign to nearly any culture today; asceticism is rare, and warrior asceticism is even rarer. However, it was the driving force behind samurai culture. Their ritualized lives, their obsession with the macabre, and their focus on beauty all stemmed from the desire to achieve this state of “perfect spontaneity.” Once it was reached (or as Musashi would say, once the Way was realized) the individual samurai would approach combat without hesitation, and with unstoppable force; in life, he would be moral, just, and insightful; and his appreciation of the world’s beauty would not be hampered by its fleeting nature, for he himself is fleeting, but recognizes this and therefore lives only in the moment.

This harmonic existence was seen as the pinnacle of a samurai’s metaphysical life and his ultimate goal. It was intertwined with the social laws of bushido, emphasizing duty to one’s lord, protection of the weak, and a high standard of personal conduct.

Like all warrior ethoses, this was an aspirational ideal, not necessarily a practical one. The standards of bushido and the tenets of Zen were meant to be reached for, yet remain near-impossible to fully attain. But as in the case of the Chivalric Code, it was the striving that mattered. The samurai spirit was characterized by this striving toward a more vibrant life, through duty and metaphysical improvement. At the same time, the threat of destruction, by one’s own hand or another’s, loomed constantly, to the point of familiarity and even fixation.

Between these, we see the samurai as he was: a contradiction, a paradox. A man walking a razor-thin wire, teetering between death and perfection.

Yin and yang.

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