geekbot

During the Heian period, samurai came to refer especially to the guards of the imperial palace and to those who carried swords. These forerunners of what we now know as samurai had ruler-sponsored equipment and were required to hone their martial skills in all times.

The actual armies of the emperor on the other hand, were nothing but groups of conscripts assigned to provincial areas of Japan in case of war or rebellion. They were modeled after continental Chinese armies and were composed by a third of the able-bodied adult male population, however, in contrast to the imperial guards, each soldier had to supply his own weapons and support himself.

In the early Heian, the late 8th and early 9th centuries, the emperor Kammu sought to consolidate and expand his empire in northern Honshu. He sent his armies to conquer the rebelling Emishi (ancestors of Ainu) which proved unsuccessful due to their lack of motivation and discipline to fight. He introduced the title of shogun and began to rely on the powerful regional clans to conquer the Emishi.

These clans originally were farmers that had been driven to arm and protect themselves from the tyranny of the imperially appointed magistrates sent to govern their lands and collect taxes. Trained in mounted combat and archery, they came to be exclusively used by the emperor to put down rebellions, while the armies were eventually fully disbanded. By the mid-Heian, they had adopted Japanese style armor and weapons and laid the foundation of bushido.

For most of the later feudal period, the era of the rule of the samurai, the term yumitori (“bowman”) remained as an honorary title of an accomplished warrior even when swordsmanship had become more important. Kyujutsu, Japanese archery, is still an important part of the war god Hachiman.