Behind the Story of Blood and Tears – Bushido

武士道七徳
Credit: sabakuINK CC-BY-SA 4.0

Did you know bushido is a modern martial arts term? It may surprise you to know there is no such thing as a code of bushido. Bushido actually describes a collective category of rules for proper samurai conduct. Many of these include house rules of certain samurai families and class-status laws set by domain lords. The post-WWII version typically refers to seven virtues, derived from a neo-Confucian hierarchy of social relations.

This article is an excellent primer on the origins and history of this much-debated term, The Historical Foundations of Bushido.

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