- •
Samurai honor prioritized brutality over civilian lives
“On or off the battlefield, early medieval Japanese warriors appear to have held little concern for the lives of others.”
- •
The Taira clan emerged from sidelined imperial princes
“They are an aristocratic dynasty... they descended from a kind of whole crowd of princes who had become surplus to imperial requirements.”
- •
Head-taking served as a merit-based reward system
“The higher the rank of the beheaded warrior, the higher the reward.”
- •
Early samurai culture lacked Western chivalric ideals
“The ideals of Samurai culture as originally constituted, they did not map on to the chivalric culture of medieval Christendom.”
- •
Frontier life forged Japan's elite warrior class
“There, for centuries now, it has been the custom for an entire order of men... to be raised from childhood in the saddle.”