[Sangermaine]

For a view of what this looked like on the ground, you should check out "Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai".

It's the autobiography of Katsu Kokichi (Musui is another name he was known by), a samurai born in the early 19th century to a very low-ranking family. It's a firsthand account of life at the very lowest fringe of Shogunate society at the very end of that system, and is quite entertaining because Katsu is a lazy good-for-nothing who can't even get one of those pointless bureaucracy jobs and survives by doing "lowly" merchant work. I think it would make a pretty funny TV show because the protagonist is such a hapless loser.

[krapp]

I can't be the only person here who read this comment and thought of Gintama.

[walshemj]

Sounds like Only Fools and Horses :-)