It wasn't very common for samurai to commit seppuku voluntarily. More frequently it was "you do this or else...". There are some examples where it happened, but not enough to consider it standard practice or "code".

Putting enemies to the sword, one way or the other, was also common in Europe. The difference is that Christianity frowned upon suicide (either voluntary or forced).

Samurai defeated in battle ran away to fight another day, like most humans.

"Bushido" is supposed to be more than seppuku anyway. This notion of the samurai as someone extremely loyal and honor-bound to follow his lord or commit suicide otherwise is a fiction.

Like I said, Japan did some nation-building on top of this myth, but it was mostly a development of writers who lived past the Sengoku, when samurai were no longer warriors.

Think of bushido as Arthurian lore: it's fiction, and people of several times updated it and added to it, and built a mythos around it. Even the katana as the "soul of the samurai" is a later day fiction; samurai during the Sengoku prized katanas (or their predecesors, actually) but they didn't particularly use them except as sidearms; it was the spear and the bow that were the "true" samurai weapons; the daisho was only codified as the "samurai symbol" once the warring period had mostly ended. It's also an invention...

Meanwhile, the real samurai were warriors and did what warriors of every culture did: war among each other, kill things, and amass fortune when they could.

> It wasn't very common for samurai to commit seppuku voluntarily. More frequently it was "you do this or else...".

I am wondering how did you arrive to this conclusion? I guess one would need to do some comprehensive review of all available materials from that time?..

> Even the katana as the "soul of the samurai" is a later day fiction; samurai during the Sengoku prized katanas (or their predecesors, actually) but they didn't particularly use them except as sidearms; it was the spear and the bow

I am not sure where katana as the soul idea came from, but I speculate that while spear, bow and arquebuse were battlefield weapons, samurais used it only in rare events of going to campaigns, while they carried katana rest of the time, so I guess it could be appropriate to call it soul.

> I am wondering how did you arrive to this conclusion?

Read what mainstream historians wrote, as opposed to more pop culture oriented divulgators like Turnbull (who in later works retracted his earlier opinions).

Historical records don't show many people voluntarily committing seppuku, but there's lots of instances of people forced to commit suicide (or whole families executed).

There are also lots of instances of samurai, high ranking and low ranking, running from the battlefield to fight another day. The notion that a samurai must commit seppuku on defeat is untenable.

Seriously, if you google the literature a bit you'll see the same opinions.

> I am not sure where katana as the soul idea came from

The writings of the Edo period, after the Tokugawa shogunate made the daisho (the pair of short and long swords) a symbol of the samurai. Before this, during the warring period, anyone could use a sword and there was nothing special to it.

> samurais used it only in rare events of going to campaigns, while they carried katana rest of the time, so I guess it could be appropriate to call it soul.

Nope. The weapons the samurai valued and trained with during peacetime were the bow primarily -- the bow was THE samurai weapon -- and the naginata (earlier) and spear.

The katana proper didn't even exist, it was the tachi or uchigatana, its antecessors. And while quality works were prized (and some had religious significance, especially pre-katana swords!) they were merely sidearms.

The "soul of the samurai" is a later day romanticization.