What would you do if you can’t get ahead in your career, but you can kick ass in a
fight?
There was a time in Japan when samurai weren’t a thing. So how did this class of warriors
arise to later overshadow the civilian government for hundreds of years? Well, it was partly
because of a demand for career warriors, and partly because the civilian government encouraged
it.
Before 792, Japan had a national military.
In 792, Emperor Kanmu got rid of it.
After 792, murder i n t e n s i f i e s.
Hey guys, Linfamy here, taking a break from my day job as a professional panda fluffer
to bring you a video on how the samurai began.
So why did they do away with the whole national army business anyways? Because it became quite
a bother. Before the Heian Period, having a state military seemed like a good idea.
Not only was it used to crush rebellions, they needed a large army to defend against
foreign invaders, mainly the Chinese.
The old national military was not a standing army. It was a militia, where you were called
for duty once in a while, but most of the time you stayed a farmer, or whatever your
normal job was, but it was probably farming. This was cheaper to maintain than a standing
army. The government couldn’t afford to feed thousands and thousands of mouths everyday.
That’s why they need you, to donate just one cent. Your generous penny will feed a
soldier for 20 years.
All males aged 20 to 59 who were fit for duty could be conscripted to serve as soldiers
when needed. On average, the men served about a month each year, spread out across the entire
year. Each province had a regiment.
Since conscripts were mostly untrained peasants, the state military was made up of mostly infantry.
A soldier was basically given a spear and told to stick em with the pointy end.
It wasn’t only infantry though. They tossed in a dash of horse archers for flavor. Horse
archers required training and horses that peasants didn’t have. These warriors were
nobles from well-off families.
Miki: Why did they get rid of the army?
Well they had a lot of problems. People were dodging the call to service. People were deserting
their posts.
Governors of the provinces were using troops for non-military things. They were supposed
to be used for fighting bandits and finding criminals. Apparently, this was not enough
work, so governors started using them for farming and other things that didn’t involve
murder.
We found some funny orders from the court telling governors to dammit, stop using soldiers
to plow your fields, they’re for plowing your people.
The men were mostly unfit for service. They didn’t have the proper training. Over time,
the court even became more lenient in letting soldiers return home if they wanted to. It
began to seek out people with horse archery skills or combat experience. There was a trend
to move away from quantity towards quality, the Reverse YouTube trend, they called it.
In 792, with the possibility of foreign invaders now slim because China was dealing with its
own problems, and with all of the issues in the national military, Emperor Kanmu said
“screw this” and got rid of it.
Miki: But then how did the government protect itself?
So the court didn’t just abandon law enforcement and war, Mama didn’t raise no pansy. They
delegated all that stuff to private military contractors. They created new military offices
and titles and gave them to warlords when they needed warriors or armies to pew pew
and stuff.
Chasing criminals and bandits was better done with small, fast horse units instead of large
armies anyways. And so in the 800s, a class of fighting men, bands of warriors, appeared
on the Japanese stage and they didn’t leave.
War turned out to be a great career path for some nobles who couldn’t normally get ahead.
The Heian court was a political battlefield. There were a small number of political offices,
and a large number of men seeking them. The same dynamic as Tinder, except in the Heian
court, the men actually had a future.
Unfortunately for a lot of nobles, the single biggest factor in determining how high you
could climb the government ladder was...
the family you were born into. Emerge from between
a Fujiwara’s thighs and you started off with a high rank, and had a good chance of
getting into the peak of government. Come out of a House Nobody crotch and you were
lucky to serve tea to a Fujiwara.
There was little social mobility. It was like if high school lasted forever.
Miki: Hurghh!
Sorry.
If you were a low or middle ranked noble, you were shut out from high government posts.
There were also second and third sons of high-ranking men who missed out because eldest brother
existed. You saw your career limited.
Don’t worry, have we got a solution for you: kill people. Being a good warrior could
catch you the eyes and ears of powerful nobles and get you high government positions. An
exciting new career path had opened.
To the stew of Japanese society, another ingredient was added: warriors. This new class started
brewing at the bottom, and would eventually rise to the top and stay there like fat that’s
congealed when the stove has been turned off.
They were called bushi (武士), which means warrior. There’s another popular word which
you may be familiar with: samurai (侍), meaning “one who serves.” A samurai is a bushi,
a warrior, in service of a lord. By the end of the Heian Period, bushi and samurai pretty
much became interchangeable. Warriors were mostly in service of a lord.
The opportunities were endless for a warrior. With the rise of private lands, landowners
needed protection. Governors in the provinces needed warriors to be the muscle for tax collection,
to fight bandits, and to defend against local rebellions. In the capital, they needed bodyguards,
police, and capital guards.
Warriors got together and became gangs. I assume these were little better than bandits
or criminal gangs. The bodyguards for governors seemed to just be paid thugs who went around
bashing heads in.
As the violence business boomed, gangs got bigger. Standards and laws didn’t exist
around these things, so these private warrior gangs tended to be cobbled together mom-and-pop
shops. They recruited people they had around them, or hired them. The quality and skill
of the members could be totally different from one gang to the next.
Charisma and influence would have been important for leaders of these groups. A warlord’s
success depended on his ability to recruit followers.
Miki: So why would people follow these guys?
Well, the main reason to follow a warlord was not honor, but personal gain. It’s hard
to get someone to risk death for you if all they get in return is honor. Leaders promised
whatever benefits they could think of, like leasing land to followers, lending farming
tools, giving out seeds for farming, organizing trade, promising government positions, giving
out Pokemon, sharing the spoils of war, granting personal favors...
These warrior gangs could grow up to a few hundred people. And two or more gangs could
form alliances when they needed larger armies. These alliances were like a house of cards,
they could fall apart at any time. Same with the gangs.
Remember, there were no laws for these things, no government enforcement of contracts. Loyalty
ended when there was a richer or stronger lord you could go and be loyal to.
Military networks had hierarchies. A samurai leader had followers directly under him, and
those followers may have their own followers, until you get to the peons at the bottom.
These guys probably had little love for the guys at the top. If someone left in a huff,
his men probably left with him in several huffs.
Into this environment came those nobles we talked about, the ones with sad career prospects.
Some chose to remain in the capital, staying close to powerful officials, becoming their
bodyguards, seeking their patronage. Others went out into the provinces and grew their
power there.
The Taira and Minamoto clans were part of this new breed of nobles, and they chose both
routes. In the provinces, they grew armies. In the capital, they mingled with the powerful.
They descended from the Imperial Family so they had an advantage when recruiting followers.
Their royal privilege gave them influence in the provinces and they became the main
warrior clans. The samurai had come to Japan, and they were there to stay.
So the samurai class would eventually take over Japan’s government. Now I know what
you’re thinking, “These warriors were running around getting bigger when no one
was looking, and the state didn’t have a national army, so of course the samurai would
take over, it’s obvious.”
Well, that’s really not fair to the poetry-reciting nobles in the Heian capital. Yeah they sit
around memorizing poems and painting their faces, but they weren’t idiots. The samurai
existed throughout the Heian Period. They had hundreds of years in between to overthrow
the government and they didn’t. Because the Heian court did keep a check on samurai
power.
Sure there was the occasional bloody rebellion here and there, but everyone’s had those
in their lives. Heian Japan was a society where the capital was at the top and the road
to power was through the government. Everyone bought into this hierarchy, even the samurai.
Nobles who left the capital for a military career in the provinces still tried their
best to visit the capital and keep their political ties strong, or at the very least, like the
emperor’s Instagram posts.
War was a profession beneath the people in the highest ranks, a path that middle-ranked
nobles took, people who had no other way to climb the political ladder. For most of these
military nobles, military might was not seen as power in itself. It was power in the provinces,
definitely, but not in the capital, not where it mattered. War was a means to climb the
ladder.
The non-military nobles in court fostered this belief by forming strong relationships
with samurai leaders. The Minamoto won the backing of the Fujiwara clan. The Taira won
the backing of retired emperors.
The court bestowed titles to samurai leaders, saying, “Here, now you have legitimacy and
power.” Samurai couldn’t go around attacking anyone. For example, when a samurai named
Taira no Masakado attacked a provincial headquarters, the court called it treason and gave some
military titles to other warriors and told them to go and kill him. The state legitimized
that killing.
The samurai also didn’t see themselves as part of a social group or class. Warlords
identified with their non-military peers more than with other warlords. Most saw themselves
not as warriors who also happened to be nobles in court, but as nobles in court who happened
to engage in war.
That’s why during most of the Heian Period, a military coup by the warrior class was unlikely.
Until it happened, of course, at the end of the Heian.
Hey guys, a lot of this info I got from Karl Friday’s book, Hired Swords, where he talks
about the rise of the samurai. If you want to know about it in excruciating detail, check
out his book. Link in the description.
Alright, time for today’s quiz question. Edo sickness was caused by the lack of what?
I’ll choose a random winner from the correct answers in 24 hours. Winner gets one of these
things. The last winner was Dusk Wolf rawrr. Good luck.
We have some new patrons this week, Emily Harvey and ||endSTART||.
Thank you so much, you guys!
Alright, much love and spread the knowledge!