Around 1200, there was a famous Japanese priest. His life was a life of labor, for he was a raconteur and a master of the martial arts, and his life was all about swords and literature. His sword was as famous as his writings, and he went around telling stories of the samurai, always with a lute at his side, so people called him "Lute Master". He traveled all over Japan, rain or shine, on the road. During his long journey, his sword rusted, but his pen became sharper. His grammar, like the blade in his hand, was flamboyant, capricious, and painful, and he could be amazingly careless of the truth, but his full-bloodedness and personal behavior did become the original image of the samurai. Legend has it that in his later years, the Venerable Pipa cut down hundreds of birch trees in order to hone his blade. And in his lifetime, he failed to find an opponent.
The fact that the Venerable Biwa had not found an opponent at that time was in no way due to the fact that there were too few samurai, but rather that his skill with the sword was too great. In his time, the samurai had already become a class, and had become so popular among the people that samurai ronin could be seen everywhere with long swords at their waists, hair in buns, and wearing real drapes. This marked the beginning of the era of samurai politics in Japan.
Bushido emerged in Japan against the backdrop of the Fujiwara clan's authoritarian politics, and the formation of the samurai was associated with the disintegration of the centralized system of power headed by the emperor and the development of the manor system. With the decline of centralized power, the conscription system that had been in place since the Daika Reform became less stringent, and in the early 9th century the "kenko system" was introduced, which made military service the preserve of the nobility, and the quality of the army fell into disrepair. At this time, the rise of manor houses in Japan, the owners of the manor for the territory and security, and, slowly separated some farmers to train, and later simply set up a special defense responsible for the samurai regiment. Some temples and shrines also organized "monk soldiers". But the establishment of the manor armed forces, posing a threat to the local, aware of the local forces also organized armed forces. Generally, they were formed by the local rich and powerful, and were called "ronpai, ronzong".
The emergence and strengthening of the samurai power, from the early 11th century gradually formed beyond the scope of the manor of the regional armed groups. Numerous scattered samurai gathered in one place and formed a samurai group under a single command. The leader of a samurai group was called a "tsuke" and his subordinates were called "shuko". The samurai group had a strong sense of clan and followed the orders of the chief, practicing a master-slave relationship. The samurai's bravery on the battlefield and dedication to their masters were the basic requirements for both the individual samurai and the samurai order, and new concepts such as "the martial arts style" and "the way of the bow and arrow" were developed, which became important ideological pillars for the maintenance of the samurai organization! The rise of the samurai coincided with the transformation of Japan from a legalistic society to an aristocratic society. It was also the time when feudalism began to take over. The rise of the samurai was not only a struggle for power between the nobles and the samurai, but also included the emergence of the samurai from the local rich farmers. At that time, the five samurai, who were local landowners, had their roots in the land. They were appointed as chiefs of constables, shoguns, etc., and embraced famous samurai warriors as their backers.
But it wasn't until the end of the Warring States period, at the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, that the term "bushido" first appeared in writing.
The purpose of bushido was similar to that of medieval Western chivalry: to set a concept of survival for warriors, elevating them from the status of hired killers. A true believer in Bushido honors the virtues of integrity, fortitude, simplicity, courage, courtesy, honesty, and loyalty. As long as a samurai was faithful to his vocation, he was honored. This belief in personal honor at any cost made the samurai not shy away from self-sacrifice, which could be described as unnecessary. The samurai who fought bravely despite being surrounded by enemies was not sacrificing his own life by the standards of bushido. Such behavior was a tangible expression of the samurai's heartfelt loyalty. From a modern point of view, this may seem strange or even suicidal. In fact, it was not. It was not at all unusual compared to European chivalry. The samurai, y influenced by Bushido, simply put aside personal life and death when considering their next move. Life and death were secondary to everything else, and making one's actions effective was the right thing to do. It was better to try and die in the process than to not try at all, because the samurai did not have to think about his own gain or loss at all, but went forward. However, this spirit still prevented some samurai from running away from the battlefield (they were flesh and blood, after all), and Bushido did not mean that a man had to fight to the death, regardless of his chances of victory, and put himself in a difficult situation. A samurai must be wise and courageous, and it is wrong and foolish to take a life unnecessarily. Suicidal behavior, such as that which often occurs when the defenders of a castle open the castle to meet the enemy, must be re-examined in terms of Bushido. Going out to meet the enemy besieging the castle was suicide, but to hold them at bay and give the lord time to repel them was a sign of loyalty and valor, not a self-destructive impulse.
The last two hundred Tokugawa defenders of Fushimi Castle in 1600, who opened the castle and kept on meeting the Western army, were precisely this kind of valor! Of course, this spirit can also be used to explain the suicidal attacks of the Japanese defenders on all the small Pacific islands chanting Banzai in World War II. Bushido still lives on in the hearts and minds of the Japanese Army and Navy of the twentieth century. Bushido, like any other formal code of behavior, has its negative aspects. Samurai often treated their captives cruelly because the captors had abandoned Bushido. Many of the samurai's enemies were executed after combat for this reason alone. Unlike medieval Europe, where nobles and knights who were captured (and often imprisoned for years) could be ransomed, the Japanese never fought in a similar way by exchanging money for prisoners. A samurai or daimyo captured alive on the battlefield usually died an ignominious death at the hands of his captor.
There are three main categories of books on bushido that have been handed down from the Warring States period. One was the secret books of martial arts, where the definition of bushido was drastically cut down to martial skills. The Monogatari anthology, a book published in 1735, focuses on the martial skills that a samurai would need to learn on the battlefield. The subtitle, "The Way of the Armor," correctly explains the book's content. Although it was written long after the Warring States period, the martial arts techniques written in this book are still very effective after a hundred years in the conservative Tokugawa Shogunate. The second is philosophical thinking, which can be used to achieve any goal by applying the spirit of the battlefield to everyday life. The third is the practical science of running a castle and commanding an army of samurai, but it also mentions how the samurai applied the spirit of Bushido to their daily lives. Kato Kiyomasa's standard that "a samurai should not dance, and a samurai who dances wildly...should commit hara-kiri" may seem a bit harsh, but perhaps it means that a true samurai had to be both educated and skilled in martial arts. Not only did he have to be proficient in swordsmanship, but he also had to be skilled in social etiquette, including the tea ceremony and the art of poetry. There were also poetry contests in which the samurai indulged, sometimes even on the battlefield! The samurai would start with an opening line (the first line), which the opponent had to follow immediately. Subtle puns and metaphors were highly valued in these battles of wits. Of course Japan was a fairly affluent country and the samurai were the upper class of society and had the privilege of experiencing all the finer things in life. Of course, the daimyo who lived this life were arguably the richest landowning powerhouses in the world at the time.
The so-called spirit of Bushido was an unwritten law, passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, or recorded by well-known martial artists, which became the motto of later samurai.
Bushido is not a clean spirit, it is a complex, chaotic and extreme sense of survival, and emotional tendencies, generated by a shadowy people, in a parochial island. In the narrow space of existence, it had the ability to retain character or attach itself to the world, but when it developed, it manifested itself in its extreme cruelty, which led to world disasters, WWII being the extreme example.