| Additional Info About Niiro Keisuke |
| Pronouns: |
He/Him |
| Age: |
36 |
| Occupation: |
Bodyguard for Hire |
| Class: |
Vagrant |
| Origins: |
Satsuma-han, Kyūshyū, Nippon |
| Relationships: |
Niiro Hisanobu (Father)
Niiro Fumiko (Mother)
Niiro Ichihiro (Eldest Brother)
Niiro Michiko (Older Sister)
Niiro Takeru (Younger Brother) |
| Plotter: |
https://bywitandwhitby.rpginitiative.com...hp?tid=358 |
| Sexuality: |
Demisexual |
| Height: |
5'7" |
| Physical Description: |
Keisuke is neither particularly tall nor broad-shouldered, but his privileged and well-bred samurai heritage is evident in his lean, wiry muscles and lithe, graceful gait. He has strong features, and his southernmost-island born tanned skin is mottled with scars—signs of battles well-fought. The most prominent of these scars is the line across his forehead from the siege of Kumamoto—a deep wound received at the hands of one of Saigō's last samurai defenders of the old ways. He also bears a puckered bullet wound scar in his left upper thigh from the Chichibu incident.
If his foreign features are handsome outside of his homeland with his long dark hair usually worn up in a top knot and his dark eyes, Keisuke carries himself with a confidence that defies doubters otherwise. He keeps his facial hair well-trimmed and prefers to continue to dress in traditional fashion instead of wearing Western clothing, though he owns a well-tailored pair of trousers, a coat, and a vest for those times when he must play the part of a proper traveler. He still carries his daishō blades that were once his great grandfather's and owns a Minié rifle along with all the accoutrements to care for it and mold his own bullets, as they are different than smoothbore musket bullets.
He's just as proficient with a number of other weapons, from bows to knives, as well as his own body (judō), but he keeps his knowledge to himself unless needing to prove his prowess in the protection of whoever employs him.
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| History: |
新納 恵介
Niiro Keisuke
(KEH-s-keh NEE-ee-roh)
Born on February 6, 1859 into the prominent Satsuma han on the southern Japanese island of Kyūshyū just barely a decade before the Meiji Restoration that saw the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the last of the samurai rule, Keisuke is the middle son of Niiro Hisanobu, a karō (house elder in service to the daimyō) of the Satsuma han. The Niiro of Satsuma han were one of the principle retainer families to the Shimazu clan, known to be influential on both the battlefield and the court, and Keisuke's father was no exception.
Quite impressed with the technology and weaponry of the west after the Anglo-Satsuma war of 1864, Keisuke's father, Hisanobu, eventually made contact with Thomas Glover while his son was quite small. Along with a few other important members of the court, a secret trip was arranged to smuggle Satsuma students out of Bakumatsu-period Japan despite the ban on international relations, and Keisuke's father led the trip to Great Britian. The Satsuma Fifteen studied at the University College, London, in direct defiance of the Tokugawa regime. They toured Britain, Belgium, France, and Prussia visiting factories and purchasing industrial equipment and arms.
Hisanobu, together with his friend and fellow karō Godai Tomoatsu, he signed an agreement with Belgian/French entrepreneur Charles Comte de Montblanc in 1865 in which Montblanc would contribute to opening mining operations in Satsuma, along with factories to produce steel, weapons, textiles, and tea. The agreement also involved opening three ports in Ryûkyû, and having Montblanc facilitate the display of the domain's products at the 1867 Paris World's Fair.
In that same year, 1867, when Keisuke was just 9 years old, the Meiji Restoration began. With the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, the samurai way of life was turned upside down, and while the revolution wasn't as bloodless as modern scholars like to claim, especially considering the many grassroots uprisings of displaced lower samurai who weren't offered the same government positions as the Niiro clan, Keisuke wasn't entirely isolated from the conflicts.
Sharing his father's curiosity and intellect, and raised with enough elite status to pursue it, Keisuke traveled as soon as he was old enough between Japan and France, Japan and Belgium, and even Japan and England with his father and other influential men who'd bloodied their blades as samurai and now sought to establish a more European-style peerage while still retaining their power.
Shortly after the Haitō Edict of 1876 that banned the carrying of swords by anyone but police and military officials, Keisuke found himself signing up for the Imperial Japanese Armyy at 17. The mandatory conscription law of 1873 saw himself shoulder to shoulder with commoners and peasants—a huge leveling of the elite status his long, proud samurai lineage once enjoyed. Shocked and confused by this new push toward a citizen army, he still couldn't entirely find himself able to entirely agree with the results of the Seikanron (Debate on the Invasion of Korea). When he heard of Saigō Takamori's resignation from the government and return to Satsuma han, Keisuke longed to join him, though that was against the wishes of his father—to this day, he regrets his obedience. Instead, as a young member of the Imperial Army, he was one of the soldiers to meet Saigō and roughly 15,000 former samurai on the snowy field of battle at the siege of Kumamoto castle.
Proving himself in battle at the age of only 18, Keisuke witnessed the ritual suicide of Saigō and the last 300 of his men. The glory of his heritage was snuffed out there before his eyes and for quite some time, the young Niiro heir was left disillusioned. His skills as a warrior caught the eye of Tōyama Mitsuru, a former samurai of Fukuoka han.
Lured with the promises of pro-democratic ideals through the Freedom and People's Rights Movement and agitating for a national parliament instead of the highly peerage-structured current Meiji developments, the well-educated and disappointed Keisuke found himself a prominent assassin and bodyguard at the age of 22 within the Gen'yōsha, or Black Ocean Society, rubbing shoulders with ultra-conservative political figures and yakuza, foreign intellectuals, and former Imperial military cohorts alike. Intimidating liberal politicians and assassinating the very types of foreigners his father Hisanobu smuggled students out to meet and bring to Japan, the young Niiro heir was unprepared for another dose of reality during the Chichibu incident of November 1884.
After realizing so many of the so-called revolutionaries he'd been responsible for the deaths of didn't have ideals so different from his own, Niiro Keisuke questioned his path and his purpose. Fluent in French and English as well as Japanese, Keisuke quietly attempted to flee his commitments, aware that walking away from his heritage and family name as well as his position in the Gen'yōsha was a death sentence if he remained in Japan, Keisuke found himself on whatever trading ship he could find to hire him as a bodyguard, professional marksman and swordsman, translator, and laborer and began to travel the trade routes, drifting further and further from his homeland in search of some sort of repentant purpose, in search of some kind of elusive sense of doing better for the greater good that he'd failed at for his own people. |
| OOC Preferences: |
I'm not one for hard limits, but I'm a big fan of straightforward communication. Ask first, plan a little with me, and I'll tell you if I'm uncomfortable with the direction (all while probably cheerfully suggesting alternatives). |
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Last seen 09-09-2020, 08:35 PM.
Local time is 04-24-2024 at 08:55 PM.
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