Question: How Can I Be a Samurai?

How do you become a samurai? For starters, you go back in time.

The samurai as a class were abolished beginning in 1873. All samurai at the time became "shizoku", which basically just meant they kept some of their previous salaries but lost most other rights, such as the right to wear a katana in public. The last samurai conflict was the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, which the Tom Cruise movie "The Last Samurai" is very loosely based on. After this point there were no samurai.

So step number one to becoming a samurai is to go back in time to when they existed. Better set your time machine to a period sometime before roughly 1586, when Hideyoshi gained power. He created a law that made samurai a hereditary position, meaning no one not from a samurai family could become a samurai from that point forward.

Now if instead of becoming a samurai, you just want to experience some samurai things, well here are a few ideas:

• Learn kendo. Kendo is the art of swordsmanship. You practice it using bamboo swords and protective armor. If you want to learn "samurai fighting", kendo might be for you.

• Learn iaido. Iaido is the art of sword drawing. If you want to learn how to draw a sword like they do in the samurai movies, this art may be for you.

• If you just want to dress in samurai armor and pose for a photo, you can find places to do that pretty much all over Japan.

Other thoughts:

Hagakure, written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo in the early 18th century, is perhaps required reading for wannabe samurai. There are several public domain copies floating around. Look on Amazon, iBooks, or Project Gutenberg.

Also recommended would be Yukio Mishima’s commentary on this book, On Hagakure, The Way of the Samurai. He was as close to a modern-day samurai as we are likely to get, even going so far as to kill himself by seppuku. He was a strange guy, but his commentary on the book is wonderful.

There is also koryu, which we might define as old-school martial arts. This is the kill or be killed, no training gloves, you WILL get hurt—possibly very badly. Jujitsu instead of judo, kenjitsu instead of kendo, and so on. If you really want this option, you have to speak Japanese perfectly, be in Japan, and have to find a master who will teach you and introduce you into this world. In other words, you have to really really really want this and be willing to dedicate yourself 100% to it. If you can't do that, stick to kendo and iaido. Or just the photo session.

Ask Me Japan

Do you have any questions about Japan that you just can't find the answer to and are itching to know? Ask me in the comments and if I have any insight I'll address your question in another post.

Thank you for reading. See you next time!

❦

	David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time. More?

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