The Decline of the Japanese Warrior Class, 1840-1880

Abstract

Although the Meiji Restoration was neither a political reform aiming at the overthrow of the political régime supported by the samurai estate nor a social revolution initiated by non-samurai classes, the samurai class was abolished after the Meiji Restoration. Why? The decline of the samurai class began with strengthening military power during the last days of the Tokugawa régime. The encouragement of martial arts and the idea that all samurai were first and foremost "fighting men" originally stemmed from the samurai's pride in being members of an honorable estate and their sense of mission as the ruling elite. Unrelenting efforts to buttress their pride and a sense of mission caused the gradual separation of the samurai's specialized duty from the samurai's estate system, both of which long had been inseparably interconnected. With this separation the estate system of the samurai was destroyed, and the new organizing principle of the samurai society appeared: functional egalitarianism. The decline of the samurai class was an unintentional historical result caused by nation state formation.

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