Warriors of Medieval Japan: Samurai and Shinobi

Warriors of Medieval Japan: Samurai and Shinobi

  • Submitted By: petka
  • Date Submitted: 01/16/2010 7:32 PM
  • Category: History Other
  • Words: 698
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Warriors of Medieval Japan: Samurai and Shinobi

The island country of Japan had many warriors but unfortunately I can only write about the two most known warriors of “The Age of the Country at War” the samurai and shinobi(ninja)
Samurai were warriors from the island of Japan. They were skilled with many weapons but, that wasn’t the only skills they had they also were skilled calligraphers and artists. They were the lords and aristocrats.
During a samurai’s life there were times of peace and times of war. During the short times of peace a samurai would: train to become better warriors, write poetry, be married, and serve their lord. The marriage of samurai was done by having a marriage arranged by someone with the same or higher rank than those being married. While for those samurai in the upper ranks this was a necessity (as most had few opportunities to meet a female), this was a formality for lower ranked samurai. Most samurai married women from a samurai family, but for a lower ranked samurai marriages with commoners were permitted. In these marriages a dowry was brought by the woman and was used to start their new lives.
During the time of war is when the samurai’s training would shine. Samurai fought primarily on horse-back with bows, and spears. Although those weapons were powerful, the katana was the most prized item for the samurai. The combination of the wakazashi and katana made “bit and small” the badge of the samurai similar to today’s policemen’s sidearm. Battle was done very differently from today’s. Samurai would line-up and challenge each other to one-on-one duels. They would fight until one of the samurai died.


Shinobi were shadowy mercenaries, spies, arsons and assassins of the island nation, Japan. These men are shrouded in fiction and fact no one knows for sure about their origins but most take it back to the 8th century, during which Sun-Tzu(an ancient writer) visited Japan and shared his book “The Art of War”. In this...

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