The reality behind the stereotypical image of Japan’s fearsome elite warriors is more nuanced than we are led to believe. It is thought the samurai developed as a social class in medieval Japan, when the term could encompass lowly foot soldiers or mercenaries, and often untrustworthy ones at that. A far cry from the skilled fighters who supposedly pledged undying loyalty to their lord, and followed a code of honour.

In fact, it was during peacetime that the image of the samurai came to be defined when their role as warriors was no longer necessary. During Japan’s aggressive imperial expansion in the early 20th Century, the samurai ideal was once again manipulated for nationalistic purposes.

Rajan Datar’s guests include Michael Wert, who has published several books on Japan’s warrior class, including Samurai: A Concise History. He is associate professor of East Asian History at Marquette University in Milwaukee; Marcia Yonemoto, professor and hair of the Department of History at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan, which examines the role of women in Japan’s military-bureaucratic state; and Polina Serebriakova, whose doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge in the UK focuses on warrior leaders in medieval Japan.

Producer: Fiona Clampin

(Image: Illustration portrait of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Credit: Photo 12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)