were originally vassals of the
KamakuraThe is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura Shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo....
and
Muromachi periodThe was a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, which was officially established in 1336 by the first Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Takauji...
shogunates. In exchange for protection and the right to become
shugowas a title, commonly translated as "Governor," given to certain officials in feudal Japan. They were each appointed by the shogun to oversee one or more of the provinces of Japan...
(governor) or
jitōwere medieval land stewards in Japan, especially in the Kamakura and Muromachi Shogunates. Appointed by the shogun, jitō managed manors including national holdings governed by the provincial governor ....
(manor's lord), in times of peace a
gokenin had the duty to protect the imperial court and
Kamakurais a city located in Kanagawa, Japan, about south-south-west of Tokyo. It used to be also called . Although Kamakura proper is today rather small, it is sometimes considered a former de facto capital of Japan as the seat of the Shogunate and of the Regency during the Kamakura Period...
, in case of war had to fight with his forces under the shogun’s flag. From the middle of the thirteenth century, the fact that
gokenin were allowed to become
de facto owners of the land they administered, coupled to the custom that all
gokenin children could inherit, led to the parcelization of the land and to a consequent weakening of the shogunate.
were originally vassals of the
KamakuraThe is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura Shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo....
and
Muromachi periodThe was a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, which was officially established in 1336 by the first Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Takauji...
shogunates. In exchange for protection and the right to become
shugowas a title, commonly translated as "Governor," given to certain officials in feudal Japan. They were each appointed by the shogun to oversee one or more of the provinces of Japan...
(governor) or
jitōwere medieval land stewards in Japan, especially in the Kamakura and Muromachi Shogunates. Appointed by the shogun, jitō managed manors including national holdings governed by the provincial governor ....
(manor's lord), in times of peace a
gokenin had the duty to protect the imperial court and
Kamakurais a city located in Kanagawa, Japan, about south-south-west of Tokyo. It used to be also called . Although Kamakura proper is today rather small, it is sometimes considered a former de facto capital of Japan as the seat of the Shogunate and of the Regency during the Kamakura Period...
, in case of war had to fight with his forces under the shogun’s flag. From the middle of the thirteenth century, the fact that
gokenin were allowed to become
de facto owners of the land they administered, coupled to the custom that all
gokenin children could inherit, led to the parcelization of the land and to a consequent weakening of the shogunate. The
gokenin class ceased to be a significant force during the
Muromachi periodThe was a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, which was officially established in 1336 by the first Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Takauji...
. and was supplanted by the figure of the
daimyois a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in premodern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
. During the successive
Edo periodThe , or , is a division of Japanese history running from 1603 to 1868 and is the premodern era. The period marks the governance of the Edo or Tokugawa shogunate, which was officially established in 1603 by the first Edo shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. The period ended with the Meiji Restoration, the...
, the term finally came to indicate a direct vassal of the shogun below an , meaning that they didn't have the right to an audience with the shogun.
Origin, meaning and evolution of the term
The terms
gokenin and
kenin are etymologically related but have very different meanings. Confusion can arise also because in documents sometimes this last word is used together with the honorific prefix (go +
kenin). Under the
ritsuryōis the historical law system based on the philosophies of Confucianism and Chinese Legalism in Japan. The political system in accord to Ritsuryō is called "Ritsuryō-sei"...
legal system in use in Japan from the seventh to the tenth century, a
kenin ("house person") was a human being who, while legally property of a family, could be inherited but not sold and, unlike a slave, had some rights. For example, the inventory of a temple's wealth mentions thirteen
kenin, among them four women, who were in effect servants.
From the beginning of the Japanese Middle Ages, the relationship between lords and vassals tended, even in the absence of real blood ties, to be seen as an ancestral bond where each side inherited the rights and duties of the previous generation. Both sides thought of and spoke of their relationship in terms suggesting kinship, hence the use of the term
gokenin, the prefix "go-" denoting prestige having been added after the
Heian periodThe is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyoto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Confucianism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
. This social class evolved during the Kamakura shogunate based on the personal, contractual and military relationship between the shogun and individual
gokenin. Until recently it was assumed
Kamakura shogunThe Kamakura shogunate was a feudal military dictatorship in Japan headed by the shoguns from 1185 to 1333. It was based in Kamakura...
Minamoto no Yoritomowas the founder and the first shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate of Japan. He ruled from 1192 until 1199.-Early life and exile :Yoritomo was the third son of Minamoto no Yoshitomo, the heir of the Minamoto clan, and his official wife, a daughter of Fujiwara no Suenori, who was a member of the...
coined the word and the role when he started his campaign to gain power in 1180. The
Azuma KagamiThe , or "mirror of the east", is a Japanese medieval text that chronicles events of the Kamakura Shogunate from Minamoto no Yoritomo's rebellion agaist the Heike in Izokuni of 1180 to Munetaka Shinnō and his return to Kyoto in 1266...
, diary of the shogunate, uses the term from its very first entries. The first reliable documentary evidence of a formal
gokenin status and of actual vassal registers however dates to the early 1190s, and it seems therefore that the vassalage concept remained vague for at least the first decade of the shogunate's life. In any event, by that date the three main administrative roles created by the Kamakura shogunate (
gokenin,
shugo (governor) and
jitō (manor's lord)) were certainly in existence. The right to appoint them was the very basis of Kamakura's power and legitimacy.
The gokenin and their role in the fall of the shogunate
Gokenin vassals were descendants of former
shoenA was a field or manor in Japan. The Japanese term comes from the Tang dynasty Chinese term zhuangyuan.After the decay of the ritsuryō system in Japan, a feudal system of manors developed...
owners, former peasants or former
samuraiis the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
who had made a name for themselves in
Minamoto no Yoritomowas the founder and the first shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate of Japan. He ruled from 1192 until 1199.-Early life and exile :Yoritomo was the third son of Minamoto no Yoshitomo, the heir of the Minamoto clan, and his official wife, a daughter of Fujiwara no Suenori, who was a member of the...
's army during his military campaigns against the
Taira clanThe was a major Japanese clan of samurai in historical Japan.In reference to Japanese history, along with Minamoto, Taira was a hereditary clan name bestowed by the emperors of the Heian Period to certain ex-members of the imperial family when they became subjects...
and were rewarded after victory. They and the bands of samurai they hired provided the shogun with the military force he needed. They also collected local taxes and ruled over territories they were entrusted with, but nominally didn't own. Because the shogun had usurped the emperor's power to nominate them, they owed loyalty only to him. The
gokenin title was earned by participating to an initiation ceremony, writing one's name in a register and making an oath of vassalage. The Kamakura government retained the power to appoint and dismiss, but otherwise left
gokenin shugo and
jitō alone and free to use tax income as they saw fit. As long as they remained faithful, they had considerable autonomy from the central government. In time, because
gokenin officials were rarely dismissed, their powers and land ownership became in practice hereditary. By the end of the shogunate, the government was little more than a coalition of semi-autonomous states.
Fall of the gokenin and birth of the daimyo
After the fall of the Kamakura in 1333, changes in the balance of power forced the Ashikaga to try to modify the state's economy and structure. The process of reversing the extreme parcelization of the land would occupy the next couple of centuries. The dynasty tried to eradicate local warlords and concentrate power in its hands, but this in fact only increased the level of hostility. It seized the lands of the
Hōjō clanSee the late Hōjō clan for the Hōjō clan of the Sengoku Period.The in the history of Japan was a family who controlled the hereditary title of shikken of the Kamakura Shogunate. In practice, the family had actual governmental power, many times dictatorial, rather than Kamakura shoguns, or the...
, former rulers of Kamakura, and of all defeated
gokenin but, at seeing the Ashikaga keep those lands for themselves, to the point where they had direct control of almost 25% of the country, their own allies started fearing for themselves and their heirs. The ensuing turmoil gave inadvertently rise to the figure of the
daimyois a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in premodern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
feudal lord, although the term wouldn't be in wide use for the first half a century. Many daimyo were
shugo or
jitō of
gokenin extraction or even noblemen, but most were new faces who had supplanted their superiors. Crucially, because resisting the Ashikaga required a strong central power and a smooth succession, among them inheritance was no longer shared, but passed on intact to a single heir, who often was not even a blood relative, but a promising man adopted specifically to be heir.
Later status
In the Edo period,
gokenin were the lowest-ranking vassals of the
Tokugawa shogunateThe Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which now is called Tokyo...
, next to the
hatamotoA was a samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa shogunate of feudal Japan. While all three of the shogunates in Japanese history had official retainers, in the two preceding ones, they were referred to as gokenin. However, in the Edo period, hatamoto were the upper vassals of the Tokugawa...
. Unlike a
hatamoto, a
gokenin was not of status - in other words, he was not allowed to have an audience with the shogun.