A.T. wrote:On the flip side he had no birthright during an era where some sources suggest that 'samurai' held familiar connotations
This gets muddled because in the period, there were distinctions between being a samurai and being of noble blood. One was not a required for the other, but they were also blending hard in this period as several hundred years of the Samurai being in charge had effectively intermixed many noble families with samurai status. Plus the sort of rationalizations the Shoguns used to justify their rule after the Yamato Emperors were firmly put into the position of 'ruler in name only.'
It's worthwhile to disconnect the entire issue of samurai status and birthright as they were not entirely related yet. It's after this period starting under Hideyoshi and then Tokugawa that the samurai were transformed into a more formal class with birthrights and entitlements explicitly tired to being samurai. For example, most land rights in the Ashikaga period mostly came down to a question of claiming descent from the clan that was given a title back during the Heinan period. The title carried certain land and legal rights, not the family name, but the title could only go to certain family names.
Most old samurai and noble families to this day still claim descent from either the Taira or the Minamoto (even though most of these claims are easily falsifiable) because those clans were at one point entitled to most high positions or magisterial positions. The Shogun actually had to be a member of the Minamoto family in some fashion which is why Hideyoshi never claimed it (he had no relation but could probably have fabricated one). Fun bit; the Oda clan claimed Taira descent to hold their lands, but they probably weren't related to the Taira at all.
Samurai status is more something you did, than something you were. Most land and political rights were attached to family names though, so as the samurai moved up in the world they either a) married into families entitled to those positions, or b) had the laws rewritten that their family was the one entitled to it. Or c) fabricated a secret ancestry that conveniently entitled them to whatever it was they just took by force. I mentioned the Tanneiji incident before. In that example, one family usurped another family and just had one of them members change their name as a way to take over.
In either case, being a samurai gave you military power but had in itself little political or inherent privilege. What gave it any sort of entitlement was the leveraging of military power to take family names, titles, or domains by force and then justify it after the fact.
The point of this fun aside being thought; there's not really any birthright associated with being a samurai in this period. Bushi families had been around for awhile but what made them distinct was largely their titles or relations to noble families rather than any inherent right of blood belonging to the members of that family.
And as an aside, I'd note the parallel we have here with ninjas.
Honestly we could probably have a whole other thread about the invention of the ninja of the 17th century vs the historical practices of 'sneaky' warfare conducted by Japanese warlords and its conflation with a number of sometimes not even related political and historical elements.
I do have this bit saved because I use it somewhat often. Part of the Stephen Turnbull apology tour.
The conclusion must therefore be that the practitioners of secret warfare in these historical accounts were warriors who operated within the usual command structure of a daimyō’s army. They were elite warriors but not a cult-like warrior elite from a distant province who served as mercenaries.
The other important point that the above accounts have in common is that when the word shinobi is used it is intended as an adverb, not a noun.
I.E. 'Ninja' was a way of doing something, not something you were. You can also say that 'samurai' while it was noun way before the Sengoku era, also started as a verb in Japanese, but even into the Sengoku period it's very accurate to say samurai is something you did rather than something you were with the complication that this is period where this was rapidly changing and the samurai who were fighting this era of wars were looking to position themselves more firmly. (also compare to 'Viking').
