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Hello during the Second World War, Japanese kamikaze pilots were photographed climbing

into their cockpits armed with samurai swords.

In the decades since, the myth of the samurai is a fanatical self-sacrificing warrior cast has been sustained in a host of films.

The samurai played a crucial part in Japanese culture since at least the 12th century,

and their identity is more complex and nuanced than the bloodthirsty

stereotype suggests. They were professional warriors, suicide liquor ages, they're

also steeped in Zen Buddhism at certain points in the history and sponsored Haiku Poetry.

They contributed to calligraphy, flower arranging and the art of the tea ceremony, and for many

years their main roles as civil servants. In the 20th century the myth of the samurai played

a part in the re-emergence of a unified Japanese nation from restoring the

emperor to restarting the post-war economy. With me to discuss the myth and history of the samurai,

are Nick Le Liskutin, program director of Japanese studies, Birkbeck College University of London,

Gregory Irvine, Senior Curated Japan at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Angus Lockyer,

Lecture in Japanese History and Chair of the Japan Research Centre at the School of Oriental

and African Studies University of London. Angus Lockyer, before we come onto the samurai themselves, can you tell us something about the society from which they emerged?

Perhaps the place to start is to remember that, like many of of us compared to their continental neighbor China

Japan was very backward for most of its history in other words it came on later so in

the middle of the first millennium of the common era. You begin to see the emergence of a series of

warrior clans. These aren't yet the samurai, contending for power. One of these emerges is

preeminent in maybe the fifth century and begins in order to consolidate itself to borrow a series of institutions from China,

...