Samurai

The word Samurai derives from the archaic Japanese verb 'samorau', which means 'to serve', and was the term for the military nobility in pre-industrial Japan. Most samurai were bound by a strict code of honor and were expected to set an example for those below them, and even though there is a romanticized characterizations of samurai behavior such as the writing of Bushido, like the shocking yet notable seppuku, where the disgraced samurai regained his honor by passing into death (suicide), studies of Kobudo and traditional Budo shows that samurai were as practical on the battlefield as any other warrior.