Samurai
武士 · Samurai — A Japanese warrior who unifies martial arts and the Way
The samurai (武士) was a professional warrior class that ruled Japan for about 700 years from the Kamakura shogunate of the 12th century until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Initially a military class guarding emperors and nobles, they seized political power from the late Heian period to establish warrior governments (shogunates). More than soldiers, samurai were an honor class following the moral code of bushido, with loyalty (chū), propriety (rei), courage (yū), righteousness (gi), and benevolence (jin) as core virtues. The privilege of wearing two swords (daisho) — katana (long sword) and wakizashi (short sword) — was theirs alone, and the tradition of seppuku (ritual disembowelment) when honor was lost became symbolic of Japanese culture. Miyamoto Musashi, Takeda Shingen, and Oda Nobunaga are exemplary figures.