This month's issue deals with the warriors. And why not. There are warriors everywhere. Infact, in each one of us, resides a warrior. A samurai. And as a samurai, I know we can and we shall overcome everything together. As a community that holds onto the beacon of hope, of courage. Of love.

I'm delighted to present SamuraiPunk to you.

Technically, Samurai (侍) were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the 12th century to their abolition in the 1870s. They were paid lucrative salaries as the retainers of the daimyo (the great feudal landholders). As the samurai (or bushi) were the warriors of premodern Japan, they made up the ruling military class that eventually became the highest ranking social caste of the Edo Period (1603-1868). They had high prestige and special privileges such as wearing two swords.

The samurai were the only Japanese citizens legally allowed to own swords (with the exception of swords having blades less than 24 inches, which were legally considered wakizashi and legal for non-samurai to own), causing wearing both a long and short sword (called the daishō, literally "big-little") to become a symbol of the samurai.

Samurai employed a range of weapons such as bows and arrows, spears and guns, but their main weapon and symbol was the sword.

Strongly Confucian in nature, they cultivated the bushido codes such as loyalty to one's master, self discipline, respectful, ethical behavior, unflinching loyalty which led them to engage in many local battles.

During the Edo era, they also became the stewards and chamberlains of the daimyo estates, gaining managerial experience and education.

In the 1870s samurai families comprised 5% of the population. The Meiji Revolution ended their feudal roles, and they moved into professional and entrepreneurial roles.

Many samurai were also drawn to the teachings and practices of Zen Buddhism.

In Japanese, they are usually referred to as bushi (武士, [bɯ.ɕi]), meaning 'warrior', or buke (武家), meaning 'military family'.

According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning 'to wait upon', 'accompany persons' in the upper ranks of society, and this is the true of the original term in Japanese, saburau. In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean 'those who serve in close attendance to the nobility', the Japanese term 'saburai' being the nominal form of the verb." As stated by Wilson, an early reference to the word samurai appears in the Kokin Wakashū, the first imperial anthology of poems, completed in the 10th century.

By the end of the 12th century, the word samurai became almost entirely synonymous with bushi, and the term was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai were usually associated with a clan and their lord, and were trained as officers in the art of war and grand strategy.

Although women could be and frequently were warriors, the social and military rules for them were somewhat different than for men. On the rare occasion when female samurai do appear in works set in the feudal period of Japanese history, expect them to be Yamato Nadeshiko ladies of war who are culturally refined, elegant, and capable of fighting.

A popular misconception holds that the samurai were the counter-culture to the Ninja; that is, whereas samurai tend to came from the upper classes and were honorable warriors who fight face to face and use no "dirty" tricks, ninjas tend to be from the lower classes, were skilled at unorthodox warfare and would not hesitate to use backstabbing, poison, or spying to gain the upper hand. This is commonly seen in works featuring ninjas, in which samurai and ninja were either depicted as mortal enemies, or ninjas being mercenaries hired by the samurai to do the unsavory wetwork honorable samurai would not do. 

However, the above-mentioned depiction is not historically accurate. Actually, while some ninjas were mercenaries, most ninjas were actually samurai themselves. The idea that the ninja were something separate from the rest of Japanese society came about during the Edo period( also called the peaceful period, as it was a 250 year long period of peace), after Tokugawa Ieyasu became shogun and unified the country. Edo-period samurai started assuming the values of the court-aristocracy, while simultaneously resurrecting centuries-disused aspects of the samurai honor code from before the Mongol invasion, and didn't like to talk about actual warfare—they also pretended they were primarily swordsmen, while the main roles of the samurai in war were actually Horse Archers, archers and spearmen.

Many modern historians believe the entire concept of ninjas being the counter-culture to the samurai was invented by Edo-period novelists to avoid showing recently gentrified samurai involved in anything remotely dishonorable.

While the samurai numbered less than 10% of then Japan's population, their teachings are still relevant today in both everyday life and in modern Japanese martial arts.

Moving on to some SamuraiPunk stories, have a look:

- Cymurai by madeindna on Wattpad:

https://www.wattpad.com/story/259513503-cymurai

- Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa.

A Japanese novel written by Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi was serialized in 1935 in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

- Shogun: A Novel of Japan by James Clavell

Shōgun is a 1975 novel by James Clavell. It is the first novel of the author's Asian Saga. A major bestseller, by 1990 the book had sold 15 million copies worldwide. Beginning in feudal Japan some months before the critical Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Shōgun gives an account of the rise of the daimyo "Toranaga". Toranaga's rise to the Shogunate...

- Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsouka

- The Samurai by Anthony J. Bryant

- Autumn Bridge by Takashi Matsouka

- Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa.

- The Way of the Traitor by Laura Joh Rowland. 

It is a novel by Laura Joh Rowland and the third entry in the Sano Ichiro series. In 1690 Nagasaki, Sano must crack his most sensitive case yet as he sets about to discover who killed a Dutch trader whose body has washed up on the shore of a small island famed for its "barbarians."

- Sam Samurai by Jon Scieszka and Adam McCauley.

This (2004) is a book by Jon Scieszka and Adam McCauley and is an entry in the Time Warp Trio chapter book series. An accidental haiku sends Sam, Joe and Fred back to the beginnings of the Tokugawa Shogunate, in 1600 Japan....

Feel free to recommend me some of your favorite Samurai Punk stories in the comments below or by commenting inline here.

I believe this is it for now. Until we meet the next time in June with another fantastic Tevun-Krus issue, this is Nab, signing off 🙂

Take care, stay safe, protected and happy =]

Nablai