Samurai

Samurai (侍) or bushi (武士, [bɯ.ɕi]) were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who served the kuge and imperial court in the late 12th century. Samurai eventually came to play a major political role until their abolition in the late 1870s during the Meiji era.^[1][2]

In the Heian period, powerful regional clans were relied on to put down rebellions. After power struggles, the Taira clan defeated the Minamoto clan in 1160. After the Minamoto defeated the Taira in 1185, Minamoto no Yoritomo established the Kamakura shogunate, a parallel government that did not supplant the imperial court.^[3][4] The warriors who served the Shogunate were called gokenin, landholding warriors whose retainers were called samurai.^[5][6]

During the Sengoku period, there was a great increase in the number of men who styled themselves samurai by virtue of bearing arms, and performance mattered more than lineage.^[7][8] During the Edo period, 1603 to 1868, they were mainly bureaucrats and administrators, roles they had also filled in the past. Only in the Edo period did samurai status become a legal creation.^[9]

In 1853, Japan was opened to the West, leading to the Meiji Restoration and Boshin War of 1868, which restored power to the emperor. Their class was abolished in the 1870s by the policies of the new Meiji government. Most former samurai became members of the shizoku class, ranking above the commoner class and allowing them to move into professional and entrepreneurial roles; the shizoku class was later abolished in 1947.