For seven centuries, samurai represented the fearsome military branch of the Japanese aristocracy. Trained and taught from a young age, they became formidable warriors in service of their lord or daimyo. They were some of the best swordsmen that the world had ever seen and were renowned for the code of honor that they adhered to… for the most part.
Some samurai could grow to be very powerful and become daimyo themselves, then finding their own samurai to take on as retainers. Some of them even became shogun, the mighty dictators who ruled over the country. With such a long and varied history, we could never fully cover the extent of their deeds in just one video, but we are going to take a look at some of the most notorious samurai to ever swing a katana.
This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list!