"... Samurai means who serves, the service in question is none other than the military. The emblem of the samurai was the cherry blossom, for its brief, ephemeral and beautiful life, generously offered to man. The samurai always dedicated their lives to the service of their daymo or shogun (lord), who was their boss (at the same time responsible for lives and haciendas around them), should be worthy of that fidelity, so he should direct them with benevolence fatherly and intelligence. "

Samurai Code.

... its main maxim is ...: SHI MON YORI IRITE SEI MON NIIRU, which could be translated as "through the door of Death you come to true Life" ... In addition, the samurai followed the philosophy muga, that is, the absence of ego.

Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1640) reflects in the Dokko-do (The Life of the one who goes alone, very appropriate for a samurai) the following points:

1. Man should not feel attachment for anything in life.
2. Man should respect the gods and the Buddhas, but not abandon themselves completely to them.
3. Man must always train his spirit in strategy and tactics.

Yamaga Soko (1622-1685), well-known thinker and Confucian, proposes:

1. Innate nature of respect for the law.
2. Fulfill all your social obligations.
3. Concern adequately with their role
4. Conserve a noble and elevated spirit
5. Maintain a generous and tolerant attitude.

Apart from the maxims to follow, the samurai must have certain basic virtues. According to Koyo Gunkan these virtues are: generosity and tolerance (ounce), magnanimity (doryo), gallant attitude (fudo) and resolution (shiki).

For Nitobe Inazo ... the virtues of the samurai must be:

1. Justice. His conduct must always be based on honor and justice.
2. Serenity as a basis for moral and physical courage. Even to the point of not fearing death.
3. Benevolence, understood as the tenderness of the Warrior (bushi no nasake). Thus showing affection, piety and magnanimity.
4. Courtesy. It is the discipline of the soul, harmonizing body and spirit.
5. Truthfulness The word of a warrior is enough (bushi no ichi gon), his law, his life and his work are one with his word
6. Honor It will keep you safe, even, if necessary, perform the Seppuku (harakiri). Honor not only affects the warrior but all those who are related to him, if he loses his life it is no longer valid and endangers the life and honor of others, so to save them he has to sacrifice himself.
7. Show loyalty, devotion and self-denial towards your Sensei until death, in exchange for your affection.

During the Tokugawa period, ideas of the Samurai class were included in the code of honor behavior, known as the Bushido (The Way of the Warrior). The martial arts already go back to the tenth century, but it was during the period of the Japanese civil wars (1482-1558) that the guidelines that a warrior should adopt to deserve the name of being human and be considered a warrior knight began to take hold. . Bushido indicates what is the attitude of every budoka. In the Tokugawa Era, it happened to be rather well (Way of the educated Man), where poets and literati appeared, without ceasing to be experts in the handling of weapons, seeing in them the means to perfect themselves through skill which involves training with weapons. After the famous Meiji revolution, the code of honor merged with the nationalism that had just appeared as sentiment in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Bushido shows a great influence of Zen Buddhism, from which concepts of:

• appeasement of feelings
• calm attitude in the face of the inevitable
• the domain of oneself before any event
• present more proximity with the idea of ​​death than with that of life and,
• absolute poverty.

##Bushido has 7 Fundamental Principles:

• Gi: truth, justice, fair and correct decision.
• Yu: bravery that leads to heroism.
• Jin: love and benevolence towards humanity.
• Rei: fair behavior
• Makoto: total sincerity.
• Melyo: honor and glory
• Chugi: devotion and loyalty.

SENSEI:

The good Sensei is like a perfect cube that we can use to extract knowledge from the well of wisdom, instead, who pretends to be a teacher, without being so, is like a perforated cube: knowledge escapes like fluid water through He does not know how to transmit knowledge. It is not enough to know, it is necessary to know how to transmit knowledge in an appropriate way.

KATANAS:

the main Japanese sabers are:

• Tachi: it is luxuriously decorated, because it is used in ceremonies. It is worn on the belt by means of ribbons thanks to the fact that it has two metal supports with rings.
• Daisho: these are the two sabers that all Samurai wear. They are divided into Katana and Wakizashi, and they are introduced by inserting a ribbon into a wooden blade on the side of the case. The katana is a long saber that can remember a sword, and is larger than the Wakizashi, which is a one-handed saber.

All these swords are characterized by being single-edged, normally curved, and all hand-tempered steel.

The Katana is the central point where the life of the samurai revolves, it is its symbol, its pride, its possession. It could be of great quality or deficient, and the forgers of the katanas do the hard work of making them in what is almost considered a religious rite that must be done with care and delicacy. Hundreds of steel blades may have been worked on in a katana. They are very sharp.

It is said that a good samurai cried if he did not have a katana of the quality he deserved. Instead, it was the good quality katana who cried if he was in the hands of a bad samurai. RUROUNI KENSHIN: as ronin that could be translated as "man of the waves", samurai who has no master to serve, either by the destruction of his clan in battle, the misfortune of his master or by his own decision.

The ronin

Also known as rurouni, abounded the time of the Restoration, the Meiji era (1860 onwards). The passage to modernity put an end to feudalism, the end of the figure of the Shogun, prohibiting carrying a sword on public roads. In this historical framework came Kurofone (the black ship), captained by Perry, which sought allies between America and Japan. He requested to supply the ship when he arrived, and that was the cause of conflicts: the end of the Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji. Among the many battles, some warriors stood out for having killed many oponenetes, which received the name of Hitokiri Battousai ("The sword that wields the killer" was also designated as an Outsider, for connoisseurs of anime and manga, this is the source of "Samurai X" with the character Rouroni Kenshin).

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NINJAS AND SAMURÁIS:

There were samurai who had ninjas in their charge, because they were excellent spies, tactical advisers and well-trained warriors. They knew the terrain well and knew how to reach the enemy and kill him.

The name of the ninja evokes a warrior dressed in black who performs incredible feats, who dominates the espionage, able to enter the interior of a fortress without being seen; that dominates the technique of invisibility (go unnoticed) and camouflage (gotompo), knowing the use of a multitude of weapons and tricks, along with hitting techniques (ukemi) and associated with a body and mind control such that it may seem superhuman. It is true that he walked on water, after making some ingenious floating utensils where he placed his feet, helping himself to advance with a bamboo pole. In the same way, thanks to their knowledge of Yagen, could create or create hallucinations in a short space of time, enough to disappear and make believe that they had become some animal (previously removed from a strategic site).

In its origins are heterogeneous groups such as the Sennin, the Gyoja (hermit warriors), the Yamabushi (warrior monk practitioners of the Mikkyo, esoteric Buddhism, which deepened the understanding of the Universe, power and magic) and the Sugenja ( mountain mystics also known as Shugendo, who knew how to deal with inhospitable nature and use it). Just as you could also count Chinese Taoists, refugees and military officers, and bushi, who had neither army nor lord to serve.

The origin of the ninjitsu is attributed according to some sources to Cho Gyokko and Ikai Cho Busho, that is to say Chinese warriors in exile who thanked the peasants for their help in teaching techniques of unarmed combat, later on they went to the adaptations that allowed them to disguise the weapons as other objects of common use and the strict control of physical and mental abilities to achieve a superior result ..

In the ninja clan there was a very specific hierarchy:

• Jonin: commanders in chief, there was one per clan and he controlled everything
• Chunin: strategists who organized what was decided by Jonin
• Genin: they carried out the orders of their superiors.

At this time the greatest representative of the ninjitsu is Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi.

In the legend of the ninja mention is made of certain magic words of power, which he pronounced while intertwining his fingers, to master the situation. It is the Kujikiri, nine words that act as mantras and allow to reach a concrete vibratory power. The nine is a magic number, three times three, recalling the three action plans (Sango): body, mind and spirit. Each associated with a position of the fingers is linked to a phrase to be recited. The words are:

• Rin: fortress
• Pyo: channels the energy
• Toh: adaptation
• Sha: healing energy
• Kai: harmony
• Jin: intuition
• Retsu: projection of scenes
• Zai: cosmic union
• Zen: contemplation.

Text source:

PLASENCIA, Nuria: "Ruroni Kenshin" MINAMI 2000, Spain, Nº9, Dec. 1999, p.30-37