The rest of the _daimyo_, together with the bodyguard of the Shogun, the so-called "eighty thousand" with their habitual residence at Yedo, made up the hereditary retainers or _fudai_. The non-domestic _daimyo_ had nothing to do with the Shogun's central government, all the posts of which, from such high functionaries as the _rochu_ or elders, who were none other than the cabinet ministers of the Shogunate, down to such petty officials as scribes and watchmen, had been all filled with domestics of various grades. As far as these domestics or direct retainers of the Shogunate were concerned, the military regime of the Tokugawa can be held to have been a revived form of that of Kamakura. In the former, however, the disparity in power and wealth between the upper and the lower domestics of the Shogun was far more remarkable than it had been among the retainers of the latter, that is to say, the _djito_. The term "go-kenin," held to be honourable in the time of Kamakura, became, in the Tokugawa period, a designation of the lowest order of the direct vassals of the Shogun. A certain number belonging to the upper class of the _fudai_ or domestics of the Tokugawa Shogunate were made _daimyo_, and placed on the same footing as feudatories of historical lineage, the former equals of the Tokugawa, and formed with them henceforth the highest military nobility of the country. The remainder of the domestics, who were not raised to the rank of _daimyo_, were comprised under the name of _hatamoto_, which means "under the standard," that is to say, the Body-guard of the Shogun. Among the members of this body there were indeed numerous scales of gradation. The lowest of them had to lead a very miserable and straitened life in some obscure corners of the city of Yedo, while the best of them stood as regards income very near to minor _daimyo_, and were often more influential. Their political status, however, notwithstanding manifold differences in rank among them, was all the same, all being equally, direct vassals of the Shogunate, and having no regular warriors or _samurai_ as their own vassals. They, therefore, belonged to the lowest grade of the privileged classes in the military hierarchy, and in this respect there was no cardinal difference between them and the common _samurai_ who were vassals of ordinary _daimyo_. That they were, however, the immediate subjects of the Shogun, and that they did not owe fealty to any _daimyo_, who was in reality subordinate at least to the Shogun, if not his vassal in name, placed them in a status like that of the knights immediate of the Holy Roman Empire or of the mediatised princes of recent Germany; in short, above the status of ordinary _samurai_ attached to an ordinary _daimyo_. Strictly speaking, between these two there interposed another group of _samurai_. They were the vassals of the three _daimyo_ of extraordinary distinction, of Nagoya in the province of Owari, of Wakayama in the province of Kii, and of Mito