If the Samurai could see the military of Imperial Japan, how would they feel?

I believe that the Japanese military of this period said that they were taking after the honour and traditions of their ancestors.

And so, how would they view them? Both in action and what their views?
 
Very much depends. The samurai were ultimately just a class, with individuals having greatly different opinions based on region and time period. In many ways, the question is like asking "what would an English knight think of today's military".

The idea of the samurai having a specific philosophy throughout time (usually called Bushido although from memory the term is a western invention) comes about from individuals such as Yamamoto Tsunetomo and his excellent (but entirely romantic) Hagakure. The book itself is telling however, as it was written during a period where much of what we associate with the samurai was dying out and is bemoaning the current generation. The book itself is a series of stories, philosophical ponderings and the ponderings of the man when he was old that naturally doesn't really have sources for much of its claims but refers to romanticised stories and heresay. More than this, Yamamoto Tsunetomo himself became a zen monk when he was forbidden to commit suicide on the death of his lord, and zen philosophy extremely coloured his views on the ideal samurai, something which again is bad at reflecting the actual nature of the samurai as depending on region and time period zen (and Soto Zen in particular) was seen as a farmers religion and not suitable for the samurai (which I believe were more likely to practice Shingon Buddhism depending on the period but don't hold me to that).

In short, the " samurai" being of some universal code of conduct and thought is very much a fiction and we can't state what they would have thought on anything. The actual history of the samurai is filled with crazy antics, betrayal, drunken rampages and militarily very divergent tactics. Extra Credits makes a rather funny point when you look at the Sengoku period that much of the "samurai ideal" weirdly applies far better to the Ninja clans who were far more consistent and "honorable".
 
Samurai weren't even, legally speaking, at the top of the food chain until Toyotomi Hideyoshi became Shogun and changed the class system to move the Samurai from somewhere near the bottom (due to their role as death-dealers making them karmically very unclean) to the top. Even so during the Sengoku Jidai, the so-called Golden Age of the Samurai, any peasant who could scrounge up weapons, armor and survive long enough to earn some renown on the battlefield could become a Samurai. This whole notion of Bushido and some sort of consistent, universal code of honor didn't really exist when Samurai were consistently at war and during the Edo Period when they actually ruled were much more like European landed knights than what's presented in the Hagakure. There were definitely stories of honorable suicide and all that but there were also plenty of examples of them abusing power and generally being little different from a 14th century French or English aristocrat.
 
What Samurai are you talking about? The idealized samurai of the Edo might see some "dishonor" in the methods, but admire the "spirit". The samurai of earlier periods (granted even as a class they were rather fluid) might think them full of themselves. Action wise I believe both would be shocked at the later actions of the IJA.
 
Samurai weren't even, legally speaking, at the top of the food chain until Toyotomi Hideyoshi became Shogun and changed the class system to move the Samurai from somewhere near the bottom (due to their role as death-dealers making them karmically very unclean) to the top. Even so during the Sengoku Jidai, the so-called Golden Age of the Samurai, any peasant who could scrounge up weapons, armor and survive long enough to earn some renown on the battlefield could become a Samurai. This whole notion of Bushido and some sort of consistent, universal code of honor didn't really exist when Samurai were consistently at war and during the Edo Period when they actually ruled were much more like European landed knights than what's presented in the Hagakure. There were definitely stories of honorable suicide and all that but there were also plenty of examples of them abusing power and generally being little different from a 14th century French or English aristocrat.
Just to clarify as this touches on many of the points I raised, the Hagakure is a poor factual document, but a fantastic philosophy book. Yamamoto's idea of the samurai is similar to the glorifying of the crusaders.

To anyone interested in the hagakure, I strongly reccomend reading into zen philosophy and its language quirks or it comes across as far more dour than it actually is (a mistake I myself made).
 
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