If my history knowledge didn't fail me....Toyotomi Hideyoshi was of low or peasant birth and he made it to Shogun after Nobunga's death. And ironically closed the door up behind him.
Yup. Toyotomi took the swords from everyone who wasn't samurai and made social class inherited. Born a farmer, your descendants will always be farmers. Took 250 years, but it did finally blow up on the Shogunate.
It...definitely was not the sword ban that was one of the reasons for imploding the Shogunate.... In fact, the sword ban is credited with drastically increasing safety in Okinawa (implemented 150ish years earlier than Japan) and in Japan because banditry was harder with fewer weapons in supply for the laymen. Moreso the alienation of the outer families and their constant treatment as outsiders and lower class nobility by the bakufu; this is what led to the Satsuma, Choshu, and Tosa (and other families) being rebellious in the first place, then looking for an opportunity to bring down the bakufu. To further shoot down the argument that angry, weaponless peasants helped the downfall, the aforementioned clans led the rebellion and it was decided by other clans joining the rebellion (ie, decided entirely by samurai), never mind Commodore Perry being the impetus for rebellion in the first place If we're going revanchist, though, I suppose I'd have to roll with my characters following Rurouni Kenshin's Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu and its principle of "swords that give life." A principle coming from a samurai about protecting those around them sounds like something my O12-minded folks might be diggity down with.
It was more the blocking of social mobility that I was talking about biting the Shogunate in the ass. Farmers were dead broke, but second only to the Samurai (those nobles in Kyoto don't even count anymore). Artisans made more money than farmers, and the Merchants made more money than all of them while being bottom of the heap. But a starving samurai couldn't do *anything* but be a samurai. Most of the small-stipend samurai were totally willing to dirty their hands with tradework like painting or making umbrellas, but their chances of getting customers were terrible. During the Sengoku, you could be a mere farmer or even artisan, get drafted, do great deeds on the battlefield, and get raised in social status (see also Toyotomi Hideyoshi!) I'm not sure how much of a following there'd be of the "Sword that gives life" in the troubled times that we see in Infinity, though I'm sure that every swordsman starts out with kendo before moving to kenjutsu. (for the non-Japanese speakers: kendo means way of the sword, while kenjutsu means techniques of the sword. The difference today is that kenjutsu has lessons with a live blade, kendo is purely a sport form with only bamboo shinai and rarely a wooden bokken) I think I'd lean more towards Kenshin's "I'm tired of killing people" for a samurai personality.
