Santa Fe JIN (Japanese Intercultural Network) celebrates the Samurai culture in our sixth Japanese Cultural Festival. Why has the JIN selected the Samurai theme for this year? This description of the Samurai Culture may help explain.
The word Samurai is an eighth century term for the class of professional warriors who served the aristocratic "daimyos" or landowners of Japan. Through centuries of warfare, the ever-shifting alliances of Samurai and daimyos struggled relentlessly for land and power. At last, from the Sengoku Jidai, "the age of battles", beginning in the late 15th century, there emerged three extraordinary leaders who pursued the vision of unifying Japan under a single ruler: Oda Nobunaga, his lieutenant and successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and finally Tokugawa Ieyasu who was also known as the Tokugawa Shogun. It was during Tokugawa's reign that Japan finally enjoyed the nearly 250 years of peace, prosperity, and isolation which came to define Japanese culture.
Sometime in the 16th century, the Shogun ordered every daimyo to travel to Edo castle, then the center of Japan's culture and government, once every two years. At first these assemblies were performed as a military drill, to test loyalty and readiness, but over the course of time these processions to Edo, now known as Tokyo, became opportunities for the daimyos to extravagantly demonstrate their welth. The daimyos realized this biennial display called for their Samurai to become more refined and educated, and warriors thus became propagators of the arts.
During this Edo period, the code of Bushido (way of the warrior) developed, giving meaning, a code of conduct and identity to a Samurai class no longer needed to fight in peacetime. It was also during this period that many of the arts of Japan such as Ikebana, (flower arrangement), Shodo (calligraphy), and Sumie (ink painting) flourished. Chado (tea ceremony) was made popular by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the most important leaders of the late 16th century Samurai history. Samurai also wrote poetry: the most famous poet from the feudal era, Matsuo Basho, was born into a Samurai family. Also during this time, bu-do (the martial ways) such as Kendo, Judo, and Aikido evolved.
The era of the Samurai ultimately ended due to the modern world forcing itself on Japan in the mid-19th century, but the ideals, spirit, strength, and culture of the Samurai never died.