“Understand that even if the enemy numbers in the thousands, a samurai finds fulfilment in the simple act of standing before them and being determined to cut them all down.”
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai.
The Domaru are the social and military elite, the samurai of contemporary Japan. Post-Uprising society was shaped by the kuge aristocracy, and the role of the Domaru was to embody the ideals of the modern samurai. Considered bushi, the lowest rung of Japanese nobility, these warriors are feared and respected for their dispassionate audacity and the exquisite heights of their martial prowess. They adhere scrupulously to Bushido, the way of the samurai, a stern code of customs and practices that lays out the honorable way to conduct oneself. As such, they are the criterion by which kuge-led Japanese society measures righteousness and good leadership. The Domaru were at the forefront of the Uprising and stories of their courageous deeds during the conflict already fill the pages of Japanese History. Even today there is seldom a military engagement of any substance that isn’t headed by a Domaru, always leading by example in the first line of attack. Domaru are invariably master swordsmen; their focus on close combat techniques makes them a warrior class as no other in history. They inspire fear in the hearts of their opponents, who know them to be capable of exercising terrible violence with the same inscrutable aplomb with which they conduct every other business. Domaru see life as an endless challenge, the failure of which resides not in death, but in indignity. As for the end of their lives, the foundation of their samurai path is the acceptance of death. They become as dead at the start of battle, laying down their lives in the name of emperor and homeland before a single blow is struck; once you’ve made peace with the fact that you are dead, you are beyond the reach of fear or hesitation.
