In the Company of Wolves: Samurai and the Social Order in Early Medieval Japan
Issue Date:
2005-04-13Metadata
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Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesAbstract:
Were the early samurai wolves amidst the fold? This question is less clear-cut
than it might seem, for the samurai were, from the beginning of their history,
at once a source of and a solution to violence and threats to the public order.
Arising in response to polices that privatized the state's military and police
system, this order of professional
mercenaries functioned for nearly 300 years as the “teeth and claws” of the
imperial court and the (civil) noble houses that comprised it. Over the course
of the 12th and 13th centuries, however, warriors wrested control of Japan's
lands and peoples from the court, and ruled the country for the next four
centuries. The early samurai were men whose values centered on the concept
of personal honor, but who killed with casual abandon and equal alacrity in
defense of public or private employers. Their contemporaries described them
as being “of imposing courage, discretion and discrimination”; as well as “like
wild wolves, butchering human flesh and using it as ornaments for their
bodies.”
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Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies
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