The Ways of the Samurai

For more than 700 years Japan was dominated by a military caste—the samurai. To the Western mind these fearsome warriors—samurai, the masterless ronin, and the assassin ninja—have always been a source of mystery and wonder, combining the idealism of chivalry with military fanaticism. The Ways of the Samurai digs beneath the myth and reveals a truth even more amazing about the men who practiced a discipline drawn from Zen and Confucian ethics—bushido, the way of the warrior. The Ways of the Samurai presents all aspects of a Samurai’s life: from training and culture to armor and weapons. It also recounts the greatest warriors including Oda Nobunaga a man of humble birth who at the time of his death in 1582 controlled thirty of Japan’s sixty-eight provinces and had earned the distinction in Japanese history of being the first of the three great unifiers of Japan; and Takeda Shingen, a warrior whose reputation was so great that, in order to keep rival clans from launching a war against the Takeda clan, news of his death was kept secret for more than a year. And, The Ways of the Samurai includes accounts of the epic battles that raged during the 100-year period in Japanese history known as Sengoku-jidai—“Age of the Country at War.”