Samurai Weren't Warriors of Honor. Bushido Came Later

Before honor, before poetry, before any code at all, the samurai began as hired muscle. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Japan's imperial court needed distant farmland protected — and the aristocrats in the capital had no intention of doing that work themselves. The "honor code" the world thinks it knows wasn't handed down from ancient battlefields. Most of it was written centuries after real samurai had already stopped fighting. ⏱ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 The Warriors the Court Hired 1:51 Survival, Not Honor 4:11 Who Were the Ronin? 6:43 The Code That Came Later 9:03 Myth, War, and the Modern Samurai 📚 Part of the Japan History series on The Hidden Chapter. 🔔 Subscribe to catch the next chapter, and tell me in the comments which myth you want busted next. #Samurai #Ronin #JapaneseHistory