0 a member of a military class of high social rank from the 11th to the 19th century in Japan:
Samurai warriors
The 'deviants' of that time were mainly people in the service of the samurai, joined by masterless samurai.
Since the early nineteenth century the borderlines between estates, even between samurai and merchants, became permeable.
From the late sixteenth century until the early seventeenth century, samurai were separated from farming communities throughout the country.
Because of the long peace most of the samurai became administrators rather than actually serving as fighters.
Among the samurai it was always the required form.
This ideology, however, did not always protect merchants from samurai and authorities.
If an estimated 500,000 samurai is added, the total population comes to about one million.
In the pre-modern period statistics are especially unreliable as official population records did not count the samurai.
