Samurai or Sumo?
 

This answer should seem very obvious but I'm having trouble figuring out which one would actually be considered higher on the social caste in feudal Japan... Anyone know the answer?

my limited knowledge leads me to believe that the samurai were higher on the social scale.

No comparison. The samurai.

lol Samurai obviously.

Wouldn't it depend on were the Sumo came from in relation to caste? Couldn't you have, for example, a Samurai who was also doing Sumo, as its a form of wrestling/martial art?

No. Sumo wrestlers of old were honored for their fighting skills, but they were merely entertainers. They may have been well paid, and become popular, but their social status would be like that of other entertainers, which was very low.

The order runs so:

The Emperor and nobility, then his highest advisers (usually samurai, including the Shogun). Then came the samurai (and there are different levels of samurai). Following the samurai came the peasants (craftsmen and farmers). Below these were the merchants, and below the merchants were the entertainers. Below these were the remains of society, which included outcasts, criminals, and of course, foreigners.

And those filthy corpse-touchers...

Looks like you beat me to that one but a qn.
I haven't thought/read/etc about this in some time so I may just be hazy with old memory... is Merchants below Peasants correct? or perhaps I'm thinking in terms of colloquial status rather than conceptual?

Your question has already been answered in this very short thread.

Since Samurai no longer exist however... Sumo is higher today. :mtongue: