Samurai

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Samurai Member of the élite warrior class of feudal Japan. Beginning as military retainers in the 10th century, the samurai later emerged as an aristocratic ruling class. They conformed to a strict code of conduct, known as bushido (‘the way of the warrior’). Under the Tokugawa shogunate in the 17th to 19th centuries, they divided into hereditary subclasses and increasingly became bureaucrats and scholars.

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