"For 700 years, from the late 12th to the mid-19th centuries, Japan’s highest ideals were embodied in the samurai. Unflinching courage, unshakeable loyalty, murderous proficiency with the sword, a serenity in the face of death that to a modern eye can seem macabre, with its culminating ideal of agonizing self-disembowelment — such are the distinctive features of what came to be known as Bushido, the “way of the warrior.”"