10 Horrifying Facts You Didn’t Know About
Samurai 10. They Tested Swords by Cutting People in Half In Japanese, “Tameshigiri” quite literally
translates to “test cut,” and although it wasn’t practiced exclusively by samurai,
it was often done on their behalf. In a nutshell, tameshigiri involved testing
the sharpness and quality of a newly forged blade on a straw mat, something you’ve no
doubt seen replicated by innumerable overweight guys wearing fedoras on YouTube. Sometimes, though, when the client purchasing
the sword was particularly wealthy or of high enough social standing, the sword would be
tested on a live, often-screaming, condemned criminal. Depending on the severity of the crime committed,
the criminal could lose a limb or be cut completely in half, with the ease with which this was
done being used as a selling point for the weapon. But hey, sure this was cruel, but those criminals
deserved it, right? We mean, it’s not like samurai ran around
randomly murdering people for fun. Oh, wait, we know where this is going… 9. Samurai Randomly Murdered People for Fun During the tumultuous Sengoku period of Japanese
history there was an informal practice amongst samurai known as “Tsujigiri,” which roughly
translates to “crossroads killing” but could be more accurately translated as “being
an unthinkable monster.” Invariably undertaken by samurai who’d recently
purchased a new weapon or mastered a new technique for turning someone’s bowels inside out,
Tsujigiri involved walking around at night and testing the new weapon/technique on the
first person they found. While these wanton acts of night stabbing
were “technically” illegal, few samurai were ever arrested for doing it because it’s
really hard to arrest someone for a crime that involves killing the only witness, and
then running away. And in the rare event that a samurai was caught
cutting down an innocent civilian, they could always claim they were invoking their right
to… 8. Murder People They Thought Insulted Them “Kiri-sute gomen” was a basic right afforded
to samurai that allowed them to immediately kill anyone of a lower class (including other
samurai) if they felt insulted, with a punishing sword-assisted backhand. The only conditions were that 1) they had
to do so immediately after the perceived insult occurred, and 2) there had to be a witness. Luckily, a samurai could use his own servant
as a witness, meaning it was possible for samurai to kill basically anyone he felt like,
without reprieve, just because society said they were important enough to get away with
it. Because life is seldom fair, being able to
indiscriminately murder members of the public wasn’t the only perk enjoyed by samurai
due to their status as members of an elite class of sword-wielding buttnuggets, as they
were also deemed so important that… 7. (Common) Women had to Pay to Marry Them Marriage in the age of samurai was an unusual
thing, because what exactly it entailed depended on the class of the woman a given samurai
wanted to wed. Today we’re going to focus on what happened
when women from the lower classes wanted to get themselves some of that sweet samurai
loving, though, because it’s hilarious. In short, common women wanting to marry samurai
had to pay them for the privilege of becoming what amounted to a servant. That last part isn’t hyperbole, either. It’s noted that one of the most valued traits
in samurai wives was “obedience,” and they were basically expected to do everything
for their husband, including making themselves available for sex 24/7, which wouldn’t be
as insulting for the woman if their husbands weren’t also allowed to have mistresses,
if they wanted. While spending quality time with samurai penis
admittedly did have several benefits for common women, such as increased status, it did come
with an undeniable downside in that… 6. Wives Were Expected to Kill Themselves if
Their Husband Messed Up Seppuku, for the lucky few of you who’ve
managed to make it this far on the internet without running into those people who are
oddly obsessed with Japan, was a form of ritual suicide practiced by samurai when they really
messed up. Usually, it was done as a way to rob an enemy
of the satisfaction of killing them. Think of it as the most extreme version possible
of saying, “You can’t fire me, I quit.” To commit seppuku, a samurai would slice open
his own stomach with a small blade, before his head was ceremonially cut off by a trusted
associate (or sufficiently trained bear, we’re assuming) so as to minimize their suffering. Though this wasn’t the only way in which
seppuku could be committed, it was by far the most common. But here’s where things get, well, weird. You see, when a samurai screwed up so badly
that he felt that he needed to commit seppuku to die with at least a shred of honor intact,
his wife was expected to kill herself, too. You know, the same wife who was expected to
be unquestionably obedient and had little to no agency in her life. While functionally similar to male seppuku,
female seppuku (known as jigai) involved slicing the neck instead of the stomach, and the woman
was expected to tie her legs together beforehand so that her body would be found in a “dignified
pose.” After all, nothing says “dignity” like
cutting off your own head because someone else told you to. Speaking of telling people to kills themselves
for no reason at all, let’s talk about… 5. Bushido, and How it Killed Thousands During
WW2 Bushido is generally described as being a
strict code followed by samurai that stressed the importance of honor, self-sacrifice, and
not being a narc. In reality, though, Bushido was more of a
nebulous group of rules that samurai kind of followed when they felt like it. This didn’t stop the Japanese government
reviving the idea of bushido at the turn of WW2, as a way of convincing conscripts that
dying in the most explodey, “screw you” way possible was the best way to appease their
samurai ancestors. While it’s not necessarily the fault of
samurai that, years later, the government would use them as a shining example of why
sometimes killing yourself could be awesome if you did it in a metal enough way, it is
their fault for being so cool everyone was all like, “Yeah, I’ll crash a plane into
a battleship if it’s what a samurai would have done.” Which is kind of annoying when you take into
consideration that samurai weren’t that cool, because “cool” isn’t a word we’d
use, since… 4. They Used to Shoot Dogs with Arrows, for Sport Though samurai are synonymous with the katana,
which as the film Samurai Cop has taught us means “Japanese Sword,” samurai placed
a great deal of emphasis in learning how to properly use a bow. So much so (hey, that rhymes) that they developed
a training exercise known as inuoumono, which quite literally consisted of chasing dogs
on horseback and shooting at them with arrows. Over time, the exercise became popular enough
that samurai and Japanese nobles began doing it for fun, competing against one another
to see who could pre-emptively annoy PETA the most. Just so this entry isn’t totally depressing,
we should mentioned that the arrows used were sometimes padded so that the dog wasn’t
killed, but this was less out of concern for the dogs’ well-being, and more so that the
samurai shooting at them didn’t have to go out and buy more if they were really good
at it. If you’re largely indifferent to the idea
of people murdering dogs for fun, maybe you’ll be more inclined to dislike samurai when you
learn that… 3. They Used to Have Lots of Sex with Teenage
Boys Given the numerous benefits we’ve already
discussed, like being able to murder people you don’t like and having a semi-infinite
number of dogs to shoot, it’s probably not going to surprise you that a lot of people
wanted to be samurai. It may surprise you, however, to learn that
becoming a samurai involved having a surprising amount of sex with an old, creepy man. To explain, samurai training young boys in
the ways of combat were allowed to take their apprentice as a lover until they became an
adult, as part of a “brotherhood contract.” Though it’s noted that the samurai could
only do this with the boy’s express permission, anyone with a basic understanding of how consent
works should be able to see how gross this is. For anyone who doesn’t, feel free to go
on Google image search and browse the many pieces of “artwork” depicting this practice
until you, like us, agree that it’s “icky as all hell.” And here’s the thing: even in the event
samurai stopped being, well, samurai, they were still awful people because… 2. They Refused to Re-Intergrate into Society
Because They Felt They Were Above Working The idea of ronin, masterless samurai who
became wandering swords for hire, has become almost as romanticized as the idea of the
samurai itself and, as such, we felt like we should call them out for being awful people,
too. In short, if a samurai lost his master or
otherwise dishonored himself, and decided that he didn’t want to tattoo his own intestines
with a dagger, he’d become a ronin, which was roughly analogous with being a hobo. Despite being considered one of the lowest
rungs of society, ronin still mostly acted like samurai, in that they treated everyone
like crap and refused to work like normal people, considering it to be “beneath”
them. Due to this, many ronin become bodyguards,
mercenaries, and criminals, and earned their keep killing or robbing people for money. That was apparently more honorable than just
working on a farm or something. But here’s the best part: there were a subset
of ronin so ridiculous in the way they acted and behaved that they get their own entry
on this list. We’re of course talking about… 1. The Kabukimono Like ronin, kabukimono were often masterless
samurai who decided that being alive was a preferable alternative to letting someone
cut their head off with a big sword. Unlike ronin, though, they celebrated their
new lease on life by being utterly fabulous. The kabukimono would dress in wildly flamboyant
outfits, in the most garish colors possible. When such an outfit couldn’t be found, the
kabukimono would settle for women’s clothing, accentuated with the most stupid looking haircut
possible, making them similar to hipsters, only marginally less annoying. Kabukimono, as samurai with no masters and
thus, no responsibilities, spent most of their time actively making the world a worse place,
engaging in activities that would make Master Betty proud, like beating random people in
the street or fleeing from restaurants without paying. Kabukimono would also murder people for fun
and rove the streets looking for other kabukimono to beat up, in what must have been the most
fabulously well coordinated fistfights this side of a Power Rangers crossover episode.
So, some of the claims in the video didn't sit well with me, so I went to his channel and checked his sources.
Several of these "facts" are sourced from what claims to be an encyclopedia, yet is essentially a dictionary. Most of the sources are niche websites.
Several of the facts in the video are well-known, but some I'd suggest taking with a grain of salt until you do some more digging.
I saw the name was "TopTenz" and instantly stopped watching.