Samurai

The samurai were the hereditary military nobility and retainer class of premodern Japan, formalized as a distinct legal and social status during the Edo period (1603-1868) under the Tokugawa shogunate's rigid four-class social order (samurai, farmers, artisans and merchants), governed by an evolving code of conduct later idealized and systematized as bushido. Samurai status was hereditary and stipended, tied to service to a feudal lord (daimyo), and carried legal privileges including, for much of the period, the right to carry two swords and to execute summary justice against commoners for perceived insult, a documented and legally sanctioned practice (kiri-sute gomen) that was itself constrained by convention and risk of consequence to the samurai involved. The samurai class was formally abolished following the 1868 Meiji Restoration's dismantling of the feudal order, though samurai-descended families and bushido-derived cultural values continued to exert a well-documented influence on modern Japanese social and military culture into the twentieth century.