The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

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Arty
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The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Arty »

Oh, you scion of old Nippon
You the neon phoenix, you the dragon flying on thermals of solar wind!
Your businessman-warriors, your salarymen-samurai, your oh-so-perfect merger of industry, philosophy, and war
Your hungry zaibatsu, your cunning ninja, your flashing lights that dye your cities
Your Emperor who hears
but never sees
You have made a merger of honor and profit
Now we shall see if the merger bears fruit
Or if the chrysanthemum shall darken and wither
By the rot that chews it at the root?


---

Image

The Chrysanthemum Shogunate is a nation balanced on a triad of power between three forces: the Emperor, the sole agent of divinity within the mortal realm and leader of all the peoples of the Shogunate; the Shogun, chosen by the Emperor as supreme military and industrial lord of the realm, and protector of the Shogunate; and the Zaibatsu, corporate conglomerates owned by dynastic samurai families, who rule over their given territories in the Emperor's name and balance competition and cooperation with each other to better the realm as a whole.

This at-times-precarious system is balanced in several subtle ways. Each zaibatsu must have at least one of its major subsidiaries headquartered on Edo-Chikyu, the capital and throne world of the Shogunate. Similarly, each of the zaibatsu’s daimyo must spent half of Edo’s year living on Edo-Chikyu, specifically in Kikushi, the Chrysanthemum City. While doing so places them at the center of the Shogunate’s power, only the sitting Shogun is allowed to bring more than a small number of their elite guard with him to Edo-Chikyu, and no weapons other than swords are allowed within Kikushi’s walls, on pain of death by disembowelment. This makes the chance of a coup within the city much more difficult.

Similarly, while the zaibatsu are allowed near-total control over their homeworlds, and they have the option of switching out planets to get the best “deal,” all other planets are nominally controlled by the Emperor. Zaibatsu may buy rights to mine or farm parts of the Emperor’s worlds, but a portion of their koku (takings) from such holdings then goes to the Emperor, and the Emperor may abolish a zaibatsu’s holdings at any time. Economically-speaking, the Emperor could bring any of the zaibatsu to their knees if he chose to. The Shogun may also purchases holdings on Imperial worlds, though for reasons stated below, the Emperor almost never charges the Shogun’s zaibatsu as much as he would charge the others.

Each zaibatsu maintains its own military, independent from and about equal in size to the Imperial Army and Navy, which almost never leaves the Edo System except in times of all-out war with one of the other imperial powers. If one zaibatsu decided to go up against the Chrysanthemum Throne, it would be a pretty even fight. If two of them fought together, the Emperor would be in serious danger. The Emperor himself also does not have a zaibatsu of his own, and while he may own land and resource rights, he is not nearly as engaged in, or capable of manipulating, his nation’s economy as the daimyo are. This is one of the reasons that one of the duties of the Shogun is the act as the Emperor’s personal bodyguard, why the Emperor has a vested interest in keeping on the Shogun’s good side, and why the Shogun has command over the Imperial Army and Navy in addition to his own zaibatsu’s military.

Realistically speaking, the true power in the Shogunate is, unsurprisingly, the Shogun. His zaibatsu can go to war, either economically or militarily, with any of the other zaibatsu, and the gifts of the office of Shogun mean he stands a very good chance of coming out on top. In the event of total war with another nation, the Shogun has complete control of the entire Shogunate military, including the assets of other zaibatsu. This is one of the reasons past Shogun have been infamous as warmongers - it’s a great way to keep their peers in line. The possibility of the other zaibatsu uniting to take the Shogun down certainly exists, and the Emperor could dismiss the Shogun at any time, but the likelihood of these things happening is miniscule so long as the Shogun walks a fine line between control and benevolence.

In short, the zaibatsu and the Emperor need each other, and the Emperor and the Shogun need each other. It is largely the Emperor’s duty to make sure the zaibatsu and the Shogun believe, or at least pretend, that they need each other, even if the reality is quite the opposite.

The current Emperor is Daigo-tenno, is an engaged and charismatic leader, and who is both loved and feared in equal respect by the Shogunate's people. Daigo resents the slow but steady concession of the Emperor's power to the Shogun which has taken place over the centuries, and seeks to reverse it. However, he insists on doing so without resorting to a military engagement of any kind, which bewilders and angers the zaibatsu who would otherwise happily back him in such a conflict. Daigo and his wife, Meiko, have four children, and Daigo has a younger brother, Shinzo; the line if succession is, therefore, well-protected for Daigo's dynasty.

The Najikawa zaibatsu is the current Shogun clan, and the head of that zaibatsu is Najikawa Yadate. The Najikawa have maintained their position as Shogun for seventeen generations, and Yadate sees no reason why that should change, as it has brought his family and conglomerate vast wealth and power. At the same time, the Najikawa have also brought the Shogunate to a state of uneasy peace, exacting harsh punishments on any zaibatsu who engage in warfare which might threaten the Shogunate as a whole. Despite the powers and armies he wields, Najikawa Yadate maintains that he is a peacemaker above all else.

There are currently nine zaibatsu powerful enough to own entire worlds (including the Shogun's zaibatsu), with more than thirty other, smaller zaibatsu and keiretsu. Three of the largest zaibatsu, the Otomo, the Jiiro, and the Toda, each stand poised to take the position of Shogun away from the dominant Najikawa by making them appear weak, and thus unable to continue their duties as protectors and warlords of the realm. At present this conflict exists largely as a four-way corporate war of espionage and buyouts, but it could turn bloody at any moment. The zaibatsu are all engaged in conflict with one another to some degree, but they are also inexorably intertwined with one another as well, thanks to a tangle of corporate and military alliances and joint ventures. This results in such strange situations as the Irawaki and Toda zaibatsu engaged in bloody warfare over a moon in the Shogunate's backwater, while the two zaibatsu stand shoulder-to-shoulder attempting to the Aitobishi stardrive monopoly in the business district of Kikushi.
Last edited by Arty on Thu Jun 13, 2013 9:32 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Arty »

The Nine Dragons of Smoke and Lightning
The Major Zaibatsu


Najikawa (current Shogun)
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Daimyo: Najikawa Yadate
Major Subsidiaries: Toratomi Driveyards, Ueda-Hosawaka Starlines, Aegahara Mining.
Headquarters World: Tanken-Chikyu

Aitobishi
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Daimyo: Aitobishi Sano-o
Major Subsidiaries: Alvarado Computing Solutions, Odori Cyberworks, Ai-Li Investment Group.
Headquarters World: Kawaguchi-Chikyu

There is a story, probably apocryphal but possibly true, about how the Aitobishi got their start. Supposedly, thousands of years ago on long-lost Earth, in the age before Nippon developed true machines, the first of the Aitobishi samurai was nearly slain in battle against his master's foes. Though he had lost the battle, the samurai was too weak from his injuries to commit seppuku, and his master chose instead to make the samurai the subject of the work of a foreign doctor who was visiting Nippon. The samurai's wounds were stitched back together, his burns treated with balms so that the scars barely showed, and the doctor's piece de resistance, his severed hand replaced by one made of copper and steel, which could tightly grip a sword or delicately hold a teacup. This new hand, while it had to be manipulated by the other, was a marvel of engineering, and the samurai saw in his new body something amazing, something a little terrifying. Something new. He went on to become a lord in his own right, founding a clan which in time became a zaibatsu, one which persists to this day as the masters of prosthetics, cybernetics, and human augmentation of every sort. Their subsidiary companies are all hallmarked by precision, efficiency, and a shared focus on giving their people every tool they need to work faster, smarter, and longer than the average human. This applies to their bankers, their scientists, and their warriors - very few commoners, and almost no samurai, go through their adult lives without at least one augmentation of some sort.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Aitobishi are closely tied to the shadowy criminals known as the cyberninja. No one is sure if the Aitobishi merely supply the cyberninja, or if they are the Cyberninja themselves. One particularly heinous whisper is that the upper echelons of the Aitobishi, perhaps even the Daimyo's family itself, has control over a "switch" in the brain prosthetics of their subjects, which they can flip "on" and instantly convert one of their citizens into a Cyberninja, growing new augmentations over their body and downloading new combat and stealth programs into their muscle memories. Obviously, such a practice would not only be highly illegal but nightmarishly unethical - fortunately, no direct proof of this practice has ever been found. Which makes dealing with the Aitobishi much more comfortable for the Shogunate's other citizens, and deal with them they do - Aitobishi-manufactured cybernetics are only increasing in popularity, and as the Shogunate's many military branches become more and more focused on controlling their war machines as easily as the pilot controls their own body, the Aitobisihi and their talents have become indispensable, even to their greatest rivals, the Hiromitsu and the Otomo.

Jiito
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Daimyo: Jiito Yuuki
Major Subsidiaries: Rio Verde Data Management, Nihotomi Detective Agency, Shimazu Forges & Armory.
Headquarters World: Nakitorisu-Chikyu

While the Jiito zaibatsu is by no means the richest, the most powerful, or even the most influential of the Nine Dragons, they excel in one area which leaves the other zaibatsu in the dust - they are the masters of gathering, dispersing, and concealing information. The Jiito daimyo have, since time immemorial, been spymasters long before they've been generals, and the most popular lore suggests that the Jiito began as a clan of shinobi who attained samurai status via service to the Emperor himself. They excel at industrial espionage, and it is a commonly-accepted fact that somewhere within the power structures of every zaibatsu, there are one or two master Jiito spies and turncoats, leaking information and funds back to the Jiito centers of power. Of course, the Jiito do not only use their services for themselves - they also offer their armies of hackers, spies, data miners, and private investigators, up for hire, and they make quite a lot of money in doing so. It's not at all uncommon for a Jiito hacker to loudly and obtrusively penetrate a rival's computer system, which then compels the rival to hire a Jiito security analyst to tell them how the hacker got in.

The Jiito are not without their warriors, of course, and their fascination with lore and information means that they have amassed one of the most comprehensive libraries of warfare in the entire galaxy. Jiito samurai spend hours each day practicing sword techniques and carefully recording their findings, and through the use of virtual memory devices, they can re-live and learn from battles fought centuries ago. The Jiito mon, of six blue feathers, is a nod to the ancient practice of Zen archery, which was a process nine parts mental to merely one part physical. The Jiito use this symbolism to remind themselves that in nearly all cases, mind conquers might, whether the conflict is on the battlefield, the court, or the market.

Hiromitsu
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Daimyo: Hiromitsu Suzuka
Major Subsidiaries: Tamada-Shokei Stellacom, Falcon Automotive, Yomijo Laboratories.
Headquarters World: Gosei-Chikyu

Ishikawa
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Daimyo: Ishikawa Ishiro
Major Subsidiaries: Masamune Media Group, Kujira Exports, Kanno Franchise Academies.
Headquarters World: Gekidan-Chikyu

Ask most people, both within the Shogunate and outside of it, just how powerful the Ishikawa are in the greater scheme of things, and you'll get a response somewhere between a confused look and a laugh. The Ishikawa have made their fortune making and selling no starships, not computers, not crops, not even trinkets; they do it by making and selling noises and pictures. From action movies to romance comics to pop albums, if it came from the Shogunate and it's entertaining, light-hearted, or diverting, it was probably brought to you by one of the Ishikawa's many media outlets, broadcasting corporations, publishing houses, or film studios. While they do also disseminate news and information, their main focus is on entertainment and, depending on who you ask, art. According to many high-ranking members of the Ishikawa clan, the zaibatsu started as a troupe of unrivaled kibuki actors - they know their art, and they know the value it has. To be more specific, the zaibatsu with four noh masks as their mon have a direct line to the way people perceive, think about, and even interact with the world around them. While the other zaibatsu struggle for dominance over the realm of industry, the Ishikawa remain largely unchallenged in their dominance of the Shogunate's culture.

This influence persists beyond the Shogunate as well - as secretive and fractious as the Shogunate is, just about every in the other human nations comes from the Ishikawa. Or rather, everything they think they know is what the Ishikawa want them to know. The Ishikawa have a story, of sorts, that they like to tell. Dealing with someone wearing a mask is a strange thing. You know that this is not their real face, but it is impossible to see what might lie beneath it. After a time, if you deal with them often enough for long enough, you may simply accept that the mask is the closest thing you will get to a face. You may become fond of the mask, just as you may become fond of the person. You may describe them to others the way they look while they are wearing the mask, and even if you tell them that this is just a mask, it is still the only way they will know the person. If the mask is never removed, what is more real: the mask you've always seen, or the face you've never seen? And what then, if the mask is removed one day, and the face beneath it revealed to be that of a killer? You cannot truly be surprised by this, though - after all, you knew it was a mask all along, didn't you? It should, perhaps, come as no surprise that the Ishikawa keep a rather large number of ninja on retainer, and, should they choose to send a message via assassination, they often give the ninja a noh mask to wear - a somewhat obvious and simple metaphor, but then this is the zaibatsu that brings giant robot anime and tentacle alien pornography to the galaxy.

Irawaki
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Daimyo: Irawaki Asano
Major Subsidiaries: Matsuhari Biomedical, Golden Delta Agritech, Takeda Shipping.
Headquarters World: Amagumo-Chikyu


Otomo
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Daimyo Otomo Fujita
Major Subsidiaries: Domitsu Worldcrafting, Iyonaga Private Security Corps, Ishiura Applied Genomics.
Headquarters World: Okinamori-Chikyu

Shiroga
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Daimyo: Shiroga Reiku
Major Subsidiaries: Yoshida & Huang Architecture Firm, San Domingo Urban Services, Kujitsa Informatics.
Headquarters World: Ishiku-Chikyu

To inhabit or visit a city on a Shogunate planet is exist in a world of towers that tear the clouds in two, of streets that overlap and intersect and bridges that string together buildings miles apart from one another, of vast indoor forests powered by artificial sunlight and alleys of where the sun has not shone in centuries. It is a world of flashing neon, floating informatics, sidewalk screens, nanocloud adverts and surveillance fog, brightly-painted flying cars and motorbikes, and clothes of every shade and intensity, all against a backdrop of ashy near-black or pearlescent utility white. And to live outside these cities on a Shogunate world is to live in almost pristine wilderness. All of this is thanks to the Shiroga zaibatsu, the master architects and city planners who sculpt the environment in which the Shogunate's citizens, both commoner and samurai, live their lives. They build elegant palaces by hand, monolithic corporate headquarters via macro-printer, and vast data networks orchestrated by architect AI, all with the same attention to detail and mathematical perfection. Their mon is that of an origami box unfolded, showing the true abstract, fractal nature of a structure, of a city, of a nation.

The Shiroga are, as a rule, obsessed with details, interconnections, and structures. While the zaibatsu is not entirely made up of architects, almost all of them have a fascination with and innate understanding of complex systems, and can see past the complexity into the elegance, or the corruption, that underpins it. They believe it is their duty to control, or at the very least guide, that complexity. This is why they have taken nearly direct control over the shape of the environment in which the Shogunate's citizens live, and why the other zaibatsu and even the Emperor himself must come to the Shiroga to build their structures and cities - because no one else understands how to build them quite like the Shiroga. Of course, no one knows how to break them like the Shiroga, either, a fact that the Shiroga's enemies have had ample opportunity to learn.

Toda
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Daimyo: Toda Jirou
Major Subsidiaries Peony Blossom Colony Development, Komaji Survey Flotilla, Chrome Star Acquisitions.
Headquarters World: Chakushu-Chikyu
Last edited by Arty on Thu Jun 13, 2013 9:19 pm, edited 11 times in total.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Invictus »

This seems more nuanced than the last Space Japan, with its half-Tokugawa half-Meiji setup that still retains a lot of the old neo-feudal cyberpunk flavor of the original. The weapon ban of Kikuchi* in particular is completely ridiculous and wonderfully evocative.

That said, the political setup doesn't seem stable at all. The Shogun seems like the primus inter pares of the Daimyo but it's not particularly clear what national resources exist outside the control of one clan or the other, and by extension what resources the Shogun actually has to enforce his broad paper authority.

But maybe I'm overthinking it. The Emperor is just using what's left of his legitimacy to divide and conquer a bunch of noble houses who can easily gang up and overthrow him.

*My rudimentary Japanese is telling me that "-ichi" is the wrong pronunciation to use if you want to describe a city - "Kiku-shi" or even "Kiku-to" ("-to" for "capital city") is probably more appropriate. On that note, "Sekai" does mean "World" but generally not in the English sf sense of "World" as synonym for "Planet".
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Arty »

A bit of on-the-spot makeupery on my part says that the main thing keeping the Shogunate stable is that the various zaibatsu are all in constant competition and conflict with one another, but they're also inexorably tied together via business ventures and marriages and the like. The Shogunate as a whole couldn't fly apart into a bunch of independent nations because the zaibatsu understand that they need one another, but they probably wouldn't all gang up on the Emperor because they dislike each other much less than they might dislike the Emperor. The Shogun exists basically so the Emperor will always have one zaibatsu on his side, and to give the other zaibatsu something to fight over besides the Chrysanthemum Throne. Of course, in doing so, the Emperor has ceded a lot of his military powers to the Shogun, so he has to make sure he stays on the Shogun's good side, too.

An idea I'm playing with is if the Emperor may grant mandates to different zaibatsu which permit them to have, essentially, state-sanctioned monopolies on certain industries or products. Not every industry or product would have such a mandate issued, but perhaps if the Emperor (or more likely, one of his hundreds of ministers) notices that (for a somewhat silly but sufficiently illustrative example) the Irawaki zaibatsu's automobile subsidiary is making really great motorcycles, then he might decree that only the Irawaki can make motorcycles, ensuring that everyone in the Shogunate gets the best motorcycle anyone is making. Of course, if the Irawaki abuse their monopoly by driving prices up too high, or if their quality starts to slip, the Emperor might withdraw the mandate (and possibly give it to one of Irawaki's rivals as further punishment). Thus, the zaibatsu might be competing as much for the Emperor's favor as much as they are with the free market, resulting in a weird blending of feudalism, capitalism, and fascism.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Mobius 1 »

Are all of those sigils original? If so, they're quite wonderful. The Najikawa one in particular is something I'd throw on a badge.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Siege »

I really like Hiromitsu myself. Looks like someone's fucking around with a hydrogen atom by putting three more electrons on it. Because we can! For SCIENCE!

They should totes be into building infeasibly exotic power sources for giant robits and transforming motorcycles and such. Done tastefully, of course. But still.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Arty »

Yep! I designed each mon myself, though I did about an hour's worth of research and went through a few iterations to make sure they could look like both war banners snapping in the breeze and corporate logos stamped on crates of merchandise.

And yeah, I'm definitely thinking the Hiromitsu are the most fringe science-y of the zaibatsu, to the point where even the Prussians (we'll get to them, guys, don't worry!) have to pause now and then and go "but... why?"
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Invictus »

Well, another perfectly valid reason why the Shogunate hasn't fragmented into their component zaibatsu is because the other great powers would have snapped them up. :) Less facetiously, there's also the common people to consider: how loyal are they to their clan lords as opposed to the Emperor and the whole Yamato identity as a whole? Warlords can always go "who many divisions does the pope have?", but I think there might be something to be said for the Emperor mattering as the shared symbol of loyalty for all the subjects of the Shogunate, and it's in the interests of the various Daimyo to at least profess their allegiance to the imperial order to their vassals would be more accepting of their own authority. This does lead into the question of what kind of religious figurehead the Chrysanthemum Emperor plays as compared to, say, the Tsar of the Eastforce. I look forward to that.

In fact, are the members of clans more like feudal vassals or corporate employees? Are their loyalties bound by oath and blood or are their contracts of loyalty traded back and forth like any other commodity? How is the social mobility?

Speaking of which, just from the mon I'm intrigued by the Toda myself.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Arty »

Well, another perfectly valid reason why the Shogunate hasn't fragmented into their component zaibatsu is because the other great powers would have snapped them up. :)
That is certainly a contributing factor :) I think there's a very strong mindset (maybe naturally-occurring, maybe engineered or at least enforced by the Emperor and his servants) that, whatever differences the zaibatsu may have with one another, when push comes to shove they must all be against the foreign empires. A few all-out wars in the past have probably helped shore up this idea. In short, the zaibatsu understand that they must all hang together, or they'll all hang separately.

That and, again, they understand that they do need each other. The "themes" of each zaibatsu's biggest subsidiary corporations are intentional - without the Irawaki, the Shogunate would starve, and without the Shiroga, their cities would crumble. While conflict is inevitable and encouraged, there is always a balancing act to consider.
Less facetiously, there's also the common people to consider: how loyal are they to their clan lords as opposed to the Emperor and the whole Yamato identity as a whole? Warlords can always go "who many divisions does the pope have?", but I think there might be something to be said for the Emperor mattering as the shared symbol of loyalty for all the subjects of the Shogunate, and it's in the interests of the various Daimyo to at least profess their allegiance to the imperial order to their vassals would be more accepting of their own authority. This does lead into the question of what kind of religious figurehead the Chrysanthemum Emperor plays as compared to, say, the Tsar of the Eastforce. I look forward to that.
With a few exceptions that the Shogunate doesn't like to talk about, the Emperors have been pretty good at keeping the zaibatsu in like and keeping them from turning into total asshole feudal lords. As a result, odd as it may seem from a real-world historical context, the Chrysanthemum Emperor is, in a way, the champion of the little guy, because his job is very much to care for every man, woman, and child in the Shogunate, and that means making sure the daimyo, CEOs, and regional managers don't overstep their bounds. Much of the Emperor's vast bureaucracy is actually given over to investigative and regulatory duties to balance the power of the zaibatsu. This, of course, has the benefit of winning the hearts and minds of the Shogunate's citizens, so that if any of the daimyo tried to make a play for the Chrysanthemum Throne, he'd have a pretty hard time getting all of his people behind him to go take down the half-divine avatar of fortune who, by all accounts, seems to have their best interests at heart more often than the daimyo might.

The Emperor is most definitely a divine being sent to the mortal realm to guide the people of Nippon - ask anybody on the street, and they'll tell you with a smile on their face and a spring in their step. Of course, your more urbane Shogunate citizen at least has questions, and probably has doubts. However, denouncing the Emperor tends to end badly for anyone who does it too loudly or too often. This doesn't, however, necessarily mean that they get disappeared or outright killed, though - sometimes they get looked at really closely by the Shogun's tax collectors, or their daughters turn rebellious and join an Angry Girl Bike Gang, or any ship they're on always seems to suffer engine troubles. Fortune is almost considered a god unto itself in the Shogunate (as befitting a feudal-corporate culture), and the Emperor is sort of seen as the earthly (so to speak) avatar of fortune. So while Emperor-worship Warhammer 40k style is not the norm (though a few cults do exist here and there), most people at the very least pay lip service to the Emperor's divinity and right to rule, if only because it's good luck to do so.

Also, while they'll get elaborated on a bit more later (I've sort of saved my favorite for last) you may find Eastforce a bit different in regards to the whole religion thing. Stay tuned ;)
In fact, are the members of clans more like feudal vassals or corporate employees? Are their loyalties bound by oath and blood or are their contracts of loyalty traded back and forth like any other commodity? How is the social mobility?
I'm going to take the total cop-out answer and say that it's all a little of both, and that it depends on the vassal or vassal family in question. Some families have sworn blood oaths to a zaibatsu, and have remained loyal for centuries, while others (in fact the majority) prefer to sign contracts for a limited number of generations, with options to renew. This means that the zaibatsu have an interest in making sure their samurai stay happy with them, but the samurai also realize that the zaibatsu have them and their family over a barrel for a certain period of time, and had best make themselves good servants.

Of course, samurai can change who they serve once their contract has ended or been otherwise nullified, and most contracts have a clause which maintains the daimyo's right to sell the samurai's service to another at any time they choose. One day, you might be the head of R&D for a successful Toda ship design subsidiary, the next you might be transferred to the Irawaki's service and ordered to fix up their floundering freighter fleets - which was done in exchange for an Irawaki irrigation expert brought in to keep the rice paddies working on the Toda headquarters world.

Likewise, some samurai might choose, after their contract is ended, not to attach themselves to another zaibatsu, and becoming freelancing ronin. Sometimes this means they might be mercenary warriors, but it can also mean you're known throughout the entire Shogunate as the guy you need to hire to design the perfect Human Resources department. For another example, imagine if Yojimbo had been about a lone samurai marketing genius who stumbled across a tiny independent mining firm under siege from two shady rival Najikawa subsidiaries, and decided to save the miners by playing the subsidiaries against each other using guerrilla marketing, advert-memetics, and carefully-placed misinformation.

Social mobility depends on the zaibatsu. Some are much more meritocratic, and more willing to grant samurai-hood to a commoner employee who really deserves it, which earns them a loyal samurai and someone who already had the brains and now has the means to get some good work done. Others are a lot more hidebound, and trust in the carefully-maintained bloodlines and family training and doctrine, and aren't crazy about handing some hotshot peasant the keys to the company shuttle (or access to the timetable, for that matter).

It is worth mentioning, I should say, that there are more than a few samurai and commoners who are only loyal to the Emperor, and that while each zaibatsu is granted a single world which is entirely theirs, they have to lease land and rights for all the other imperial worlds. So there are many samurai who have nothing to do with the corporate machinations of the zaibatsu, and these guys tend to be very old-school, very traditional warrior-nobles. There's a lot of rivalry between the "suits" and the "swords" (though of course, there are plenty of warrior samurai in the zaibatsu and plenty of bureaucrat samurai who are purely loyal to the Emperor), and duels between the two over insults to one or another's honor are not uncommon.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Invictus »

Arty wrote:With a few exceptions that the Shogunate doesn't like to talk about, the Emperors have been pretty good at keeping the zaibatsu in like and keeping them from turning into total asshole feudal lords. As a result, odd as it may seem from a real-world historical context, the Chrysanthemum Emperor is, in a way, the champion of the little guy, because his job is very much to care for every man, woman, and child in the Shogunate, and that means making sure the daimyo, CEOs, and regional managers don't overstep their bounds. Much of the Emperor's vast bureaucracy is actually given over to investigative and regulatory duties to balance the power of the zaibatsu. This, of course, has the benefit of winning the hearts and minds of the Shogunate's citizens, so that if any of the daimyo tried to make a play for the Chrysanthemum Throne, he'd have a pretty hard time getting all of his people behind him to go take down the half-divine avatar of fortune who, by all accounts, seems to have their best interests at heart more often than the daimyo might.
Ah, just like what peasants throughout European histories (and peasants in China today!) believed, except actually true. :v What happens when a commoner undertakes an epic quest to reach Kikuichi City to petition the Emperor to redress some petty oppression by a branch manager?

BTW, I have hazy memories of arguments advanced by historic Japanese authorities that the Tennou's divine authority is best preserved by doing as little as possible so there can be no complainable flaw in his rulership. Of course, this was in the context of a monarchy that spent most of its existence being used a powerless figurehead by various parties...
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Arty
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Arty »

What happens when a commoner undertakes an epic quest to reach Kikuichi City to petition the Emperor to redress some petty oppression by a branch manager?
That is a good question! It probably doesn't happen often (travel is, to one degree or another, restricted or at least monitored for commoners) but it's by no means impossible.

(Also, I took your language advice and changed the city and planet names around a bit)
BTW, I have hazy memories of arguments advanced by historic Japanese authorities that the Tennou's divine authority is best preserved by doing as little as possible so there can be no complainable flaw in his rulership. Of course, this was in the context of a monarchy that spent most of its existence being used a powerless figurehead by various parties...
I think a lot of previous Emperors have taken this tack, and mostly just tried to make everyone play nice through catspaws and diplomacy. Daigo, however, is more than a little ashamed of what he sees as cowardice on the part of his ancestors/predecessors, and so is taking a few risks with not only his own name but the title of Emperor itself by taking a more personal hand in the Shogunate's affairs.
I know it’s a mess and it’s half-taped together and it’s old and busted — but it’s mine. And you gotta make that work, right? You gotta make your own stuff work out.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Maybe he has ninja secret police. Or has cut a secret deal with the AIs of the zaibatsus, so he's actually the center of a network of whistleblowers or something. And he sends his ninjas to keel those who are in the wrong.

EDIT:

Or he's some empath who, unlike past Emperors sequestered in silence, he now walks amongst the throngs of people. Like some Oriental pagoda-dwelling Jesus. And his empathic abilities allows him to feel the plight of the people. A pseudo-messianic cult figure!
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Arty »

I actually kinda like the idea that the Emperor might have a kind of empathic link to the people, though nothing so strong as direct telepathy. More like he has an innate sense of his, I suppose you might call it his approval rating? So he knows if there's trouble, and has a vague sense of where it might be. Hmmm... I'll do some thinking on it.
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Re: The Chrysanthemum Shogunate

Post by Invictus »

The Eight Million kami whisper such things to him, surely.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
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REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
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