Samurai Archives Japanese History Podcast

Welcome to our sixth bonus episode, which we'll be splitting into two parts. In part one, Chris and Forest look at the self-serving nature of Bushido and the spectre of death that stalked the Samurai on the battlefield.  It is often claimed that not only did Samurai not fear death, they embraced it, if not actively sought it out on the battlefield, and that Samurai acheived this Zen state both by the nature of being a Samurai, and by incorporating the ideology of Bushido into their Samurai souls.  If you take a step back and actually look at that with a critical eye, it quickly becomes clear that this is patently ridiculous.  Obviously Samurai lords had to rely on their Samurai, and their position and success depended upon convincing men to march out and potentially die on the business end of a sharp spear, so they'd use whatever ploy they could come up with, be it "Bushido" or anything else to accomplish this. So, with this in mind, what was was actually going on?  What the heck was everyone thinking? Shoppi