− | ''Gôshi'' (lit. "countryside/village warrior") were [[Edo period]] [[samurai]] who remained situated in the countryside rather than residing in [[castle town]]s. This was possible only in a few parts of the archipelago, including chiefly in [[Satsuma han]], which had the highest samurai to non-samurai ratio of any [[han|domain]], and which was powerful enough to exact from the [[Tokugawa shogunate]] exceptions to policies such as that removing samurai from the land. | + | ''Gôshi'' (lit. "countryside/village warrior") were [[Edo period]] [[samurai]] who remained situated in the countryside rather than residing in [[castle town]]s. This was possible only in a few parts of the archipelago, including chiefly in [[Satsuma han]], which had the highest samurai to non-samurai ratio of any [[han|domain]], and which was powerful enough to exact from the [[Tokugawa shogunate]] exceptions to policies such as that removing samurai from the land. ''Gôshi'' could also be peasants or commoners who have been granted certain privileges of the samurai, similar to ''[[goyo shonin|goyô shônin]]'', such as the right to bear swords, the right to audience with the lord, or the right to use of a family name in official documents, albeit without being actually made members of the samurai class.<ref>[[Luke Roberts]], ''Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa'', Cambridge University Press (2002), 11n26, 51.</ref> |
| ''Gôshi'' thus had more personal, direct power over the peasants of their local area, though many also worked the land themselves. | | ''Gôshi'' thus had more personal, direct power over the peasants of their local area, though many also worked the land themselves. |
| *Conrad Schirokauer, David Lurie, and Suzanne Gay, ''A Brief History of Japanese Civilization'', Wadsworth Cengage (2013), 155. | | *Conrad Schirokauer, David Lurie, and Suzanne Gay, ''A Brief History of Japanese Civilization'', Wadsworth Cengage (2013), 155. |