2 - Medieval shōen

Summary

THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF MEDIEVAL PROVINCES

In the opening chapter Jeffrey P. Mass discusses the establishment of warrior government in medieval Japan under the Kamakura bakufu. In an agrarian society the shoguns, regents, and warriors throughout the country – like the emperor and nobles in Kyoto – depended primarily on land and its produce for their support. Thus, to understand early medieval society it is essential to understand the nature of the land system and the subtle but far-reaching changes that were taking place on the land.

The medieval land system is sometimes categorized as a system of private estates, shōen, and public domain, kokugaryō. The public domain had existed since the Nara period (710–94) when all lands throughout the provinces were subject to the fiscal and administrative authority of the imperial court. During the Heian period (794–1185) absentee proprietors, including nobles, temples, and shrines, and members of the imperial family acquired collections of private rights, shiki, in reclaimed or commended holdings scattered throughout the provinces. These holdings, known as shōen, were gradually sealed off from the taxing power and administrative supervision of state officials. Thus by the twelfth century most provinces in Japan had complex patterns of landholding in which public and private holdings were intermingled. This chapter will examine the shifting interaction of shōen and kokugaryō in the Kamakura period, the structure and management of shōen, the relations between shōen proprietors and their holdings, and the impact of the political emergence of warriors on the control of shōen.