Notes

1. Japan's warrior order came into being to serve the imperial court and the noble houses that comprised it as hired swords and contract bows-just as one of the many byproducts of the broad trend toward the privatization of distinguished the Heian polity and from its Nara era predecessor.

2. One of the difficulties the government faced was enforcing its conscription laws. Under the imperial state polity, military conscription was simply one of many kinds of labor tax.

3. The imperial state military system had been designed in the late seventh century, to face the challenges posed by Tang China. The architects of the new polity seized on large scale created a militia system that made all free male subjects between the ages of 20-59, liable for induction as soldiers.

4. The court responded to the challenges with a series of adjustments, amendments and general reforms. The most dramatic step was when the court abolished its infantry-centered regiments everywhere except the frontiers and other strategic provinces.

5. Skills at arms offered an ambitious young man growing opportunities to get his foot in the door for a career in government service and/or in the service of some powerful aristocrat.

6. One way to understand the first shogunate, its relationships to the imperial court and to samurai in the countryside, and its role in governing Japan-is to think of it as a warriors' union.

7. Yorimoto, a dispossessed heir to a leading samurai house, adeptly parlayed his own pedigree, the localizes ambitions of provincial warriors, and a series of upheavals within the imperial court into the creation of a new institution.

8. It had a mandate from the court to maintain order in the provinces, to keep its own men under control, and use them to defend the court. On the other hand, the shogunate's ability to carry out this mandate depended on the continuing support of its followers.

9. The advent of this new polity and the ensuing Pax Tokugawa marked the transition from medieval to early modern Japan, which brought with it profound changes for the samurai.

10. The event, known as the Meiji restoration, marked the beginning of the end for the samurai class as a class. Over the next decade they were stripped first of their monopoly over military service and the rest of their privileges and badges of status.