Shishi tended to be of modest rank, status, and income. Lack of status meant that they were little encumbered by official duty and office, which were reserved for higher samurai rank. They lived in a world that was less structured by ritual than was that og their superiors,and communication with men from other domains was also easier for them than it was for their superiors. Because the shishi were at the outer circumference of the ruling class, frustrations of limited opportunity and ritual humility often made them suspicious and critical of their cautious superiors. Poorly informed about the context of national diplomatic and political issues, they were inclined to the simplistic solutions of direct action. Calls for preparedness that accompanied the opening of Japan produced a lively expectation of war and led to a setting that was alive with rumor and that put new emphasis on the importance of the martial arts. Swordsmanship academies were crowded as never before with students, and together with tournaments they became settings for political bravado and self-assertion. The shishi were men of the sword.
The lower samurai’s frustrations often meshed with the discontent of the rural samurai and village leaders. In the countryside, pseudosamurai pretensions were symbolized by sword, surnames, and rudimentary scholarship. These could combine with the experience of administrative responsibility to encourage critical attitudes toward urban-based but underemployed samurai, sometimes with the conclusion that it was the leadership of the farm villages that really mattered. In Tosa, for example, a Shouya League of the 1840s produced complaints that summed up many of the frustrations and that harked back to a past order in which village leaders had carried out the court’s commands without interference from castle town samurai. Tosa shishi included sons of rural leaders as well as lower samurai.