Samurai is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. Also the Samnurai were nominalized to mean "those who serve in close attendance to the nobility," the pronunciation in Japanese changing to saburai.
By the end of the 12th century, samurai became almost entirely synonymous with bushi, and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai followed a set of rules that came to be known as Bushid¨. While they numbered less than 10% of Japan's population samurai teachings can still be found today in both everyday life and in martial arts such as Kend¨, meaning the way of the sword.
