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Imagine it’s the 1400s in Europe and a four-year-old boy has been taken away from his family to endure years of harsh training. But he will be a warrior, protecting the land and the civilians. He will be a knight, the warrior class of Europe. It started out similarly for a samurai, the warrior class of Japan. Despite these similar beginnings, samurais and knights were different because they trained differently, had different armor, and their view on death was different.
Training was different for samurais and knights. First of all, they had different ages of advancement. For example, in Japan one could become a samurai at age 14, while he had to be at least 21 in Europe (Document C). This is different because to become a knight, a trainee would need to became a page and a squire first, while someone could just be fighting at 14 in Japan. A samurai and a knight …show more content…
A knight would stress the importance of life and death because they were Christian and believed in one life and an afterlife in heaven. On the other hand, a samurai would believe in reincarnation, where one gets a new life after this one, so they didn’t make a big deal out of life and death (Document F). There is an obvious difference between the two views on death, which is another reason why the differences greatly outweighed the similarities.
Once again, the training, armor, and views of death differed from samurais and knights. The samurais and knights had different obligations, different advantages and disadvantages to their armor, and different religious beliefs with different views on death. Although there are some obvious similarities between samurais and knights, the differences outweigh the similarities by a great deal. This is important in history because today people can see what the advantages and disadvantages were of the armor, training, and views on death that these two groups had, and what worked the