Gokenin

[5] 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.

[6] This social class evolved during the Kamakura shogunate based on the personal, contractual and military relationship between the shōgun and individual gokenin.

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.

[8] 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.

[3] Gokenin vassals were descendants of former shōen owners, former peasants or former samurai who had made a name for themselves in Minamoto no Yoritomo's army during his military campaigns against the Taira clan and were rewarded after victory.

[7] The gokenin title was earned by participating to an initiation ceremony, writing one's name in a roster (myōbu (名簿)) and making an oath of vassalage.

[2] 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.

[3] The ensuing turmoil gave inadvertently rise to the figure of the daimyō feudal lord, although the term wouldn't be in wide use for the first half a century.