The Way of the Samurai

This luxurious gift edition presents Inazo Nitobe’s classic work, The Way of the Samurai, featuring stenciled page edges and full-color illustrations.

To many people, the word samurai conjures images of menacing masks, long blades and elaborate armor. However, this classic text by Inazo Nitobe reveals the greater depths to samurai culture - they were not simply warriors but an aristocratic class who practiced literary and military arts in equal measure.

Essential to this way of life was the samurai’s moral code and the quality of bushido, roughly translated as chivalry. The Way of the Samurai provides an intriguing exploration of bushido and other valued qualities such as rectitude or justice, courage, politeness, veracity, honor, loyalty and self-control. It also explores the Samurai’s more violent traditions, such as the chilling act of hara-kiri or self-immolation.

This mixture of chivalric principles with brutal warfare is fascinating. While many aspects of Samurai culture have disappeared, its principles still have resonance in modern Japanese society and around the globe.

Featuring beautiful full-color illustrations, this luxurious gold-embossed hardback makes a perfect gift.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Luxury Classics series brings together deluxe gift editions of classic works of literature, complete with stenciled page edges, gold embossed cover designs, full-color illustrations and beautiful patterned endpapers.

Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933) was scholar and an educator. After studying at John Hopkins University he maintained his links with the US and tried through his academic career ’to become a bridge across the Pacific’. He wrote Bushido: The Soul of Japan, published here as The Way of the Samurai, in 1899 and the book established his reputation in the West.