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.