For more than 700 years Japan was dominated by a military caste—the samurai. To the Western mind these fearsome warriors—samurai, the masterless ronin, and the assassin ninja—have always been a source of mystery and wonder, combining the idealism of chivalry with military fanaticism. The Ways of the Samurai digs beneath the myth and reveals a truth even more amazing about the men who practiced a discipline drawn from Zen and Confucian ethics—bushido, the way of the warrior.