Hatamoto

• Japanese: 旗本 (hatamoto)

Hatamoto, lit. "bannermen," were a class of roughly six thousand middle-ranking samurai of the Edo period who, instead of serving a daimyô or being daimyô themselves, were direct retainers of the Tokugawa shogun.

They held small territories in fief, enjoyed stipends of anywhere from 100 to nearly 10,000 koku, and held various middle- or upper-middle-level government posts. Some had their own retainers in turn.

References

• Craig, Teruko (trans.). Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai. University of Arizona Press, 1988. p.xii.