Military System of the Japanese Samurai Class

Timeline

1. 1603–1615Edo · Kantō regionAfter Tokugawa Ieyasu founded the shogunate, he promulgated the first Buke Shohatto (1615), systematically regulating samurai families' marriages, castle repairs, and loyalty obligations, fixing the samurai as a hereditary ruling class distinct from the farmers, artisans, and merchants.
2. 1700–1720Japan · JapanA century of peace deprived samurai of battlefield functions, transforming them into administrative bureaucrats versed in both civil and military arts; works such as Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure (dictated c. 1716) and Daidōji Yūzan's Budō Shinshui-shū systematically expounded bushidō ethics of loyalty, honor, and views of life and death, forming a spiritual resource running through the late-shogunate shishi movement.
3. 1873–1876Tokyo · Kantō regionThe Meiji government issued the Conscription Edict in 1873 to establish a national army, and the Sword Abolition Edict in 1876 banning samurai from openly wearing swords; the samurai's military monopoly and status symbol were lost simultaneously, and the Satsuma Rebellion (1877) became the samurai class's last armed resistance.