Knowra Bushido Bushido Bushido is an ethic associated with Japan’s samurai, commonly emphasizing loyalty, honor, courage, and disciplined conduct. Its ideals and interpretations changed across periods rather than forming one timeless code.
Samurai : Japan’s hereditary warrior class, which served military and political leaders from the medieval period into the nineteenth century. Bushido is associated with this class, though samurai conduct varied by era and status.
Confucianism : A tradition of thought rooted in Confucius’s teachings, emphasizing ethical relationships, learning, and social responsibility. Confucian ideas supplied a vocabulary for loyalty, duty, hierarchy, and moral cultivation.
Hagakure : A collection of sayings and anecdotes attributed to Yamamoto Tsunetomo, recorded in the early eighteenth century. Its stark reflections on service and death became a famous, though nonrepresentative, Bushido text.
State Shinto : The system of state-sponsored shrine practices and imperial rites developed in modern Japan before 1945. Modern authorities linked imperial loyalty and selected Bushido ideals to state ritual and national identity.
Kamakura period : A period of Japanese history from 1185 to 1333, when the shogunate established samurai rule. The rise of warrior government shaped early expectations of service and martial conduct.
Zen : A school of Mahayana Buddhism that emphasizes meditation and direct insight into experience. Zen practice became associated with samurai discipline, though it was not Bushido’s sole religious source.
The Book of Five Rings : A treatise on strategy, tactics, and martial practice written by Miyamoto Musashi in the seventeenth century. Musashi’s strategic teaching offers a distinct samurai text, less a general moral code than a practical art.
Japanese nationalism : Political movements and ideologies that promote Japanese national identity, sovereignty, or unity. Bushido was recast as evidence of a distinctive national character in modern nationalist accounts.
Tokugawa period : The era of rule by the Tokugawa shogunate from 1603 to 1868, marked by relative peace and social hierarchy. Long peace encouraged samurai writers to frame warrior identity through ethics and self-cultivation.
Shinto : Japan’s indigenous religious tradition, centered on kami, ritual practice, and relationships with place and community. Shinto ideas and rites contributed to later accounts of samurai identity and imperial loyalty.
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