>>281789955
>negative social mobility
this is often viewed as very bad especially when it interferes with personal interests (e.g. love) and I completely agree it became an antiquated and regressive policy BUT, at least in momoyama/early edo period the social stiffening was something very welcomed by the population at large, because it meant an end to widespread violence and the need to fortify and fight to protect their own villages, as well as invalidating the attempts of feudal lords to conscript peasants as soldiers or laborers. for example peasants welcomed the Sword Hunts according to Ferejohn and Rosenbluth in War and State Building in Medieval Japan:

>(...)Tsuguharu Inaba describes the misery of peasant life in wartime and explains the relief with which peasants greeted Oda Nobunaga’s policy of dividing labor between farmers and warriors. Rather than being distressed to have their swords confiscated, many farmers greeted with relief the new leader’s ambition to curb the fighting clans. Throughout these years, Inaba emphasizes, farmers retained their local village councils in which they made their collective decisions to support the emerging centralized regime.

>Although peasants and warriors were already accustomed to a division of labor in warfare, the Toyotomi regime made the division more explicit. Hideyoshi proscribed peasants from carrying arms such as swords and prohibited village communities from resorting to arms for self-protection or conflict settlement. (...)From the standpoint of village communities, Toyotomi’s authority solved two of their thorniest problems: the need to protect themselves from neighboring villages and the need to provide local lords with corvée labor during war time. Both were now illegal.

I'm pretty sure the same thing happened in parts of europe and the rest of the world. Edo period was not samurai autism all the time.

>>281789402
how dare you call the age of the Shogun depraved, I'll see you crucified like you deserve!