Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
It bears noting that under the Tokugawa Shogunate, farmers had a higher social status, at least in theory, than merchants. This despite that many farmers were more or less impoverished while many merchants could be quite wealthy. From my understanding, the reasoning was that farmers were producers, while merchants simply trafficked in goods produced by others.
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I was going to bring up similar points but you beat me to it. The Shogun/Daiyomo/Samurai/Peasants social hierarchy works ok for the point Simonmark was making, but it was more complicated than that in feudal Japan, and particularly in the late feudal era. The merchant class and the two distinct priestly classes were also important players and in the case of the merchants didn't fit well into the structure at all (as in, they had increasing economic power but were looked down upon socially). And then there were the occasional conflicts with the more militant Buddhist monasteries, and finally the partial breakdown of the samurai system with the introduction of firearms.
Of course, the finer points don't matter. The Silver Shogun isn't trying to recreate feudal Japanese society, he's using a mish-mash of modern analogues of the samurai system along with some of its mystique. Web, you've probably mentioned before in other discussions of the Silver Shogunate's backstory, but how much of an expert on Japanese history was the Silver Shogun? With a name like Tokugawa I'm assuming his family took great pains to educate each generation about their glorious legacy?