It’s often the claim that in Chinese and Korean history you do have soldiers and warrior specialists. Is it unique to Japan, this setup where you have the emperor and the nobility and then, separately, a warrior class? They still have to negotiate power with the court and nobility in Kyoto and the emperor, but it’s clear that they’re the dominant partner in that partnership. I’d say once we get into the late 13th and early 14th century, then the warrior regime really starts to dominate they become the hegemonic power at that point. It’s in maybe the 9th or 10th century that we have noble families who are themselves warriors-and that’s where we get the beginnings of warriors as politically influential people-and when most people would start talking about the samurai as a group: a very small and not very cohesive group, but a group nonetheless.Īnd when do they become completely dominant? Yes, samurai is ‘one who serves.’ So in its original meaning, it could actually have referred to people who were not warriors it could refer to non-warrior servants-although even in pre-modern Japan, it’s mostly associated with warriors. That’s what it means in Japanese, isn’t it? That’s when you have a very specific group of people known as those who serve the court and that’s the definition of samurai. It’s really in around the 9th century that you have warriors who are working for the nobility and the emperor in Kyoto. Others would argue, ‘a soldier doesn’t necessarily make a samurai.’ One of the big debates used to be, ‘When can we begin talking about the samurai?’ Some authors argued that as soon as you have warriors and an army, you have the origins of the samurai. Yes, from their origins until their fall. So you’re also trying to chart their evolution over time? Also, at some point, the samurai become a caste and being a samurai becomes something very rigid-whereas early on, it’s not. We don’t have as many sources for the medieval period, but then getting into the pre-modern period we have a lot more. In the book, you’re looking at the samurai over nearly a thousand years. But, broadly conceived, they’re warriors who are legitimately recognized as warriors by whoever is in power at a particular time, whether that’s the court centered in Kyoto or a warrior regime in the form of a shogunate. In Japan they wouldn’t necessarily use the word samurai and historians wouldn’t use the word ‘samurai’ because it has a very specific meaning. ‘Samurai’ is the popular term in the West to refer to warriors in general. Do you want to start by telling us who they really were? In the book’s introduction you talk about “a global fantasy” about the samurai. You’ve just written this very nice, brief history of the samurai, it’s just over a hundred pages long. Foreign Policy & International Relations.

Way of the samurai book