*On origins of [[samurai]]/bushi, Karl Friday writes that during the Heian period, they were essentially ''miyako no musha'', with much closer associations to their social peers within the Court & aristocracy than to a warrior or bushi identity, and that it was only after the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate and of the gokenin hierarchy that a distinctive bushi identity began to emerge. More details of his argument/explanation can be seen at: Karl Friday, Samurai Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan, Routledge (2004), 10. | *On origins of [[samurai]]/bushi, Karl Friday writes that during the Heian period, they were essentially ''miyako no musha'', with much closer associations to their social peers within the Court & aristocracy than to a warrior or bushi identity, and that it was only after the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate and of the gokenin hierarchy that a distinctive bushi identity began to emerge. More details of his argument/explanation can be seen at: Karl Friday, Samurai Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan, Routledge (2004), 10. |