In discussion of samurai in contrast to knights of medieval Europe, several ideas need to be examined to come to a precise conclusion about their similarities and differences. First it is important to establish exactly what ‘medieval’ means in regards to Japanese history. For this of course, I am going to focus specifically on the Edo period samurai, and how their behavior contrasts with that of a medieval knight or landed nobility in Europe.

To add a layer of depth, first let us take a look at Edo at a glance. It is a roughly 265 year period from (1600{1603} – 1868), and during this time, with the exception of a few incidents, was a very peaceful period for Japan. This peace allowed the samurai class to develop a ‘codified’ ethic, or code of conduct by which they would follow. Of course, this was a process that took time to occur, as the samurai were nominally a warrior elite at the beginning of the Edo period following the end of the Sengoku period. This code of ethics, so to speak, is known as bushido, or the way of the warrior (bushi = warrior, do = way). Now it must be understood from the gate that the term bushido was not commonly used by those members of the samurai class at the time, they would actually say something more along the lines of “I am a bushi”, rather than something like “I follow the code of bushido”, per Oleg Benesch’s work, Bushido: the formation of a martial ethic in Late Meiji Japan. Within this overarching idea forming over the course of the Edo period, it also has to be mentioned that samurai served one lord strictly in most scenarios, with the exception of their respective domain being abolished thereby making them ronin, or masterless samurai.

At the start of the Edo period, Tokugawa Ieyasu ultimately took control over Japan following the events of the Sengoku period. His control is curious, in that he never fully defeated every rival daimyo in Japan, so he really only controlled 40% of the land under his rule as shogun. As a result of this, a scenario forms where there is a sort of semi-independence among the daimyo, where they have full control over their domains affairs. Yet at the same time, each domain submitted to the Tokugawa Bakufu. As my Japanese History Professor, Donald Roden, once put it “Japan has characteristics of a feudal system, yet also has a centralized form of government.” At this point, this is where the hierarchy is ‘established’ (Tokugawa was not the first shogun in Japanese history, he advanced the existing hierarchy among samurai). Under Tokugawa, the economy of Japan became a highly systemized agrarian economy based on rice production. The stipend which members of the samurai class would receive is known as a koku, or bushel of rice. For the daimyo of a domain, who are what could be viewed as landed gentry, generally speaking they received no less than 10,000 koku. The amount a samurai serving underneath a daimyo received was based on factors such as family line, (certain families known as fudai, where they have been loyal to one lord/family for an extended period of time; this also played a role within how different domains were categorized by Tokugawa) job, or even domain (some domains were wealthier than others). In a sense, this system is relatively similar to the ones in medieval Europe, but I do not know enough about that subject to do a direct comparison, and I don’t want to make an egregious error. In addition to the designation of koku, Tokugawa created the Alternate Attendance System, which mandated daimyo split time between their domain and the capital of Edo (similar to how King Louis XIV made his aristocrats reside in Versailles). This was a move to control the power bases of the daimyo, by having their heir and primary wife permanently residing in Edo period, to keep a watchful eye for any form of insurrection. Of course, this wasn’t a policy that was passed right out of the gate, but it is a fundamental part of the Tokugawa baku-han system. By the end of the Edo period the government is highly systemized and extremely organized until what I argue to be the last 60 years of the Edo period.

Moving forward, regarding the behavior of the samurai things get a bit more complicated. At the beginning, samurai were samurai, but they were warriors, not refined bureaucrats. Many of the samurai living during the early years of the Edo period had seen some form or another of warfare, as just prior was the Sengoku, or warring states period. At this point, while a ‘code’ had begun to show itself, it wasn’t an established form of behavior across the board. Prior to the Edo period, a samurai’s relationship was more of an in tandem affair, where it was based off favor shown by the lord and benefit gained by the samurai. Come Edo, in times of peace, these samurai became educated by law of Tokugawa, and served one lord, complete loyalty regardless of personal gain for the samurai. This shift is where the idea of servitude becomes the most important thing to a samurai. In particular, while the figure of Miyamoto Musashi is interesting, as his work Go Rin no Sho, or The Book of Five Rings was the first written ‘code’ of behavior for the individual samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo fully defines these parameters. Tsunetomo lived during the transition from Early to Late Edo, and his work Hagakure was published in 1716. As I noted before, Early Edo had samurai who had seen combat, by the time of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, which is Late Edo, it is only generational samurai who remain, wholly educated and indoctrinated into the Tokugawa system. The Hagakure very much emphasizes the importance of refining oneself in order to preserve the honor of the lord in which they served. This leads to an interesting dichotomy in the fact that while they were loyal to the lord of their domain without a fault, they were also loyal to the Tokugawa shogunate. The idea behind bushido was based around servitude to ones lord during the Edo period, yet there was also innate loyalty to the Shogun. Collectively speaking, Hagakure became a guideline for the proper behavior for samurai across the board, addressing things such as personal hygiene, poise, mannerisms, education, and the like. Behind this message of undying loyalty, ironically enough, is the idea of dying for loyalty. To die with a purpose was the greatest thing a samurai could do, rather than dying a ‘dog’s death’. Honor was a concept tied to dying for the samurai. Their cleanliness was so if they did die, they would be presentable doing so, thus preserving their lord’s honor. As much as it was a personal code, it was also a societal code in order to preserve the existing hierarchy of the daimyo. In comparison to the knights of Europe, I am sure there are similarities within each system, but there are also stark differences as explained above.

Edit: per the comments of u/ParallelPain on another thread, I must mention that Hagakure was not well recieved at the time it was written, and rather became popular in the ~1930s. So while the textual analysis is correct, the application is a bit skewed.