What do samurai warriors believe in

Among them are dress-up experiences in which participants can put on a samurai armor or ninja costume, and martial art workshops about samurai weapons and fighting techniques.

Ask in our forum. Home Back. Plan a Trip. The samurai district in the small town of Kakunodate in northeastern Japan is one of the most pleasant, preserved samurai districts in Japan with numerous former residences open to the public. Cherry trees planted in the district make a spectacular seasonal sight around late April and early May. Kitsuki is unique for having two samurai districts on hills sandwiching a merchant district in the valley in between. They are among the most pleasantly preserved samurai districts in Japan.

Kanazawa 's samurai district is named Nagamachi and preserves several lanes with earthen walls, large entrance gates and a few residences and museums that are open to the public. Hagi 's former castle town preserves several lanes, lined by the white walls and wooden gates of former samurai mansions.

Some of the residences are open to the public. Satsuma Peninsula. This samurai district on the rural Satsuma Peninsula is beautifully maintained with rock walls and hedges. The gardens of seven former samurai mansions can be viewed by toruists, however, the buildings cannot be entered. The old town of Bitchu-Takahashi at the base of Matsuyama Castle preserves several old buildings, including a few samurai mansions that can be entered by tourists. Matsue preserves a small samurai district along the moat of the local castle.

One of the former samurai mansions is open to the public, while another building served as Lafcadio Hearn's former residence. This residence stands not far from Kumamoto Castle and served as the home of a branch family of the ruling Hosokawa Clan.

It is a beautiful example of a high-ranked samurai mansion. The two-storied Seisonkaku Villa adjacent to Kenrokuen Garden was built by the local lord for his mother towards the end of the feudal era. It is one of the most elegant preserved samurai villas in Japan. The Aizu Bukeyashiki is the large former mansion complex of a high ranked local samurai family. This helmet appears to have flames reaching up from the sides and meeting at a point on the top.

This motif references the flaming jewel in Buddhism, a common symbol referring to the wish-fulfilling properties of Buddhist practice and devotion. The samurai who chose this helmet wanted the protection of this symbol close to his body. The samurai believed his presence on the helmet would protect the wearer from harm. Photo: Brad Flowers.

This became a cultural touchstone in Japan, so much so that women and children of the samurai class were also expected to face death calmly if they were caught up in a battle or siege. How did this rather extraordinary system arise? As early as the eighth century, military men were writing books about the use and the perfection of the sword.

They also created the ideal of the warrior-poet, who was brave, well-educated, and loyal. In the middle period between the 13th to 16th centuries, Japanese literature celebrated reckless courage, extreme devotion to one's family and to one's lord, and cultivation of the intellect for warriors. Most of the works that dealt with what would later be called bushido concerned the great civil war known as the Genpei War from to , which pitted the Minamoto and Taira clans against one another and led to the foundation of the Kamakura Period of shogunate rule.

The final phase of the development of bushido was the Tokugawa era, from to This was a time of introspection and theoretical development for the samurai warrior class because the country had been basically peaceful for centuries.

The samurai practiced martial arts and studied the great war literature of earlier periods, but they had little opportunity to put the theory into practice until the Boshin War of to and the later Meiji Restoration. As with earlier periods, Tokugawa samurai looked to a previous, bloodier era in Japanese history for inspiration—in this case, more than a century of constant warfare among the daimyo clans. After the samurai ruling class was abolished in the wake of the Meiji Restoration, Japan created a modern conscript army.

One might think that bushido would fade away along with the samurai who had invented it. In fact, Japanese nationalists and war leaders continued to appeal to this cultural ideal throughout the early 20th century and World War II. Echoes of seppuku were strong in the suicide charges that Japanese troops made on various Pacific Islands, as well as in the kamikaze pilots who drove their aircraft into Allied battleships and bombed Hawaii to start off America's involvement in the war.

Today, bushido continues to resonate in modern Japanese culture. The medieval Japanese warriors known as the samurai have been a fascination source for people throughout the world for centuries. For a good reason — they were among the most elite warriors in human history. The samurai are renowned for several reasons, which include their efficiency in battle, their well-crafted katana swords, and most importantly, their honor code is known as bushido.

It was the code of bushido that set the samurai apart from other contemporary warrior groups and gave them their reasons to fight. Without the bushido code, the samurai would have just another one of the many warrior classes in history.

Bushido was an extremely complex worldview, but it shared many attributes with the honor code of medieval European knights for the sake of comparison. The code of bushido was followed faithfully by the samurai. Every detail of how they conducted themselves in battle was dictated by the code, including some of the following matters: the types of weapons that were allowed, the treatment of enemies, and how death was preferred over cowardice, considered the worst form of dishonor.

Bushido also required that samurai spare women and children from violence and never engaged in wanton cruelty of animals. Besides these important ideas, the samurai were also expected to respect their culture and national traditions and to show the utmost respect for their lord and shoguns, even to the point of following them after death.

An examination of the bushido code reveals that it is actually the result of three different but complementary Eastern religious and philosophical traditions — Shintoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism.

The samurai rose to prominence in Japan gradually during the twelfth century AD, making themselves known when they helped repulse the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Before the Mongols attempted their amphibious invasion of Japan, a highly militarized government took power in the Japanese city of Kamakura that established a bakufu or shogunate. The Kamakura shogunate defeated all but one other power in Japan by giving special concessions to the buke or warrior class during the Gempei War Once the buke class had attained prominence during the Gempei War, they did not relinquish that power and gradually became the most important class in Japan.

The samurai led the daimyos , who were feudal lords in the brutal war that determined Japan's leadership. The samurai were a privileged class set apart from all others in Japanese society, but they were also held to a higher standard.