Zev,
From this and your other message I get the sense that you are an avid
student of Japanese history. That's great! One thing to keep in mind
is that we have to think about this topic over a very long period of t
ime. It's very rare to be able to state with 100% confidence that
something is "just so".
On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 06:11:57 -0000, zevlordさん wrote in message <
c9p3rd+pe4n@...>
>They were both:
Agreed.
>Three major ranks:
Why three? How do you define "major"?
>kenin - meaning "housemen". They were the administrators or vassals.
Kenin had different meanings over a period of some 1000+ years. When
talking about Japanese history we need to be pretty clear exactly
what period we're referring to.
>mounted samurai - Only high-ranking samurai warriors were allowed to
>fight on horse-back, and then foot soldiers. Sorry can't remember the
>Japanese Name's
Mounted samurai is not a "rank". Higher level samurai (who were by
definition rich) might have horses that they fought on from time to
time, or used for transportation.
By foot soldiers I'm sure you mean ashigaru. This we can agree was
usually the lowest rank of samurai or quasi-samurai, across alot of
Japanese history.
There are plenty of other ways to group samurai, and many different
ranks or titles. For instance there is the ritsuryo system where each
title was given a very specific, and numbered, rank. These titles
existed for a thousand years after the ritsuryo system disintigrated.
Obviously the titles were in name only since the risturyo system
itself was gone.
--
Jay Kelly
oyakata@...