本物の日本史 · DEEP JAPAN HISTORY · FROM HIROSHIMA
Honest, source-based Japanese history — the Mōri clan, the age of the samurai and seven centuries most guides skip, with the myths clearly flagged. Written from Aki, the old Sengoku heartland now called Hiroshima.
Start the storyWe separate what the records show from what makes a good story. Both are here — the tag tells you which is which.
The samurai didn't begin as noble knights and didn't end in a blaze of glory. Here's the actual arc — seven centuries, eight chapters.
01
What is a samurai · origins
Before the honour and the cherry blossoms, they were provincial enforcers — armed men hired by the capital's nobles to collect taxes and crack heads in the countryside. The graceful warrior-poet image came a great deal later.
02
First shogun · samurai rise to power
The help took the house. After winning a brutal civil war, the warrior Minamoto no Yoritomo set up a government run by and for fighters — and quietly left the emperor holding a ceremonial title and not much else.
03
What is bushido · the samurai code
The tidy "way of the warrior" the world quotes was largely codified in peacetime and popularised for Western readers around 1900. On the actual battlefield, switching sides for a better offer was so common it was practically a career skill.
04
Sengoku period explained · warlords
A hundred and fifty years of warlords betraying, marrying and out-scheming one another. This is the era of Mori Motonari — the local lord who turned a small Aki clan into a power that ruled western Japan. His castles are still here, under your feet.
05
Samurai armour · helmets · kabuto
Real commanders charged into battle wearing helmets shaped like giant crescent moons, rabbit ears, catfish tails and towering golden spikes. Part status symbol, part psychological warfare: be unforgettable, and be impossible to lose in the smoke.
06
Did samurai use katana · weapons
The sword is the icon, but battles were won with bows, long spears and — from the 1540s — matchlock guns by the thousand. The katana was closer to a sidearm and a badge of rank than the weapon that decided a war.
07
Samurai daily life · Edo period
Two and a half centuries of peace left the warrior class with no wars to fight — and salaries that didn't keep up. Many became debt-ridden clerks shuffling paperwork, with some quietly taking side jobs to make rent. The fiercest men in Japan, stuck at a desk.
08
Why did samurai disappear · the end
No final battle erased them — paperwork did. Stipends were cut, wearing swords in public was banned in 1876, and a modern conscript army made the warrior class obsolete. One last rebellion, and a seven-hundred-year-old class was legislated out of existence.
Samurai sites near Hiroshima
The warlords of these chapters lived, schemed and built their castles in Aki — today's Hiroshima. You can stand on those ruins, and carry one home: a goshuin seal printed on paper recycled from the peace cranes of Hiroshima.
足元の歴史
Hiroshima is known for one chapter of its past. We tell the rest — the warlords, the castles, the seven centuries before — and we put it on paper made from the city's own paper cranes.
Explore the Hiroshima castles