Samurai
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
95 free Samurai trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 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 95 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 95 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 02Which modern Japanese martial art, fought in armour with flexible practice swords, grew out of samurai sword training?
Kendo
Kendo, 'the way of the sword', grew from the kenjutsu drills of the samurai; once armour and split practice swords were brought into training, students could spar at full contact.
Q 03In which Quentin Tarantino film does the swordsmith Hattori Hanzō forge a blade for the Bride?
Kill Bill
Kill Bill gave its master swordsmith, played by Sonny Chiba, the name of a real Tokugawa retainer whom legend remembers as a leader of ninja, not as a smith.
Q 04Which Star Wars character's headgear did concept artist Ralph McQuarrie model on a samurai helmet?
Darth Vader
Darth Vader: George Lucas asked for a tall, dark figure in a cape, and McQuarrie joined a samurai helmet to a breathing mask because the script had the villain cross open space between ships.
Q 05The title shogun is short for seii taishōgun, a commander-in-chief sent to subdue whom?
Barbarians
Barbarians: the title first went to generals sent against the Emishi people of northern Japan in the 8th century, and only four centuries later became the name for the country's military ruler.
Q 06Which Hollywood star played the half-English outcast Kai in the 2013 fantasy film 47 Ronin?
Keanu Reeves
Keanu Reeves led Universal's fantasy retelling of the forty-seven retainers' revenge, which opened in Japan first, sold few tickets there and went down as one of Hollywood's biggest flops of 2013.
Q 07Who founded the Kamakura shogunate after his victory in the Genpei War?
Minamoto no Yoritomo
Minamoto no Yoritomo took the title of shogun in 1192 and governed from Kamakura, leaving the court in the old capital as a figurehead while real power moved east with him.
Q 08Miyamoto Musashi's Niten Ichi-ryū school broke with convention by teaching its students to fight in what way?
With a sword in each hand
With a sword in each hand: Musashi's school, whose name means 'two heavens as one', paired the long and short swords, and late in life he set out its method in The Book of Five Rings.
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 Confucian terms, making the warrior a moral exemplar for the classes below him.
Q 10Before the sword became their emblem, the earliest samurai fought mainly from horseback with which weapon?
Bow
Bow: the first samurai were mounted archers, and their calling was known as 'the way of the horse and bow' for centuries before the sword became their signature weapon in the 17th century.
Q 11The word 'samurai' is thought to derive from 'saburau', a verb meaning what?
To serve
To serve: the word first described attendants who waited on nobles at court, a term of rank rather than of fighting, and only later came to mean the warrior class itself.
Q 12Which Europeans brought Japan its first matchlock guns, on Tanegashima in 1543?
The Portuguese
The Portuguese arrived aboard a storm-driven Chinese junk; the island's lord bought two of their guns and set his swordsmith to copying them, and the matchlock took the island's name.
Q 13Hideyoshi's 1588 'sword hunt' confiscated weapons from which group, leaving the samurai alone armed?
Farmers
Q 21Which manga about a disgraced executioner wandering Japan did The Mandalorian's creator cite as an influence?
Lone Wolf and Cub
Lone Wolf and Cub follows Ogami Ittō, the shogun's executioner, framed by a rival clan and turned assassin with his three-year-old son Daigorō; Jon Favreau named it as a model for his bounty hunter.
Q 22Which samurai text, dictated by a retired Saga retainer, is famed for teaching a warrior to live as though already dead?
Hagakure
Hagakure records the talk of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, who became a monk when the law forbade him to follow his dead lord in suicide; he had worked as a scribe and never fought in a battle.
Q 23The young Oda Nobunaga's wild behaviour earned him the nickname 'the Fool' of which province, his family's home?
Farmers had to hand over swords, bows, spears and guns, which officials said would be melted down for a great Buddha statue; the edict fixed the line between warriors 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 killed 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 16Yasuke, the African retainer of Oda Nobunaga, is one of two playable heroes in which 2025 video game?
Assassin's Creed Shadows
Assassin's Creed Shadows pairs him with the shinobi Naoe; the real Yasuke reached Japan in 1579 as a Jesuit's attendant, and Nobunaga was so curious to see him that he took him into his own service.
Q 17By what Japanese name was William Adams, the first Englishman in Japan, known?
Miura Anjin
Miura Anjin, 'the pilot of Miura', was the name Ieyasu gave Adams along with a fief and the rank of a direct retainer; he is the model for John Blackthorne, hero of the novel and series Shōgun.
Q 18Commodore Perry's 'black ships' steamed into Edo Bay in 1853 to press Japan's shogunate to do what?
Open its ports
Open its ports: Perry came back the next year, and the treaty the shogunate then signed opened Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships after more than 200 years of near-isolation.
Q 19The 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 20Sailing out to duel Sasaki Kojirō, what is Miyamoto Musashi said to have carved 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.
Owari
Owari: its heir scandalised his retainers with his rough dress and manners, and is said to have hurled the ceremonial incense at the altar during his own father's funeral.
Q 24Tokugawa Ieyasu, the future shogun, spent most of his boyhood as what?
A hostage
A hostage: sent away as a pledge of his family's loyalty, the boy was seized on the road by a rival clan in 1547, traded on two years later and not freed until he was seventeen.
Q 25Which woman warrior of the Tale of the Heike rode into the Battle of Awazu beside her lord Kiso Yoshinaka?
Tomoe Gozen
Tomoe Gozen cuts down an enemy leader at Awazu in 1184 as a last feat for Yoshinaka; tradition has her survive his defeat that day and end her long life as a nun.
Q 26Which 1960 western set in Mexico remade a Kurosawa epic?
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven moved Seven Samurai's plot to a Mexican village; when Kurosawa's film first reached American cinemas, it had itself been released under that title.
Q 27In Seven Samurai, a village of farmers hires the warriors to protect what from returning bandits?
Their harvest
Their harvest: the bandit chief decides to wait until the crop is in before raiding again, so the farmers, with nothing else to offer, go looking for samurai who will fight for food alone.
Q 28Hattori Hanzō, remembered in legend as a ninja master, led men from which province, the ninja heartland beside Kōka?
Iga
Iga ran itself as a league of warrior families until Nobunaga invaded it in 1581; a year later Hanzō is credited with guiding Ieyasu safely home through its mountains after Nobunaga's death.
Q 29The anime Samurai Champloo sets its Edo-period sword fights to which modern style of music?
Hip hop
Hip hop: director Shinichirō Watanabe, fresh from Cowboy Bebop, had beatmakers such as Nujabes score a samurai road story that is full of deliberate anachronisms.
Q 30Unlike the older tachi, how was the katana carried?
With the cutting edge facing up
With the cutting edge facing up, thrust through the sash so the draw could become a cut; the tachi hung edge-down, which is why the smith's signature sits on opposite sides of the tang on the two types.