and shaped the nation’s culture. After the Meiji Restoration, and especially in the decades before the Second World War, it was thought that samurai ideals might serve as a template for national development, and the nation transmuted into a master race of warriors—thus giving Japan hegemonic strength among nations, just as the samurai had once wielded uncontested power over their fellow Japanese. But bushido had always been an elite, class-bound creed, and was not necessarily suited to mass adoption across the population.
