kontextmaschine:

About the samurai:

• Back when they were real warriors they were mostly mounted archers
• Then there was a period where they oversaw land but it was more administrative at-the-pleasure-of-the-Emperor than Western feudalism in a lot of ways
• A LOT of the romantic stuff about them as honorable poet-duelist swordsmen was backwards-projected legend made up in the later period when they were really a superfluous class mostly known for causing trouble in the bar district

Part of the dominance of the mounted archer form is plate armor never became a thing in Japan, in part because quality iron is really rare there (the famously extensive process of forging a katana is less about making a super-weapon than compensating for poor-quality inputs) and rusts quickly in the coastal/tropical climate

And good grassland for horse-raising was even especially rarer compared to Europe so cavalry superiority was even more of an elite advantage

Some of the most dominant Japanese infantry forces were monks whose monasteries controlled mountainous areas though. Japan had to do its own suppression of the monasteries at one point – the notion that “the Japanese practice Shinto AND Buddhism” comes out of this, before the Imperial house coopted the more statecraft-oriented functions (birth and marriage registration!) and confiscated from the rest it was all ~JaPaNeSe ReLiGiOn~