We're all familiar with the Japanese samurai, sword-wielding traditional warriors, all

consumed with a rigid code of honour, known as Boshito.

But how much of this is true?

In this episode, I speak with an expert, Dr. Michael Words, Associate Professor of East Asian

History at Marquette University.

Through his work, which includes the book Samurai, a concise history,

he has cast aside the Hollywood stereotypes and uncovered a real history that is much more complex.

He explains the origins of the samurai,

their evolving role and shatters many of the myths

most of us have come to believe.

Michael, I wanted to begin my understanding

what the term samurai actually means. Because as I've looked into this,

it seems to evolve over time. But can you explain its original meaning?

Originally, the term samurai, we think, starts as a term in the 700s of the common era, right?

And it refers to someone who is in attendance to or serving some kind of noble elite person, but quickly comes to denote someone who has some kind of

guard role, so some kind of, we could broadly say, military capacity or something like that.

And so it retains this notion of service, that is to say, it's not at all an elite term, right?

It's in its original meaning.

And then I would say that in the West, the term samurai just denotes any

kind of warrior, right, which is not the way that the term is used in Japanese. The term

bushi is just the general term for warrior of any kind of status, right? And that would have been used throughout Japanese history.

So Samurai starts out as a very kind of low-ranking, servant-guard type of person in the

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