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History Uncensored
What Samurai Life Was REALLY Like - Debunking The Myths | Bonus Interview!
00:13:50
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- [00:06]
A
I spoke to a doctor of Japanese history, Jonathan Lopez Vera, to find out more about the practicalities of day to day samurai life. Let's start with some debunking. When people picture the samurai, what do they get wrong?
- [00:22]
B
Well, most of it, I'm afraid, most of it. Because what people know at the samurai is what all the movies and manga in anime and all the other pop culture products have shown us for years. And most of that, first of all, because I always say that to start talking about the samurai, the first thing that we have to consider is that they existed for quite a long time. I mean, like a thousand years. So even if we are talking about the real samurai, it's not the same. When we're talking about the 12th century and we're talking about the 19th century. Just think about 1,000 years in the history of Europe. I mean, everything changed.
- [00:58]
A
How often were they fighting? And obviously that's going to depend on which period of this history we're talking about. So give us the broad sweep.
- [01:07]
B
Yeah, we have like the peak, it's what we call the Sengoku period. In fact, Sengoku means like warring states. And that's more than one century of civil war. And it was like they were fighting all across the country. And it was not the north against the south or the red against the white. It was like everyone was fighting everyone. Usually you were fighting all the other samurai lords, which territories were in contact with yours, because either you were fighting to conquer his territory or you were fighting to defend your territory from his attacks. So it was a big war and it lasted more than like 150 years, something like that. And then on the contrary, we have that when this period ended, we would say in the 17th century, we have like two centuries and a half of completely peace. So these samurais that existed during this long period of time, they were samurai, but a samurai is a warrior, but there were no wars to fight. So it's completely different. These two kind of samurais before this period of wars, we could say from the beginning of the existence of the samurai, which is quite, quite difficult to determine, to say when we can start talking about samurai and not just warriors, there were worse. It depends on the area of Japan, because in the north it was more often that they were fighting because they were fighting the indigenous people that were living there and they were expelling them to the north. So the samurai that were living in these areas, they were fighting quite often
- [02:53]
A
is the Ainu people.
- [02:55]
B
Yeah, more or less. To summarize, this is more or Less the people who lived in Japan, because the actual Japanese, we could say arrived, we're talking about a lot of centuries ago. And then the Japanese were fighting them for a lot of time, and they were like expelling them to the north island, to Hokkaido, which was not Japan back in that moment. It became Japan in the second part of the 19th century. So it's quite recent. So it depends also. It depends a lot of the place you were. If you were in the capital, you were there only like trying to defend the capital in case of an attack. So it depends. It varies a lot depending on the period and depending on the area of Japan you were.
- [03:39]
A
Who could become a samurai. And if you were not born into the samurai class, was there still an opportunity for you to become one?
- [03:46]
B
In 1591, samurai Lord who controlled all Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he established a new law that said that you had to be what your father was. I mean, so the only way to become a samurai, it was if your father was a samurai. And it was not only the way to become a samurai. I mean, you have to be a samurai. Maybe you wanted to be a peasant, but you were the son of a samurai. Bad luck. You have to be a samurai. So from that moment on until right. The last moment of the samurais, it was just hereditary. I mean, if your father was a samurai, you're a samurai too, before that moment. And it's funny because Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the guy who invented this law, he was the son of a peasant, but when he get. He got to the top and then he like, he closed the door.
- [04:34]
A
Fascinating.
- [04:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's funny.
- [04:36]
A
So interesting that closed door policy. I'm relieved that Rules doesn't exist now. Otherwise I'd have to be a professional golfer and I'd be extreme.
- [04:43]
B
Yeah. But before, before this law of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, you could, you could become a samurai just the way that he did it. I mean, he was a soldier, a normal soldier. And then you were just like going up in the ranks of the army. And that's problematic sometimes. I'm thinking now that last year there was a huge polemic stuff because of a new video game, Assassin's Creed Shadows, because the main character of the game, Yasuke, he was a slave from Africa who arrived to Japan. And then in the game they say that he was a samurai. And so there was all this big thing on the Internet, on Twitter and everything, saying that he wasn't a samurai because he wasn't the son of a samurai. But that Story of this slave, it was like 10 years before this law. So he was, in fact, a samurai. If some daimyo, which is the name of a samurai lord, decided that you deserve to be. I mean, he gave you swords, he gave you the money that he was paying you for your service, and he gave you a house, you were a samurai.
- [05:56]
A
Quick sidebar on this fascinating figure. Yasuke was an African man brought to Japan in the 1570s, possibly enslaved, who arrived with Portuguese Jesuit missionaries. He came to the attention of the warlord Oda Nobunaga, who was struck by Yasuke's skill, stature, and appearance and took him into his household. Yasuke was given a stipend, a residence, weapons, and fought alongside Nobunaga, making him the first known black man to serve as a samurai retainer in Japan. After Nobunaga's death in 1582, Yasuke disappears from the record. Take me through the swords, the weapons, the kit, the armor of a samurai.
- [06:35]
B
Well, that's another thing that the myth has made us believe, that the main weapon of Asamura is katana. Right? I mean, if you go out on the street and you ask about that, even people that doesn't know much about Japan and whatever they tell you, oh, yeah, the Japanese soldiers or warriors, yeah, they had the katana and, yeah, they had katana. And usually paired with another one which is a bit shorter, which is wakizashi. When we see a samurai, we always see them with a couple of swords here. So this is like the main weapon that comes to our mind. But in fact, in the battlefield, they were not much used, and it doesn't come through our mind. But the main weapon of a samurai has always been the bow and arrows, which we don't think much about that picture when we think about a samurai. But that was the main weapon in the battlefield. And then if we had to say the second one, it would be. It's called yari, which is like a very long spear, and that would be the main ones. Then in the 16th century, the Portuguese arrived to Japan, and they had the firearms, so they had the arquebus. And it was like a change in the warfare in Japan, because it was like bow and arrows, but better, we could say. So that changed a lot of things. And then we will have the katana and wakisashi, but that's more like a status thing. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, when he did this law that established who was a samurai and who was not a samurai, he also did another law that said, okay, now we know who's A samurai. And who's not? So from this moment on, only the ones that are samurai, they are allowed to have weapons. All the rest they cannot have. So the weapons become like a symbol of status.
- [08:27]
A
I read also that they began to accessorize their armor to identify themselves with antlers or sun flares.
- [08:36]
B
Yeah.
- [08:36]
A
Is that true?
- [08:37]
B
Yeah. Sometimes when we see the. In the movies and we see these samurais with these very big helmets that it's. If you think about going into battle with that, it's kind of inconvenient. I mean.
- [08:48]
A
Yeah, very impractical.
- [08:50]
B
Yeah, this was because usually this kind of armors with all these big things in the helmet and whatever, they were used by the big generals that they were usually not fighting on the battlefield. They were usually in a hill somewhere near the battlefield, and they were just a high place to see all the battle. And they were just giving orders to their men, to their officers. And so they were not fighting with that. And sometimes they were even used only for ceremonies or for. I mean, some of them are too big to be used in a real life situation, we could say. But yeah, they love these kind of things. And the armors were also evolving through time. And for example, when the Portuguese arrive with the arquebuse, they also bring some European armors. So from that moment on, we see, especially in some generals, they were the ones that had access to this kind of modern European things. We see some mixed armors. I mean, it looks like a samurai armor, but if you look at all this part here, it's not the typical samurai one, but it's like a European one, that it was more practical to defend yourself for a shot with an arquebuse than the old ones.
- [10:03]
A
So that's the outside. Let's talk about the inside. What is Bushido? Why does it emerge? And did samurai actually live by it, or is that a myth?
- [10:15]
B
It's a myth. I mean, from this moment of peace that we are talking about, 250 years of peace, we have a lot of people, in fact, like 6% of the population in Japan, they are considered samurai. This is a way that the samurai, they created this narrative of the honor. And the samurai, like an example for the rest of the people of all the virtues. I mean, in this period of peace, the government of Japan, they decided to adopt Confucianism as official ideology of the state. So they became like an example of all the virtues of Confucianism, which are loyalty and frugality and these kind of things that come to our mind when we think about the samurai. So all these samurais that they had a lot of time because they didn't have to work and they have the education to write and to write novels or to write other kinds of books, they started to like retelling their past, but adapting all the old facts of the past to the new ideology. It's something that, like when we are watching Dumbo or Bambi or some Disney old movie and there's something that it was okay back in the time, but it's not quite okay now. I mean, some racist comment or something like that and then they change it and they adapted to our times and our morality. So they did more or less like that. They changed all the texts from the past and they adapted them to this new morality that they had. And then when the samurai era ended, the government of Japan used again this same Bushido thing. They were no samurai anymore, but they used all this Bushido thing too. It depends on the moment. In the moment of the second World War, they use that rhetoric and that narrative to bring the country to war and to convince a 16 year old boy to get into a plane and crash himself like a kamikaze, something like that. So it's been used in many different ways. Even today is used but for soft power. I mean, it's used in a good way, we could say to promote Japan abroad and we see it in movies and everywhere, but it was like some, something that it was created to, to. To justify all the privileges that the samurai had in front of the rest of the people.
- [12:49]
A
Well, thank you, thank you for exposing that revisionist history because that is something that we like to do on History Uncensored. Jonathan, this was such a treat. Thank you so much for coming on.
- [12:58]
B
Thank you very much.