Go-kenin

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Go-kenin ( Japanese. 御 家人 , Go is an honorific prefix , literally: "Honorable housewives") was a title of nobility that was used from the Kamakura period in Japan for direct vassals of the Shogun . The status changed in the following centuries until the title lapsed with the dissolution of the samurai status at the beginning of the Meiji period .

Change of meaning

The title was first used in the Kamakura period. With the end of the Kamakura Shogunate , he was in the Muromachi period as a mere social status of warriors, less than the Shogun bestowed, official rank . Under the rule of the Ashikaga shogunate , the title was not used. Most of the administrators ( jitō ) of the country estates were subordinate to the overseers ( shugo ) of the respective province.

In the Sengoku period , high-ranking subordinates of the daimyo were also referred to as go-kenin . From the Edo period , the title referred to the lowest rank of the direct vassals, one rank below the O-memie ( 御 目見 ) and two below the Hatamoto ("standard bearer"). Unlike the Hatamoto, Gokenin were not admitted to shogunal audiences .

literature

  • Thomas Donald Conlan: State of War. The Violent Order of Fourteenth-Century Japan . Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2003, ISBN 1-929280-16-5
  • Jeffrey P. Mass: Lordship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Japan. A Study of the Kamakura Sōryō System . Stanford University Press, Stanford, California 1989, ISBN 0-8047-1540-8