samurai
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Samurai
From the earliest time, Japan had been ruled by an emperor. In the Early Stage (c.a 1000-1477), the emperor and aristocrats used the samurai, warriors as tax collectors. The emperor and aristocrats could ensure the peasants did not hide the rice or stop working by hiring the samurai as tax collectors. Since each aristocrat hired samurai to protect themselves and collect tax, there could be no unity of samurai. In other words, each samurai were enemy to each other in the Early Stage. For example, Genji and Heiji were two of the most powerful samurai clans but because different aristocrat families hired them, they were enemies to each other.
The samurai made their living by getting a certain portion of crops they collected for the aristocrats. Since aristocrats had the power to hire samurai and make peasants pay taxes and the samurai could not unify themselves, the only way for samurai to gain power was to marry with aristocrats' family members. Fujiwara was one of the examples who got power from this approach; however, the culture of the emperor and the aristocrats, such as reading poems, drawing pictures, and having parties influenced him and he got weakened...