First time heard of him. Very retro. Cute girls in his videos: double-plus good. He's alright; nothing new really. But... then... I've only just skimmed through his work.
Nope, this is a vintage photo that I assume was colored when it was made. Late 19th century or very early 20th century, I would guess. Not much work for the Samurai class in those days. Or at least, not much work as they'd prefer it. Their ancestors worked hard to achieve a social status that has whithered into nothing.
I'll get back to this on saturday. It is nice to see someone making the music freaks of our small LJ community happy. No Don Claude album before the summer I am afraid.
Given that he appears in a photograph, I assume he postdates most of the ones described in Romulus Hillsborough's Shinsengumi: The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps, but I'm really not sure what his story is. To be honest I don't even remember where I originally found the photo; I think it might have come from vintage_photo.
Samurai by the late 19th century were mostly engaging in live action role-playing. Their political power was greatly diminished and their purpose as defenders of the Emporer had been eclipsed by soldiers drilled in Wester-style armed combat (that is to say, shooting people with modern firearms was a more effective means of ensuring the continuity of government). At the same time, there was a complex social context that as an American I'm not sure I can ever truly understand. To this day, "samurai families" carry cachet as a symbol of the establishment. Which is curious when you consider that throughout Japan's history only a small percentage of samurai were ever officially beholden to the Emporer.
There is one more interesting matter about samurais: like European knights they had fierce traditions of various intrigues, duels, murders and suicides (very often - massive suicides). But in contrast to European aristocracy (which almost killed itself, that's why European kings tried to prohibit duels) samurai were very numerous social group till their official end.