Unsurprisingly, this question comes on the back of me playing a recent game called Ghost of Tsushima, where the main character is a samurai who is forced to conduct a guerrilla-style war against an invading force. It depicts him struggling with taking “dishonourable” actions, such as attacking someone from concealment/stabbing an enemy in the back.
I’m just wondering whether there was ever truth in that, or whether it’s just a idealised picture of a time that never was?
'Defining' samurai is a very tricky task due to the ideas that surround the class and its place in society during specific time periods. This being said, I hope to shed some light in reference to the game and its attempts at portraying a class that has seemingly transcended time.
Within the context of Ghost of Tsushima, where it is set during the attempted invasion of Japan by the Mongol Empire, the ideals reflected by Jin Sakai and his Uncle, Lord Shimura, are fabricated for this specific period, ie the Kamakura Period. As /u/SecondTalon mentioned in his mentioning of /u/bigbluepanda, the idea of Bushido was not present in Japan at this time. Bushido is a Late Tokugawa/Early Meiji and beyond construct, (as stated by /u/ParallelPain on a separate thread that has been linked already) that evolved from the initial development of discourse on the topic in the late 19th century, into something that is highly nationalistic due to the warping of old texts, specifically Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure, with State Shinto during the 1930's-1940's. Warriors who were members of the samurai class were more likely to identify themselves as bushi during the Kamakura Period in which the game takes place. In short, yes the games vision is a more romanticized/idealized version of the martial ethics of the samurai class. Singular loyalty to one Lord became increasingly popular during the Late Sengoku Period, on the cusp of the Tokugawa period.
Additionally, the use of the katana as the samurai's 'weapon of choice' is inaccurate, katana became more prevalent during the Edo period as a marker of status. There could be a token of truth to their behavior during 'x' period in history, but its difficult to definitively say. Hope this answer helps!
Sources are:
Oleg Benesch: Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushidô in Modern Japan
Karl F. Friday: Bushido or Bull? A Medieval Historians Perspective on the Imperial Army and Japanese Warrior Tradition
John A. Ferejohn and Frances McCall Rosenbluth: War and State Building in Medieval Japan
Yamamoto Tsunetomo: Hagakure
Hall, S., Keiji, Nagahara, and Yamamura, Kozo: Japan Before Tokugawa : Political Consolidation and Economic Growth
While I cannot answer, I can point to answers like this and this provided by /u/bigbluepanda that mention that Bushido did not exist in that time period. /u/ParallelPain essentially states that Bushido is a creation of the Meiji era revisionism (October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912) - long after the era of the Samurai as a fighting force.