thumb|right|enomoto takeaki, a famous hatamoto of the late edo period a  was a samurai in the direct service of the tokugawa shogunate of feudal japan.nussbaum, louis frÃ©dÃ©ric et al. (2005). "hatamoto" in ; n.b., louis-frÃ©dÃ©ric is pseudonym of louis-frÃ©dÃ©ric nussbaum, see deutsche nationalbibliothek authority file. 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 house,ooms, p. 190. and the gokenin were the lower vassals. there was no precise difference between the two in terms of income level, but hatamoto had the right to an audience with the shogun, where gokenin did not.ogawa, p. 43. the word hatamoto literally means "at the base of the flag" and is often translated as "bannerman". another term for the edo-era hatamoto was , sometimes rendered as "direct shogunal hatamoto", which serves to illustrate the difference between them and the preceding generation of hatamoto who served various lords. ==history== the term hatamoto originated in the sengoku period. the term was used for the direct retainers of a lord; as the name suggests, the men who were grouped "at the base of the flag". many lords had hatamoto; however, when the tokugawa clan achieved ascendancy in 1600, its hatamoto system was institutionalized, and it is to that system which we mainly refer today when using the term. in the eyes of the tokugawa shogunate, hatamoto were retainers who had served the family from its days in mikawa onward.ogawa, p. 35. however, the ranks of the hatamoto also included people from outside the hereditary ranks of the tokugawa house. retainer families of formerly defeated provincial strongmen like takeda, hÅjÅ, or imagawa were included, as were branch families of feudal lords.ogawa, pp. 35-36. also included were heirs to lords whose domains were confiscated (for example, asano daigaku, the brother of asano naganori), local power figures in remote parts of the country who never became daimyo; and the families of kamakura period and muromachi period shugo (governors) : some of these include the akamatsu, besshÅ (branch of the akamatsu), hÅjÅ, hatakeyama, kanamori, imagawa, mogami, nagai, [[o
Hatamoto