Within the shōen, land was not individually owned (the landlord usually living in faraway Kyoto, but residents were entitled to a certain portion of the produce. To counteract this, the government created a policy formalising the previously-unofficial hereditary estates ( shōen).
Samurai champloo spear girl series#
By the tenth century, military men had added a social dimension, as the practitioners of mounted archery belonged to certain exclusive lineages, often ranked among the lower aristocracy.Īround the beginning of the 1000s, a series of epidemics hit the agricultural population hard, leaving many fields lying fallow. They especially coveted appointment as tax farmers. In the capital they were the “hired assassins” of the highborn, while in the provinces they controlled from their fortified compounds small forces of peasant foot soldiers. As described above, the Heian class system was “frozen” into a familial status hierarchy descendants of the men who had crushed these revolts gained recognition as the exclusive practitioners of the “way of the bow and horse.” These houses encompassed not merely several branches of the Taira and Minamoto, but also the Òkura, the Tachibana, and the Hidesato line of the Fujiwara (not to be confused with the Fujiwara at court). The court rewarded all these men with governorships and rank, thereby making them tax farmers and members of the lower aristocracy. This set the stage for a series of rebellions the Imperial court, whose main military strength was naval, defeated them by setting other criminals against the rebels, and awarding them with ranks and governorships afterwards. (this scene from Mononoke-Hime depicts a much later period when firearms were coming into use, and a ‘red elk’ instead of a horse, but I don’t have a lot of choices for illustrating horse archery :p )Īfter the end of these wars, Japan entered a long period of population decline, leading to knock-on failures in an imperial court unable to gather sufficent revenue which thinned out the existing aristocracy. In other words, these long wars constituted “practice for becoming samurai.” With the cessation of hostilities in 812, the technology of the samurai had come together: they were lightly armored mounted archers wielding curved swords. Because most engagements involved mounted archers, there were many opportunities for the government’s equestrian elite to hone its skills. The emishi curved sword was probably the predecessor of the vaunted samurai slashing weapon. The emishi also wielded a curved sword, instead of the straight one employed by government soldiers.
From these small bands of emishi riders, the court learned that leather armor was better suited to mounted warfare and soon abandoned iron. These long wars helped lay the foundation for the classical samurai way of doing battle. In Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History, William Wayne Farris writes: Although early use of the term “samurai” for low-ranking bureaucrats may date back all the way to the 600s, the samurai as distinct caste are have their origins in Emperor Kanmu’s expansionist wars against the Emishi people in the late 700s/early 800s, during which peasant conscripts proved inadequate and horse archers - whose training and upkeep was very expensive - became dominant in warfare. However, the groups that ultimately became the samurai were not always aristocrats. Until really the last couple of hundred years, economic and social power in Japan was concerned with control over rice. With anime gifs.įor much of Japan’s later history, the country (though by no means always unified as a ‘country’) was effectively ruled by the feudal landlord samurai (侍)or bushi (武士) caste. …hopefully that doesn’t have any egregious errors of grammar or tone.īefore we get to introducing our main features tonight, let’s drop some historical context! By which I mean a lot of historical context. Good evening, everyone! It’s time for anime! This Thursday, the theme is period dramas and samurai films.