The middle ages were rough times, with lots of fighting, poverty, and war, but one class of people held everyone together. Back in the 12th century two warrior forces co-existed in Europe and Asia. In western Europe, knights protected their lords, while in Japan samurai fought for honor and were loyal to their daimyos. The big question is; were the similarities between knights and samurai greater than the differences. The samurai and knights were more different than similar in three main areas: social position, training and armor, and honor and death.
Samurai and knights were overall more different in social position and status. Japan and Europe both had a feudal system and in both systems the knights/samurai served lords/daimyos. Both of
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Samurai and knights both had to go through lots of training in their first years of life, but the specific teachings and timeline of the training was very different. To start, samurai were first taught in school as a child with a combination of mental, physical, and discipline training. They studied poetry, and the honor code of Budisho, while they also learned fencing, and Buddhism. When the children were about 14 they officially became samurai in a ceremony called genpuku. On the other hand, knights also started when they were young but purely focused on the physical side of training with a little bit of religious teaching mixed in. Then at 14 the pages (young knights in training) became a squire, and then at 21 the squires became knights. (Doc. C) Overall, the samurai had a very complex training with multiple aspects mixed in, while the knights focused on physical training. This shows that the samurai were more religiously and mentally educated, and had strong beliefs, while knights were purely focused on the physical aspects of being a warrior. Knights also had a longer amount of training while Japanese children could become a samurai warrior by the time they were a teenager. This proves the difference in the training itself and the amount of time spent to become a