Zaichôkanjin (在庁官人), or "resident public officials", were provincial elites in the eleventh and twelfth-centuries. They generally had origins as either courtiers who had settled in the provinces, or as descendants of former indigenous elites, and came to dominate local government. As merely provincial powers they lacked autonomy within the shoen system and fell under the jurisdiction of the kokushi (provincial governors), or alternatively could commend their lands to a shoen proprietor.
Houses with zaichôkanjin origins include the Chiba, the Ashikaga, and the Miura. Following the Gempei War, it was zaichôkanjin houses such as these that would adopt the bakufu as their patron rather than the traditional kokushi or shoen proprietors.
References
- "The Missing Minamoto in the Twelfth-Century Kanto", by Jeffrey P. Mass. Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 19, No. 1. (Winter, 1993), pp. 121-145.