How Did the Samurai Really Disappear?

The term Samurai means 'those who serve'. The rise of Samurai culture took place during the feudal Heian Period (794-1185) in Japan. They were employed by wealthy landowners to serve and defend their lands. At the time Japan was a fraction of multiple militaristic factions. Samurai were members of the professional warrior class who served as retainers under the shoguns. Samurai were highly valued in Japan due to their lifetime of training in tools in the art of war. For hundreds of years samurai roamed the lands for instilling justice and educating the population during peacetime under the patronage of their daimyo who paid them regular taxes out of their tax revenues.

The central government took steps in the reintegration of samurai. In 1869, the daimyo were given only one tenth of their income as the central government gave the order to ‘reform’ in which they were forced to reduce the stipends paid out to the samurai to push them out into other occupations. In 1871, the samurai were ordered to lay aside their swords and were no longer allowed to wear their katana in public.

They were no longer allowed the honor of presenting their inherited pride which was passed down from their ancestors. The domains ruled by daimyo that samurai followed so faithfully were officially abolished.

Samurai rapidly faded away during the Meiji restoration and modernization of Japan. The Meiji Restoration was a political event that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji and led to westernisation of Japan. The Restoration led to enormous changes in Japan’s political and social structure and spanned both the late Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji era, during which time Japan rapidly industrialised and adopted Western ideas and technology.

The movement of this ‘restoration’ was a threat posed by American and European forces to colonize the fragmented factions of Japan. The scattered states of warring factions were forced at gunpoint to make treaties with Western powers where the US forced the Isolated land of Japan to open its gate for Trading and Industrialization. Japan, which was a world power with muscles who defeated the Chinese in 1894 in Korea and Russians in 1905 shocked the westerns who viewed them as inferior.

How did the samurai really disappear? Explanations offered by historians explains, the samurai society was divided into the classifications of rank, which led to a room for new ideas to flow in. By then samurai were used to being called “civil servants”, and had already lost their right as independent warriors. After the 1840s the process of national military began to take shape and with Matthew Perry’s forcible violation of Japanese insularity led to the 1854 treaty that opened Japan to the west.

Western military power was more advanced technically compared to the power dynamics of the samurai, which led them to reform the concept of military power in Japan. Thus leading to the decline of samurai class as an outcome of military reform in the final days of the Tokugawa regime.

Samurai who belonged to the most educated class became teachers by joining in the shinto and Buddhist priests in the advancement of the education system, while the others turned to vagrancy. The final straw for samurai stipend came in 1876 where they were given seven to eight years of stipend income in the form of interest bond books, with the intent that when they come to maturity they would be in the position to buy plots of government lands at discount price as well as start their own business. But many samurai were stuck in their traditional ways in a rapidly changing world and advancement of technology in Japan, thus ending the samurai culture.

The film “The Last Samurai”, which was inspired by the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion led by Saigo Takamori and the role of French officer Jules Brunet in the Boshin War dramatizes the end of the samurai era.

This article is written by Aditya Kumar Singh, a student of Loyola Academy, Secunderabad, interning with Deccan Chronicle.