The Creation of The Samurai

Note: Much of my research here comes from The Taming of the Samurai by Eiko Ikegami, as well as the great videos from Let's Ask Shogo (including this one).

So I spent some time talking about the history of Japan up until 1180, and about the Chinese philosophies that infused the aristocratic culture of the Heian period.  But Legend of the Five Rings is about samurai, so it is important to know where they came from.  

By the end of the Heian period, the "Height" of Japanese Imperial Society,  three powerful philosophical/religious forces were holding sway over the land: 
​The first was  early Shinto, the religion of the common people.  Originating with the Jōmon and Yayoi,  this religion saw the world as filled with supernatural and natural spirits to be appeased, some hostile, some friendly, and all worthy of reverence, and some fear.  Because of the actions of Himiko, the head of this religion,  though in a very distant, "in name only" form, was the Emperor,  who officially owned all the land of Japan.  
The second was the Chinese Philosophies,  particularly Confucianism,  first brought to Japan by wealthy political refugees,  and later actively imported by the Imperial government in the form of scholars and advisors as a way of centralizing and modernizing Japan.
The third was Buddhism,  brought by monks eager to evangelize, but supported by the Imperial Court also as a way of centralizing control of Japan.
There were also Taoist spiritualists, but they tended to make their way up into the mountains as hermits and did not play a major part in the building of Japan.

But where were the Samurai?

​Prior to the samurai, all land was officially owned by the Emperor, who portioned it out to all free men in exchange for their service and taxes (preferably in rice). However,  it was very hard to make the farmers give up their taxes...rice agriculture took a lot of land development, and the farmers would just flee to the hills anyway.  So the Emperor made an edict that would allow anyone to permanently own those lands that they "reclaimed" as long as they paid the tax on that land, which was called a shōen.  "Reclamation" meant "convert the land over to rice production and compel taxes out of it."  And if small developed plots happened to be in a larger 'reclaimed' area and got lost in the paperwork? A convenient mistake.

 Once the shōen were established, the next order of business was for the ones holding the shōen to try to get out of paying taxes themselves.  To this end, they did all kinds of schemes, like pretending the shōen was really controlled by the keepers of a shrine, masking their wealth in untaxable goods, and so on, thus keeping the territory and wealth while diminishing the wealth of the Imperial Court.  

This edict suited the Imperial Courtiers, who had the money to buy off undeveloped areas in the developed south, hire mercenaries to collect taxes, and pay laborers to convert the land, while they themselves worked in Kyoto with the Emperor.   And it suited the Buddhist monks, who had large numbers of devoted followers who would work the land around their monasteries , and encouraged them to strengthen their military might.  Shrines not being taxable helped them a lot, and the Imperial Court feared the divine retribution involved with contradicting the monks.

But it also suited strongmen with martial and military skill who could carve out sections of the undeveloped tribal territory to the north and bring in (or compel)  labor to convert the land.  And unlike the courtiers, these strongmen stayed with their land, and so were able to pass it on to their families, especially if they had links, however tenuous, to the Imperial court and noble families.   While the court and Confucianism despised these warriors for their culture of violence and being unclean with blood on their hands, having lands meant economic power, which made the warriors more socially acceptable.  

Eventually, the Buddhist monks and their holdings became powerful enough that leaders among the monks looked at claiming the Imperial throne. The Imperial Court then hired more warrior-trained men to protect their holdings for them, with those warriors then using courtly influence to rise in wealth and power.   Others who had claimed shōen needed to protect their territories from others. They hired more warriors with greater strength, and those warriors grew more powerful as the shōen's wealth increased.  Finally there were warriors who had claimed smaller territories who needed protection or independent warriors who worked out networks of alliances and vassalage, where a warrior would show himself brave, trustworthy, and loyal to a regional greater lord, and in exchange,   would be given protection, privileges, titles, and new lands won off of enemies or out of undeveloped land.  These three kinds of warriors became the Samurai.

After watching numerous other war leaders fall to the infighting related to the Imperial Court, one of these war leaders, Minamoto no Yoritomo, kept himself separate from them as he consolidated his power among all these samurai as Shogun, and finally a whole administrative structure based around fighting men.  This leading to a Japan split three ways with three different administrations:  The Imperial Court, the Temples,  and the Shogunate and the system of vassalages and loyalties of the samurai. 

Although the Imperial Court and its associated warriors would try to sow dissention between the different samurai families and overthrow the Shogun's hold on power, they were never truly successful.  It's good to have the warriors on your side.