Samurai bio

Samurai (侍?) is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon oraccompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau. In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean "those who serve in closeattendance to the nobility," the pronunciation in Japanese changing to saburai. According to Wilson, an early reference to the word "samurai" appears in the Kokin Wakashū (905–914), the first imperialanthology of poems, completed in the first part of the 10th century.[1]
By the end of the 12th century, samurai became almost entirely synonymous with bushi (武士), and the word was closely associated withthe middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai followed a set of rules that came to be known as bushidō. While they numbered less than 10% of Japan's population[2] samurai teachings canstill be found today in both everyday life and in modern Japanese martial arts.

Bushidō (武士道?), meaning "Way of the Warrior-Knight", is a Japanese word which is used to describe a uniquelyJapanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, andhonor unto death. Born from Neo-Confucianism during times of peace in Tokugawa Japan and following confucian texts, Bushido was also influenced by Shinto and Buddhism, allowing the violent existence ofthe samurai to be tempered by wisdom and serenity. Bushidō developed between the 9th and 12th centuries and numerous translated documents dating from the 12th to 16th centuries demonstrate its wideinfluence across the whole of Japan,[1] although some scholars have noted "the term bushidō itself is rarely attested in premodern literature."[2]
Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, aspects of bushidō...