Despite being deprived of their traditional privileges, many of the samurai would enter the elite ranks of politics and industry in modern Japan.
During the Heian Period , the samurai were the armed supporters of wealthy landowners—many of whom left the imperial court to seek their own fortunes after being shut out of power by the powerful Fujiwara clan. Beginning in the midth century, real political power in Japan shifted gradually away from the emperor and his nobles in Kyoto to the heads of the clans on their large estates in the country. The Gempei War pitted two of these great clans—the dominant Taira and the Minamoto—against each other in a struggle for control of the Japanese state.
The war ended when one of the most famous samurai heroes in Japanese history, Minamoto Yoshitsune, led his clan to victory against the Taira near the village of Dan-no-ura. The triumphant leader Minamoto Yoritomo—half-brother of Yoshitsune, whom he drove into exile—established the center of government at Kamakura.
The establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate, a hereditary military dictatorship, shifted all real political power in Japan to the samurai. Zen Buddhism , introduced into Japan from China around this time, held a great appeal for many samurai. Also during the Kamakura period, the sword came to have a great significance in samurai culture. The strain of defeating two Mongol invasions at the end of the 13th century weakened the Kamakura Shogunate, which fell to a rebellion led by Ashikaga Takauji.
The Ashikaga Shogunate, centered in Kyoto, began around For the next two centuries, Japan was in a near-constant state of conflict between its feuding territorial clans. After the particularly divisive Onin War of , the Ashikaga shoguns ceased to be effective, and feudal Japan lacked a strong central authority; local lords and their samurai stepped in to a greater extent to maintain law and order.
Despite the political unrest, this period—known as the Muromachi after the district of that name in Kyoto—saw considerable economic expansion in Japan. It was also a golden age for Japanese art, as the samurai culture came under the growing influence of Zen Buddhism.
In addition to such now-famous Japanese art forms as the tea ceremony, rock gardens and flower arranging, theater and painting also flourished during the Muromachi period. This period ushered in a year-long stretch of peace and prosperity in Japan, and for the first time the samurai took on the responsibility of governing through civil means rather than through military force.
This relatively conservative faith, with its emphasis on loyalty and duty, eclipsed Buddhism during the Tokugawa period as the dominant religion of the samurai. It was during this period that the principles of bushido emerged as a general code of conduct for Japanese people in general. Though bushido varied under the influences of Buddhist and Confucian thought, its warrior spirit remained constant, including an emphasis on military skills and fearlessness in the face of an enemy.
In a peaceful Japan, many samurai were forced to become bureaucrats or take up some type of trade, even as they preserved their conception of themselves as fighting men. In , the right to carry swords was restricted only to samurai, which created an even greater separation between them and the farmer-peasant class. Sometimes the shogun's family would become weak, and a rebel leader would seize power from them, after which he would be named shogun and would start a new ruling family.
The final shoguns were those of the Tokugawa clan, who came to power in and ruled until Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the dynasty, built a new capital in Edo, the city that is now Tokyo. His grandson Iemitsu completed the national isolation policy. The shoguns also imposed a strict class system, with the samurai warriors at the top, followed by farmers, artisans, and merchants. Called bakufu in Japanese. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.
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