Hi Haibane,
Well, where to start? First off, welcome aboard, this should be fun. Ready? Okay, here we go....
To give a bit of historical information here, I thought we might explore exactly who/what the Samurai were, where they came from, and what rights they had. The term "samurai" comes from a term meaning "to serve", and the initial use takes itself from the employed lower members of the nobility who would serve as bodyguards/attendants on the higher ranked. As time went on, it began to take on more of a warrior meaning (earlier terms for warriors were not samurai, but bushi [bu - martial, shi - person] or mono no fu [person of things, meaning weapons]).
As the term samurai began to be used, anyone could become one. I know, this goes against what most people think, you have to be born into a samurai family, etc etc, but we'll get to that, I promise. At this point, it was really a rule of force that determined your status. Someone could go from being a lowly member of an armed force, and through sheer luck, skill, and determination, become a samurai, or a Daimyo (fuedal lord). This continued until Hideyoshi (16th Century), who began just such a way, making his way from a low-level foot soldier (ashigaru) to becoming Taiko (basically Shogun, military leader of Japan, but he was not elligible for that title due to his low birth station). It was Hideyoshi who then decreed that Samurai could only come from Samurai families.
In terms of the weaponry for the Samurai, for most of their history, the sword was not the main weapon associated with them. Originally the primary weapon was the bow and arrow, and mounted archery was the focus of a Japanese battlefield. The early name to refer to the way of the Warrior was Kyuba no michi, or The Way of Mounted Archery (Kyu - bow, ba - horse, no - of, michi - path, or way [or street...]) and warrior nobility families were refered to as Kyusen no iie, or bow and arrow families.
Moving into the Nambokucho period, and through the Ashikaga Shogunate, weapons such as Naginata took prominence, and the Sengoku Jidai (15th - 17th Century) saw spears take the lead (most commonly su-yari, or straight spears, leading to changes in armour to smoother less laced styles such as okegawa-do ni-mai-do gusoku, as the spears tended to get caught up in the lacing of the older styles, resulting in more danger for the guy in the armour). Swords during this time was only really as a secondary weapon.
When Ieyasu Tokugawa took control of Japan, becoming Shogun and unifying the country for two and a half centuries of peace, rules were created to keep the Samurai in check and to maintain their dominant place in the society. These included rules for the wearing of daisho, and the fact that only Samurai were allowed to wear them. It should be noted that other members of society were permitted to wear swords, but only Samurai could wear the two swords. As established, though, some Samurai were nobility, but the nobility were not necessarily Samurai, and Samurai were not necessarily nobility. So these rules applied to Samurai only. As stated, during the Meiji Restoration, a number of decrees were brought into effect, amongst them the abolishing of the Samurai class (along with the rest of the caste system), and the banning of wearing swords.
Hope that clears a few things up.
I'll have to ask her.
