Samurai
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100 free Samurai trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
10 free samurai trivia questions with answers. Discover how much you know about samurai, the legendary warriors of feudal Japan. This trivia quiz features 100 questions covering samurai history, culture, codes of honor, and famous historical figures. Whether you're a history enthusiast or just curious about these iconic warriors, put your knowledge to the test!
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What code of conduct guided the samurai, emphasizing loyalty, honor and martial mastery?
Bushido
Bushido was for centuries a shifting set of unwritten expectations rather than one written code, and individual clans interpreted it in their own way.
Q 02What was a samurai called once his master died or cast him off?
Ronin
The word literally means 'drifter' or 'wandering man', and some ronin also cut all ties with their family or clan.
Q 03Which ritual act of suicide was practiced by samurai to restore honor or avoid capture?
Seppuku
Seppuku, also called harakiri, was considered the most honourable form of capital punishment available to a samurai who had committed a serious offence.
Q 04Which curved, single-edged sword did samurai pair with the shorter wakizashi?
Katana
Katana blades are curved and single-edged, with a circular or squared guard and a grip long enough for two hands.
Q 05In which period did the samurai formally rise to power with Japan's first military government?
Kamakura Period
The Kamakura Period (1185–1333) marked the samurai's formal rise to power: Japan's first shogunate was seated at Kamakura, shifting real authority from the imperial court to the warrior class.
Q 06What were feudal Japan's powerful lords with large estates and private samurai armies called?
Daimyo
Daimyo ruled most of Japan from vast hereditary domains from the 15th century until 1871, when the Meiji government abolished the han and replaced them with prefectures.
Q 07Who founded the Kamakura shogunate after his victory in the Genpei War?
Minamoto no Yoritomo
Minamoto no Yoritomo won the Genpei War against the Taira clan and was appointed seii taishōgun by the court in 1192, ruling from Kamakura rather than Kyoto.
Q 08Which legendary Japanese swordsman founded the Niten Ichi-ryū, a distinctive two-sword fighting style?
Miyamoto Musashi
Miyamoto Musashi founded Niten Ichi-ryū, a school built on wielding the long and short swords together, and late in life wrote The Book of Five Rings to explain its method.
Q 09The Edo-period samurai moral code was built mainly on which philosophy?
Confucianism
Confucianism: Edo-period thinkers such as Yamaga Sokō recast the samurai's role in Neo-Confucian terms, making the warrior a moral exemplar who served the whole social order.
Q 10Early high-ranking samurai, in heavy ō-yoroi armour, fought mainly from horseback with which weapon?
Yumi
Yumi, the bow: mounted archery became so central that three forms of it, yabusame, inuoumono and kasagake, flourished as disciplines once the samurai came to power.
Q 11The word 'samurai' is thought to derive from 'saburau', a verb meaning what?
To serve
To serve: 'saburau' meant to wait upon or attend a superior, so a samurai was by definition a retainer; bushi was the broader term for a professional warrior.
Q 12In which year did Portuguese traders bring the first matchlock guns to Tanegashima?
1543
1543: Portuguese traders aboard a Chinese junk reached Tanegashima, off Kyushu; the island's lord bought two arquebuses and had local smiths copy them, and the gun took the island's name.
Q 13Which ruler, grand minister from 1586, decreed that non-samurai could not carry weapons, freezing Japan's mobility?
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Q 21Sailing out to duel Sasaki Kojirō, what did Miyamoto Musashi carve into a wooden sword?
An oar
An oar: legend says Musashi arrived late at Ganryūjima in 1612 with a wooden sword whittled from a spare boat oar, long enough to out-reach Kojirō's famously long blade.
Q 22How many duels did Miyamoto Musashi reportedly fight without ever losing?
62
62: Musashi wrote in The Book of Five Rings that he had won more than sixty duels between the ages of 13 and 29, and biographers put the undefeated tally at 62.
Q 23The Hagakure records the sayings of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a former retainer in what is now which prefecture?
Saga
Saga: Tsunetomo served the Nabeshima lords of Saga domain in Hizen and dictated the Hagakure to a fellow retainer after retiring to a hermitage as a monk in 1700; Yukio Mishima later wrote a book praising the text.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's 1588 sword hunt (katanagari) confiscated weapons from farmers and monks, fixing the line between the warrior class and everyone else.
Q 14Which warrior clan began in 814 when Emperor Saga gave his surplus children a surname?
Minamoto
Minamoto: in 814 Emperor Saga cut the cost of his huge family by demoting many of his children to the nobility under the new surname Minamoto, the Saga Genji line.
Q 15Which court official did Asano Naganori assault, leading to his seppuku and the forty-seven rōnin's revenge?
Kira Yoshinaka
Kira Yoshinaka, the shogunate's master of ceremonies, was beheaded by Asano's former retainers in a night raid on his Edo mansion in early 1703; fictionalised versions of the tale are known as Chūshingura.
Q 16At which Tokyo temple are the forty-seven rōnin and their master buried?
Sengakuji
Sengakuji, in Tokyo's Takanawa district, holds the graves of Asano Naganori and the forty-seven rōnin, who laid their enemy's head at their master's tomb there before surrendering.
Q 17Yasuke, the African samurai who served Oda Nobunaga, first came to Japan in the service of which Jesuit?
Alessandro Valignano
Alessandro Valignano, the Jesuit Visitor to the Indies, brought Yasuke to Japan in 1579; Nobunaga summoned him out of curiosity in 1581 and took him into service, and he fought at Honnō-ji.
Q 18By what Japanese name was William Adams, the first Englishman in Japan, known?
Miura Anjin
Miura Anjin, 'the pilot of Miura', after the fief Ieyasu granted him on the Miura Peninsula; Adams inspired the character Blackthorne in James Clavell's Shōgun.
Q 19The Battle of Sekigahara, which effectively founded the Tokugawa shogunate, was fought in which year?
1600
1600: on 21 October 1600 Tokugawa Ieyasu's Eastern Army routed the Western coalition after several of its commanders switched sides mid-battle; Ieyasu was named shogun in 1603 and his house ruled until 1868.
Q 20The 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, the last great samurai uprising, was led by which former government leader?
Saigō Takamori
Saigō Takamori, who had quit the Meiji government in 1873 over the Korea debate, led the revolt and died at Shiroyama in September 1877 when conscript troops crushed his last stand.
Q 24Which retainer ambushed Oda Nobunaga at Honnō-ji in 1582, forcing him to commit seppuku?
Akechi Mitsuhide
Akechi Mitsuhide turned his army on Nobunaga's lightly guarded lodgings at Honnō-ji in Kyoto on 21 June 1582; Hideyoshi crushed him at Yamazaki less than two weeks later.
Q 25What nickname did young Oda Nobunaga's eccentric behaviour, like eating melons while riding backwards, earn him?
The Fool of Owari
The Fool of Owari (Owari no Ōutsuke): born in 1534 as heir to the Oda of Owari, Nobunaga scandalised his elders with wild dress and behaviour, most famously by throwing incense at his father's funeral.
Q 26Which future shogun spent his boyhood as a hostage of the Oda and Imagawa clans?
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Tokugawa Ieyasu, born Matsudaira Takechiyo in 1543, was seized by the Oda in 1547 on his way to the Imagawa and traded to them in 1549, living as their hostage until 1560.
Q 27Female samurai Tomoe Gozen served which lord at the Battle of Awazu?
Minamoto no Yoshinaka
Minamoto no Yoshinaka, also called Kiso Yoshinaka, was Tomoe's lord and possibly her husband; the Tale of the Heike has her take an enemy's head at Awazu in 1184 before Yoshinaka fell.
Q 28Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) had a Japanese runtime of how many minutes?
207
207 minutes: the full Japanese release ran 3 hours 27 minutes with an intermission, and Toho cut it to about 160 minutes for export and the 1954 Venice festival.
Q 29In Seven Samurai, a village of farmers hires the warriors to protect what from returning bandits?
Their harvest
Their harvest is what the bandits come back for; Kurosawa and co-writer Shinobu Hashimoto found an Edo-period account of samurai defending farmers while researching the film.
Q 30The Azuchi-Momoyama period is named for Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle and Momoyama, site of whose retirement castle?
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's
Fushimi Castle at Momoyama was where Hideyoshi lived after retiring.