100 Fun Facts About Samurai

What code of conduct guided the samurai, emphasizing loyalty, honor and martial mastery?

Bushido was for centuries a shifting set of unwritten expectations rather than one written code, and individual clans interpreted it in their own way.

What was a samurai called once his master died or cast him off?

The word literally means 'drifter' or 'wandering man', and some ronin also cut all ties with their family or clan.

Which ritual act of suicide was practiced by samurai to restore honor or avoid capture?

Seppuku, also called harakiri, was considered the most honourable form of capital punishment available to a samurai who had committed a serious offence.

Which curved, single-edged sword did samurai pair with the shorter wakizashi?

Katana blades are curved and single-edged, with a circular or squared guard and a grip long enough for two hands.

In which period did the samurai formally rise to power with Japan's first military government?

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.

What were feudal Japan's powerful lords with large estates and private samurai armies called?

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.

Who founded the Kamakura shogunate after his victory in the Genpei War?

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.

Which legendary Japanese swordsman founded the Niten Ichi-ryū, a distinctive two-sword fighting style?

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.

The Edo-period samurai moral code was built mainly on which philosophy?

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.

Early high-ranking samurai, in heavy ō-yoroi armour, fought mainly from horseback with which weapon?

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.

The word 'samurai' is thought to derive from 'saburau', a verb meaning what?

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.

In which year did Portuguese traders bring the first matchlock guns to Tanegashima?

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.

Which ruler, grand minister from 1586, decreed that non-samurai could not carry weapons, freezing Japan's mobility?

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's 1588 sword hunt (katanagari) confiscated weapons from farmers and monks, fixing the line between the warrior class and everyone else.

Which warrior clan began in 814 when Emperor Saga gave his surplus children a surname?

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.

Which court official did Asano Naganori assault, leading to his seppuku and the forty-seven rōnin's revenge?

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.

At which Tokyo temple are the forty-seven rōnin and their master buried?

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.

Yasuke, the African samurai who served Oda Nobunaga, first came to Japan in the service of which Jesuit?

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.

By what Japanese name was William Adams, the first Englishman in Japan, known?

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.

The Battle of Sekigahara, which effectively founded the Tokugawa shogunate, was fought in which year?

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.

The 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, the last great samurai uprising, was led by which former government leader?

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.

Sailing out to duel Sasaki Kojirō, what did Miyamoto Musashi carve into a wooden sword?

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.

How many duels did Miyamoto Musashi reportedly fight without ever losing?

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.

The Hagakure records the sayings of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a former retainer in what is now which prefecture?

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.

Which retainer ambushed Oda Nobunaga at Honnō-ji in 1582, forcing him to commit seppuku?

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.

What nickname did young Oda Nobunaga's eccentric behaviour, like eating melons while riding backwards, earn him?

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.

Which future shogun spent his boyhood as a hostage of the Oda and Imagawa clans?

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.

Female samurai Tomoe Gozen served which lord at the Battle of Awazu?

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.

Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) had a Japanese runtime of how many minutes?

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.

In Seven Samurai, a village of farmers hires the warriors to protect what from returning bandits?

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.

The Azuchi-Momoyama period is named for Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle and Momoyama, site of whose retirement castle?

Fushimi Castle at Momoyama was where Hideyoshi lived after retiring.

The Shinsengumi were commissioned in 1863 to protect the shogunate's representatives in which city?

Kyoto: the Shinsengumi policed the imperial capital from their Mibu barracks against anti-shogunate loyalists, and won fame with the 1864 Ikedaya raid.

Unlike the older tachi, how was the katana carried?

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.

Date Masamune, the 'One-Eyed Dragon', lost an eye to which disease?

Smallpox: a childhood bout blinded Masamune's right eye; one story says he plucked it out himself after being told an enemy could seize it, and his crescent-moon helmet became iconic.

In the Meiji Restoration, the shogun's capital of Edo was renamed what on 3 September 1868?

Tokyo, 'eastern capital', replaced the name Edo by imperial edict, and Emperor Meiji moved his court there from Kyoto the following year.

In which year were the kazoku and shizoku status categories abolished in Japan?

1947: the postwar constitution in force from 3 May 1947 abolished the peerage, and the shizoku entry for former samurai families was dropped from the family registers the same year.

During the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281, which clan controlled the Kamakura shogunate as regents?

Hōjō: the Hōjō regents (shikken) ruled in the shogun's name from 1203, and Hōjō Tokimune directed the defence against both invasions; resentment over meagre rewards later helped topple the shogunate in 1333.

William Adams reached Japan in 1600 aboard which Dutch ship, the only one of its fleet to arrive?

Liefde ('Love') limped into Bungo on Kyushu in April 1600 with about two dozen survivors of the five-ship Rotterdam fleet; Adams was its pilot, and the Geloof was the only ship to get home.

The Battle of Sekigahara was fought in what is now which Japanese prefecture?

Gifu: Sekigahara lies in Gifu Prefecture's Fuwa District, on the old Nakasendō road between Lake Biwa and the Nōbi plain, close to the Shiga border.

In which city did the Satsuma leader of the 1877 rebellion set up his private academy, the Shi-gakkō?

Kagoshima: the Shigakkō opened in 1874 in the Satsuma castle town, and its students' raid on a government arsenal there set off the rebellion in January 1877.

Which Hollywood film uses quotations from the Hagakure as a narrative device?

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Jim Jarmusch's 1999 gangster film, stars Forest Whitaker as a hitman who lives by the text.

Which Tokugawa general reportedly went through 57 battles without a single wound?

Tadakatsu fought lightly armoured and was nicknamed 'The Warrior who surpassed Death itself'; his colleague Ii Naomasa, heavily armoured, was wounded in nearly every battle.

Ii Naomasa's red-armoured elite unit, the akazonae, was inherited from which clan?

Takeda: after the Takeda fell in 1582, Ieyasu assigned their former retainers and Yamagata Masakage's red-armoured tradition to Naomasa, whose horned red armour earned him the nickname the Red Devil of Ii; the sets are preserved at Hikone Castle.

Which Sengoku warlord was known as the 'Tiger of Kai'?

Shingen died of illness in 1573 while campaigning toward Kyoto, and his death was concealed while power passed to his son Katsuyori.

Uesugi Kenshin's followers believed he was the avatar of which Buddhist god of war?

Kenshin's departures for war began with prayers at the Bishamonten shrine and a meal of three dishes and three cups for luck.

How many major battles did Shingen and Kenshin fight at Kawanakajima?

Five: the two clashed at Kawanakajima in 1553, 1555, 1557, 1561 and 1564; the fourth battle, in 1561, caused heavier losses as a share of the forces engaged than any other battle of the Sengoku period.

Outnumbered ten to one at Okehazama in 1560, Nobunaga killed which Kyoto-bound warlord?

Imagawa Yoshimoto, marching on Kyoto with some 25,000 men, was caught resting in the heat; a thunderstorm masked the Oda advance on his camp and he was beheaded in the melee.

Before Okehazama, Nobunaga recited 'Man has but 50 years' from which performance piece?

Atsumori, a kōwaka dance piece about the young Taira warrior slain at Ichi-no-tani; after reciting its 'Man has but fifty years' verse, Nobunaga put on his armour and rode out from Kiyosu.

In what lowly role did the future Hideyoshi first serve Nobunaga?

Sandal-bearer: as Nobunaga's zōri-tori, the young Kinoshita Tōkichirō is said to have warmed his master's sandals against his chest, and he rose through the Oda ranks to command armies.

The Battle of Nagashino, famed for Nobunaga's massed matchlock fire, came in which year?

1575's battle is famous for massed matchlocks, but the legend of 3,000 guns firing in three rotating ranks is now doubted; the reliable Shinchō Kōki mentions about 1,000 guns and no volley rotation.

Ieyasu's pretext for attacking Osaka in 1614 was an inscription on what object?

The bell at Hōkō-ji read 'kokka ankō'; the shogunate claimed the characters split Ieyasu's name and so cursed him.

Which Osaka Castle defender did a Shimazu lord hail as 'Number one warrior in Japan'?

Yukimura was also called the 'Crimson Demon of War' and 'The Last Sengoku Hero'.

In 1869, defeated Tokugawa loyalists founded Japan's only republic on which island?

Hokkaido, then called Ezo: Enomoto Takeaki's Republic of Ezo, with a president chosen by vote, held Hakodate until imperial forces took the Goryōkaku fort in June 1869.

In which year did the Haitōrei edict ban former samurai from carrying swords in public?

1876: the Haitōrei of 28 March 1876 banned wearing swords in public, exempting soldiers, police and former daimyō; universal conscription had already ended the samurai monopoly on military service.

A katana is defined by a blade longer than two shaku, roughly how many centimetres?

60: a shaku is about 30.3 cm, so the two-shaku threshold is roughly 60.6 cm; shorter blades are wakizashi or tantō, and many old tachi were shortened at the tang and remounted as katana.

Which polearm became a status symbol and self-defence weapon for Japanese noblewomen?

Naginata: its sweeping reach made it the weapon kept by women of samurai households, and its battlefield use forced the introduction of greaves into Japanese armour; naginatajutsu became a modern martial art practised mostly by women.

Of 105 bodies excavated from the 1580 Battle of Senbon Matsubaru, how many were women?

35: DNA testing of the 105 bodies found 35 women; with no castle at the site, archaeologist Suzuki Hiroatsu concluded they had come to fight rather than to defend a home.

Nakano Takeko led an ad hoc corps of women fighters in the 1868 defence of which domain?

Aizu: Takeko died leading the women's unit, retroactively named the Jōshitai, against imperial troops at Aizu in October 1868; her mother and sister fought beside her after senior retainers refused to let women fight officially.

Which widow of the Kamakura shogunate's founder was dubbed the 'nun shogun' for her power?

Hōjō Masako married the future shogun around 1177 against her father's wishes; widowed in 1199, she took vows as a nun yet ran the shogunate through her sons Yoriie and Sanetomo.

Loyalist Kusunoki Masashige died at Minatogawa in 1336 fighting which turncoat general?

Ashikaga Takauji, who had helped Emperor Go-Daigo overthrow the Kamakura shogunate in 1333 and then turned on him, crushed Kusunoki at Minatogawa near modern Kobe; Kusunoki's suicide made him Japan's model of the loyal samurai.

The shogunate Takauji founded in 1338 opened which period of Japanese history?

The Ashikaga shogunate ruled from Kyoto's Muromachi district until Nobunaga drove out its last shogun in 1573.

Which child emperor died when the Taira fleet was destroyed at Dan-no-ura in 1185?

Antoku, aged about six, was carried into the sea by his grandmother Nii-no-ama, Kiyomori's widow, as the Minamoto fleet overwhelmed the Taira; the Kusanagi sword of the regalia was lost with him.

What was the childhood name of the Minamoto general Yoshitsune?

Ushiwakamaru, 'young ox', was Yoshitsune's name as a boy at Kurama temple, where legend has the tengu king Sōjōbō teach him swordsmanship.

Legend says the monk Benkei had won how many swords in duels before he met Yoshitsune?

999: legend has Benkei collecting 999 swords from defeated duellists and hunting his thousandth in Kyoto when the young flute-playing Yoshitsune beat him and won his lifelong loyalty.

The Last Samurai (2003) was filmed mostly in which country?

New Zealand: the Taranaki region provided the village and battlefield locations, with the conical Mount Taranaki standing in for Mount Fuji; the Japanese temple scenes were shot at Engyō-ji near Himeji.

Tom Cruise's Algren in The Last Samurai is loosely based on officers of which nationality?

French: Jules Brunet, a French army officer of the military mission to the shogunate, stayed on to fight with Enomoto Takeaki's holdouts in 1868–69, a decade before the Satsuma Rebellion the film depicts.

Which Sergio Leone western copied Kurosawa's Yojimbo so closely that Toho sued?

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) transplanted Yojimbo's plot to a Mexican border town; Kurosawa wrote to Leone that it was 'a very fine film, but it is my film', and the settlement gave Toho a share of its earnings.

Asked his name in Yojimbo, Mifune's rōnin invents one after glancing at what nearby?

'Kuwabatake Sanjuro' roughly means 'mulberry field, thirty years old'; in Sanjuro he looks at camellias instead.

Sakamoto Ryōma brokered the 1866 alliance between Satsuma and which rival domain?

Chōshū: the two domains had been bitter enemies since Chōshū's 1864 attack on Kyoto, but the Satchō Alliance Ryōma brokered became the engine of the Meiji Restoration, which Ryōma, murdered in December 1867, did not live to see.

How did Shinsengumi commander Kondō Isami meet his end in 1868?

Beheaded at Itabashi: captured at Nagareyama in April 1868, Kondō was refused a samurai's seppuku and beheaded as a common criminal at the Itabashi execution ground in May; his head was displayed in Kyoto.

Which Shinsengumi first-unit captain died of tuberculosis in 1868?

Okita Sōji, the Shinsengumi's first-unit captain and a prodigy of the Tennen Rishin-ryū, died of tuberculosis in Edo in July 1868; the image of him coughing blood at the Ikedaya raid comes from fiction.

Hijikata Toshizō died in 1869 at the Battle of Hakodate, the last fight of which war?

Boshin War: the 1868–69 civil war between the new imperial government and Tokugawa loyalists ended with the fall of Hakodate; Hijikata was shot from his horse in June 1869, weeks after trying to board and seize the ironclad Kōtetsu.

Musashi's Book of Five Rings covers Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and which final book?

Void is the short final chapter, covering mindset rather than technique; the five books correspond to the godai elements of esoteric Buddhism.

The Ōnin War, which tipped Japan into the Sengoku era, broke out in which year?

1467: the Ōnin War ran from 1467 to 1477, beginning as a feud between Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sōzen over the shogunal succession, and left much of Kyoto in ruins.

Which western-Honshu daimyō is remembered for the 'lesson of the three arrows'?

Mōri Motonari is said to have shown his sons Takamoto, Motoharu and Takakage that one arrow snaps but three together hold; the tale is probably apocryphal, and Kurosawa wove it into Ran.

Kurosawa's Ran (1985) transplants which Shakespeare tragedy to Sengoku Japan?

King Lear: Ran turns Lear's three daughters into the three sons of warlord Hidetora Ichimonji; costume designer Emi Wada won an Oscar and Kurosawa received his only Best Director nomination.

Himeji Castle's brilliant white exterior earned it a nickname after which bird?

Heron: Himeji is Shirasagi-jō, the White Heron Castle, for its white plastered walls and soaring roofs; the country's largest surviving castle, it was among Japan's first UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1993.

What happened to the one WWII firebomb that landed on Himeji Castle's top floor?

It failed to explode: the single incendiary that landed on the keep's top floor in the 1945 raids never ignited, so the castle survived while the city around it burned; it also rode out the 1995 Kobe earthquake almost untouched.

The samurai chonmage topknot originally served what practical purpose?

Steadying the helmet: the topknot gave the kabuto something to sit on and grip in battle; with the warrior class gone, the style lived on mainly among sumo wrestlers, with the shape varying by rank.

In the mounted archery rite of yabusame, a galloping archer shoots at how many targets?

Three: the rider gallops a roughly 250-metre track and looses a turnip-headed kabura-ya at three wooden targets in turn; Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū in Kamakura is a famous venue.

In a seppuku ceremony, what was the role of the kaishakunin?

Beheading the dying man: the kaishakunin, usually a trusted friend, stood behind and struck as the blade went in; the ideal cut left a flap of skin so the head fell forward rather than rolling away.

Seppuku as a judicial punishment was abolished in which year?

1873: the Meiji government struck seppuku from the penal code that year, though voluntary seppuku did not die out; General Nogi in 1912 and novelist Yukio Mishima in 1970 both chose it.

Who in 1167 became the first warrior-family courtier appointed Daijō-daijin (chancellor)?

Taira no Kiyomori rose from provincial warrior stock to chancellor in 1167 and married his daughter to the emperor; the Tale of the Heike says his dying fever in 1181 was so fierce no one could approach him.

Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who resigned in 1867, was which number in the Tokugawa shogun line?

15th: Yoshinobu was the fifteenth and last Tokugawa shogun, returning power to the emperor in November 1867; he lived until 1913, long enough to be made a prince and take up cycling and oil painting.

The daishō, the sword pair worn by samurai, literally means what?

Large and small: dai-shō is literally 'big-little', usually a katana with a wakizashi, though any long sword paired with a short one counted; matching fittings mattered more than matching smiths.

Who commanded the Western Army that lost to Ieyasu at Sekigahara?

Ishida Mitsunari, Hideyoshi's former administrator, assembled the Western coalition in the name of his lord's heir; captured after the rout, he was beheaded in Kyoto, and the vassal who took his Sawayama castle found no gold or silver inside.

Beaten by Hideyoshi at Yamazaki less than two weeks after Honnō-ji, how did Nobunaga's killer die?

Killed by bandits: fleeing after Yamazaki toward his castle at Sakamoto, Nobunaga's killer was speared by peasant bandits near Ogurusu; his brief grip on power gave rise to the phrase 'mikka tenka', a three-day reign.

The 2024 series Shōgun set an Emmy record by winning how many awards for its first season?

18: Shōgun's 18 Emmys for one season beat Game of Thrones' 12; it was the first non-English-language series to win Outstanding Drama Series, with Hiroyuki Sanada as Toranaga.

Yagyū Munenori, sword instructor to shogun Hidetada, completed which treatise around 1632?

Heihō kadensho, the Yagyū family's book on strategy, applied Shinkage-ryū swordsmanship to politics and life; its author went on to serve the third shogun, Iemitsu, as inspector-general.

What did Kamakura regent Tokimune do to the envoys Kublai Khan sent in 1275?

Had them beheaded: Tokimune executed Kublai's envoys at Tatsunokuchi in 1275 and another party at Hakata in 1279; he later built Engaku-ji as a memorial to the dead of both Mongol invasions.

In Kobayashi's Harakiri (1962), a poor rōnin must commit seppuku with a blade of what?

Bamboo: young Motome Chijiiwa, who had pawned his real blades to feed his family, is forced by the Iyi clan to disembowel himself with his bamboo sword; Tatsuya Nakadai's Hanshirō tells the story while demanding his own seppuku.

The Maeda clan's Kaga domain was nicknamed for its rice income of how many koku?

One million: 'Kaga Hyakumangoku', Kaga of a million koku, was the richest domain of the Edo period, rated at just over a million koku from 1600 under Maeda Toshinaga, son of clan founder Toshiie.

Which young page died defending Nobunaga at Honnō-ji in 1582?

Mori Ranmaru, Nobunaga's favourite attendant, died with his brothers Bōmaru and Rikimaru holding off the attackers long enough for Nobunaga to commit seppuku; the fire left no body for the rebels to find.

Which tea master was ordered by Hideyoshi to take his own life in 1591?

Sen no Rikyū had served Nobunaga and then Hideyoshi before being ordered to commit seppuku in 1591; the three main Senke tea schools all descend from him.

In Samurai Jack, what is the shapeshifting demon who hurls the hero into the future?

Aku, the shapeshifting master of darkness voiced by Mako, flings Jack into a dystopian future in the pilot; creator Genndy Tartakovsky drew on the 1970s series Kung Fu and Frank Miller's comic Ronin.

Which 2019 FromSoftware game about a shinobi named Wolf won The Game Awards' top prize?

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice took Game of the Year at the 2019 Game Awards; director Hidetaka Miyazaki wanted a break from Dark Souls, and the old Tenchu series was the project's starting point.

Under sankin-kōtai, daimyō had to leave whom permanently in Edo as hostages?

Their wives and children: under the alternate-attendance system formalised in 1635, a daimyō's wife and heir lived permanently in Edo while he split his years between Edo and his domain; the costly processions kept lords too poor to rebel.

Who led the forty-seven rōnin in their 1703 vendetta?

Ōishi Yoshio, chamberlain of Akō domain, had run Asano's castle and led the raid after nearly two years of feigned dissipation; he is often called by his pseudonym Ōishi Kuranosuke.

The Tale of the Heike was spread by blind performers who chanted it to which instrument?

Biwa: blind lute-players called biwa hōshi chanted the epic of the Genpei War across Japan; the text was compiled before 1330 and opens with the famous line about the bell of Gion Shōja.

Which Tokugawa shogun's animal-protection edicts earned him the nickname 'Dog Shogun'?

Tsunayoshi, the fifth shogun, was born in a Year of the Dog and from the 1680s issued Edicts on Compassion for Living Things that protected Edo's strays in vast kennels, earning him the name Inu-kubō.

Hattori Hanzō's nickname 'Oni no Hanzō' translates as what kind of Hanzō?

Ieyasu, moved by his loyalty, reportedly remarked that 'even a demon can shed tears'.