Codes Of Combat

A Samurai or Noble began missile combat by shooting a turnip-head arrow to make a whistling flight over the heads of the enemy. He began melee combat by declaring his name and boasting of his proud family heritage. Anything less was ignoble, more like an ambush than a proper battle.
Many samurai and nobles carefully washed their heads and set their hair the night before a battle. Some even perfumed their hair with burning incense. They knew that if they were defeated, they would probably be killed and beheaded and they wanted their heads to look their best when displayed. The sign of surrender on the battlefield was to remove one's helmet so as to make it easier for the enemy to lop off one's head. Most samurai wore a moustache so that their heads would plainly be those of men. Samurai going into battle usually carried a bag for the heads of the enemies they'd killed.
Some Samurai also took a rope into battle with them, for tying up a prisoner. Prisoners were kept for interrogation and hostages; they expected to be executed unless they had powerful relatives or allies who could set up an alliances between the two warring sides.
In an age of Contending Clans, even the clan lord's children were expected to commit suicide or go proudly to their execution. Sometimes a clan lord's line survived because the child's nurse nobly substituted her own son for the clan heir and sent him to be executed.

Death & Mourning

A dead person's body was usually cremated but might be put intact into the coffin, folded up into a kneeling position. The funeral was conducted at the Buddhist temple attached to the graveyard where the body was buried. The bereaved family wore white and handed white envelopes containing money to the people who came to pay their respects to the dead. Immediate relatives returned to the grave every seven days until 49 days had passed. Then a service was held to move the dead person's pure spirit to another site that would not be contaminated by a dead body. A funeral could not take place without a body to bury. People always went into the wilderness in groups so that if one of them died, the others could bring back the body. Even peasant woodcutters, charcoal makers and hunters always went into the wilderness in groups of two, three, five, or more. (A group of four was avoided because /shi/ is the pronunciation of the word for "four" and the pronunciation of the word for "dead.")
Mourning periods were 3 days for a child of less than three years old; 3 months for the eldest son and 1 month for younger children; 3 months for a wife, brother or sister; 5 months for grandparents or for a mother who'd been divorced, 13 months for husband or parents. A person in mourning could not visit a Shinto shrine or the Imperial Palace.