Writing a story for school. Can any1 give me information on samurais?

[kais_gurl]

Well, I need to know a few things. Like, what they eat, what kind of places they live in, can both genders be samurais, their clothes, ect. Thank you if you help in my thanks I shall add your name
-Leigha Comer

[pgsmith]

Typing "samurai" in a Google search produced 5 references to samurai history on the first page. Perhaps a little research of your own for your school work is in order?

P.S. The plural of samurai is samurai. The Japanese do not add 's' to the end of their words.

Cheers,

[Steve Williams]

Originally posted by kais_gurl
Well, I need to know a few things. Like, what they eat, what kind of places they live in, can both genders be samurais, their clothes, ect. Thank you if you help in my thanks I shall add your name
-Leigha Comer

Welcome to e-budo......


We have a great board here, with answers to many tough questions about martial arts and Japanese history........ most people are more than willing to provide answers.....

But I agree with pgsmith....... you are 20 years old for gods sake... do a little research [sheeeshhhh]........

If you have any specific samurai related questions to which the answers are really difficult to find, then please ask, and you will probably get an informed answer...... but basic "what is a samurai" questions....... do yourself a favour and read a little.

[Jock Armstrong]

Library books- anything by Stephen Turnbull. General Japanese history books on Japan won't give you much. As a wise man already said- use your search engine.

[John Lindsey]

Leigha,

After you do your research and type up your article, you should post it here or send someone a copy to proof it for you. While there are a lot of online sites full of information, there are a lot of bad sites out there too.

Oh, and don't bring up the "Samurai studied Zen" myth that everyone loves to write about...

[don]

As a leg up on the suggestion that you do some research, I would recommend searching this site or Iaido-L (check Google) for the names Karl Friday, Thomas Conlan, William Bodiford. There are lots more, but browsing the fora will clue you as to them.

Ganbatte! (Work hard!)

[Chiburi]

Originally posted by John Lindsey
[T]he "Samurai studied Zen" myth that everyone loves to write about...

They didn't? Or am I confusing Zen Buddhism and Zen as we know it? I think there's someone else here who needs to get back in front of a book and start reading :rolleyes: :smash:

Cheers,

[don]

Originally posted by Chiburi
They didn't? Or am I confusing Zen Buddhism and Zen as we know it? I think there's someone else here who needs to get back in front of a book and start reading :rolleyes: :smash:

Cheers,

http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=4749&highlight=bodiford

We had this discussion recently on AikiWeb (above). The gist, quoted from there is:

...Suzuki overemphasized Zen’s influence is relevant here. One researcher tried to trace the Zen influence in gardens that Suzuki vaunted so highly. The earliest reference he could find was the 20 century...in a tourist brochure...written in English...by a foreign woman...living next door... to Suzuki. How much Zen was there actually in the air that these Bushi were soaking up?


Another poster wrote: "Historically and culturally, Japanese martial arts happens to be closely linked to Zen. That is the way it just happens to be...."

According to what I’ve read, it would be more accurate to say that “Historically and culturally, Japanese martial art-ISTs happens to be closely linked to Zen.”

There were two great outcroppings of Zen in Jpn history, Kamakura and Edo. According to Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 85) by Martin Collcutt (http://www.amazon.com/exe...=books&n=507846), the Hojo, having wrested power from the Emperor in the 12 century, needed religious, political, and cultural legitimation. The other Buddhist sects were already connected to the imperial household and thus their loyalty could at best be suspect. Zen, introduced to Jp in the 8 th century, was suddenly useful (its purported sword/mind benefits having languished lo those four centuries unrecognized). Two of the Hojo seemed actually to practice it, but they were the exception. The chief values of Zen to the warriors was–

1) cultural legitimation (the trappings of spiritualism and the insight of their Chinese Ch’an masters in matters of Chinese literature–Kyoto, the imperial household, had Jpn literature in its pocket)

2) political: these Ch’an masters would travel on behalf of the Shogun to China on diplomatic missions and provide intelligence concerning matters on the continent.

3) funerary ceremonies

The Ashikaga Shoguns would continue this convenient association for the same reasons.

In Edo (1600-1867), Zen might, without injustice, be considered a kind of urban affectation. Purported to train the Bushi to fight better, when the rustics came to town absent this marvelous mind-swordsmanship, they handed their enlightened citified cousins their heads. Indeed, when the Shogunate established it’s military academy to defend itself against the coming revolution, it installed these sorts as teachers, very embarrassing to mind/swordsmen Yagyu, hereditary sword tutors to the Shogun. To be sure, there were people who claimed a Zen component, but scholars, e.g., speak of Yamaoka Tesshu as an exception during that time, as he actually did go to a temple and actually did do Zen with more than his tongue. (See especially Hurst, G.C. "From heiho to bugei: The emergence of the martial arts in Tokugawa Japan" in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts, VOLUME 2 ~ NUMBER 4 ~ 1993 )


Another poster wrote: "In regards to Zen and its connection to martial arts, and here, I am addressing tradtional Japanese martial arts, please do your homework and go through all of the accepted historical documents and records regarding Japanese martial art throughout its entire history in Japan. Much of what I say here is a product of such painstaking reserach over the last 40 years."

Actually, I would be interested as to why this poster's experience going through the accepted historical documents and records regarding Japanese martial art throughout its entire history in Japan deviates so greatly from those quoted below:

Karl Friday:

“Be careful of the oft-repeated contention that Zen was widely practiced among the samurai. It was not. The most common form of Buddhism among the medieval and early modern samurai--as among the peasantry and townsmen of the same periods--was Pure Land. The form of Buddhism that most influenced the bugei, was Mikkyo. “ (http://listserv.uoguelph....iaido-l&P=R7653)


Meik Skoss:

Interesting question about the relationship of Zen to koryu bujutsu. Probably the best sources to examine on the subject would be the densho of different ryu. That being said, there's an almost total dearth of Zen-stuff in any of them. What one does find are references to kami (Shinto deities), devas and bosatsus (Buddhist worthies of various sorts), direct reference to mikkyo practices. If one takes these documents as reliable sources of valid information about warrior concerns, then Zen is pretty far down the list, ranking somewhere between absolute and asymptotic zero.

Oh, yes, what about Herrigel's and Suzuki's references to the importance of zazen and satori in budo or other Japanese traditional arts? I defer to Wayne's World for a definitive answer: "and monkeys might fly out of your butt." In other words: NOT!!

William Bodiford:

This conclusion is absolutely correct. I would emphasize the phrase "almost total dearth" rather than "absolute zero," though. Initiation documents passed down in traditional martial lineages predominately reference combined exoteric-esoteric (ken-mitsu) forms of tantric Buddhism and Chinese learning (especially Daoist magic). There are rare examples, though, of martial initiation documents (densho) that contain subsection titles and contents identical to the initiation documents (kirikami) that were passed down in medieval Zen lineages. Just estimating from memory, I guess I have seen these kinds of initiation documents only in about 3 of the 50 or so collections of koryu document collections that are available in publications. These documents might represent only one or two of about 30 or 40 initiations taught in those particular martial art lineage and taken together they correspond only to about three or four of the hundreds of initiation documents taught in Zen lineages. (Regarding initiation documents in medieval Japanese Zen, please read my book: Soto Zen in Medieval Japan, 1994, Univ. of Hawaii Press.) A comparative examination of these overlapping documents would result in a completely different version of "Zen and the martial arts" than commonly imagined by Western writers.

(For the whole of the very intersting thread excerpted here (Skoss/Bodiford and more of Friday), see http://www.e-budo.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=5971&highlight=skoss+almost+total+dearth)

[Joseph Svinth]

It is very much a work in progress, but see also http://climbtothestars.org/pim/ZenJudoAikido?PHPSESSID=27af81490b6b3a6df9e163ac95d5990b .