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A shōen (
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Nukata-dera_map.jpg/220px-Nukata-dera_map.jpg)
Shōen, from about the 8th to the late 15th century, describes any of the private, tax free, often autonomous estates or manors whose rise undermined the political and economic power of the emperor and contributed to the growth of powerful local clans. The estates developed from land tracts assigned to officially sanctioned Shintō shrines or Buddhist temples or granted by the emperor as gifts to the Imperial family, friends, or officials. As these estates grew, they became independent of the civil administrative system and contributed to the rise of a local military class. With the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate, or military dictatorship, in 1192, centrally appointed stewards weakened the power of these local landlords. The shōen system passed out of existence around the middle of the 15th century, when villages became self-governing units, owing loyalty to a feudal lord (daimyō) who subdivided the area into fiefs and collected a fixed tax.
After the decay of the ritsuryō system, a feudal system of manors developed. Landowners or nameholders commended shares of the revenue produced (called shiki) to more powerful leaders often at the court, in order to be exempted from taxes and to subvert the Chinese-style "equal fields" system, whereby land was redistributed after certain periods of time. In the Kamakura period a hierarchy of nameholder, manor stewards (jitō), shugo (military provincial governor), and the shōgun in Kamakura had evolved. These shōen were completely free from interference from the government, which therefore had no say or control of what occurred within the shōen's boundaries.
By the end of the Heian period virtually all Japanese land had become shōen and continued to be through the Ōnin War until the Sengoku period.
History
editShōen appeared in the 8th century and disappeared in the 16th century. They can be distinguished by historical period, and a shōen of each period had specific features in its formation and relationships with the cultivators of its fields. There are two primary periods of shōen development, although in fact smaller and more detailed categorizations exist. The first type, which developed in the middle of the Nara period, are now called shoki-shōen (
Before ritsuryō system
editThe earliest antecedent of the shōen are tatokoro or naritokoro (
Land policies in the Nara period
editNew policies of the central government during the Nara period, initially designed to encourage reclamation, played an important role in the development of shōen. The land policy of the ritsuryō was called handen-shūju-sei (
Shoki-shōen
editOne feature that distinguishes early or shoki-shōen from medieval shōen is their manner of formation. Most shoki-shōen were established by a Buddhist temple or a central noble by obtaining ownership of either of two kinds of paddy fields: those that had existed prior to the temple's or noble's ownership; and those that were reclaimed under the order of the temple or the noble which ruled a shōen. Shōen composed primarily of newly reclaimed land characterized shoki shōen, and accordingly shoki-shōen are sometimes called kondenchi-kei-shōen (
Another feature of shoki-shōen is annual rental system of paddy fields. There were no permanent inhabitants of shoki-shōen and the fields of shoki-shōen did not have regular cultivators, so cultivation rights were rented out on a contract of a year to peasants who inhabited the neighborhood around the shōen. Therefore, it was indispensable to recruit help of peasants, who did nearly all the work of cultivation, in order to ensure stable labor force for cultivation and reclamation of new fields. An owner of a shoki-shōen often utilized the local government system of Daijō-kan, kuni and kōri to meet this need; an owner of shoki-shōen who usually had been assigned by the central government as a kokushi (
Formation of Chūsei-shōen
editMedieval or chūsei-shōen are different from shoki-shōen mainly in existence of shōmin (
Another distinguishing feature of chūsei-shōen are their exemptions from some kinds of tax imposed by the central government. In the middle or the end of the Heian period there were two types of tax. One type of tax was corvee labor under the supervision of kuni, and the other was a tax on farm products (about three percent of rice or other farm products). To evade these taxes, peasants wanted to be ruled and protected by the shōen owners, which was usually a politically influential Buddhist temple, Shinto shrine or court noble. To achieve this protection by the shōen owners, peasants donated the nominal land ownership of the fields they cultivated to shōen owners. These fields, nominally donated to the ownership of a shōen were historically called kishinchi (
Meanwhile, there also appeared shōen which gathered territory by depriving peasants of land ownership. In some cases, shōen owners would demand tribute from peasants cultivating neighboring fields and if the peasants could not pay that tribute, the shōen confiscated the fields. In other cases, a peasant could not repay the rent for cultivation rights of shōen land, and the shōen owner who was the cultivator's creditor foreclosed on the cultivator's land rights as substitution of the credit, in which case the peasant became bound to the shōen as a shōmin, rather than a tenant cultivator. This kind of shōen is sometimes called konden-shūseki-shōen (
There were several kinds of chūsei-shōen, and each kind of shōen had particular process of achieving exemption from tax:
Kanshōfu-shō
editKanshōfu-sho (
Kokumen-shō
editKokumen-shō (
In the 10th and 11th century kokumen-shō was rapidly increased, and in 1040 the central government was not able to continue ignoring kokumen-shō and finally explicitly prohibited kuni's new permission of exemption of tax. This ordinance is now called chōkyū-shōen-seiri-rei ("The Order for Disposal of Shōen in Chōkyū Era" in Japanese).
Rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen
editRinjizōyaku (
Shōen in the Muromachi period
editIn the aftermath of the Ōnin War, the power of the shōen disappeared as new daimyō came in control of the court. These daimyo dissolved or destroyed the shōen, preferring to keep the peasants under their direct control, and effectively making them serfs in return for their protection.
See also
edit- Ritsuryō system
- Uji system
- Fiefdom
- Serfdom
References
edit- Edward Kaplan, West Washington University. Medieval Japan's Feudal Process, accessed on December 4, 2008.
- (in Japanese) Amino Yoshihiko et al., Shōen no seiritsu to ryōyū
荘園 の成立 と領有 [The Rise of Japanese Manors and their Territorial Rights], (Kōza Nihon shōen shi講座 日本 荘園 史 , 2), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1991; ISBN 4-642-02692-4. - Hall, John Whitney. "Terms and Concepts in Japanese Medieval History: An Inquiry into the Problems of Translation". Journal of Japanese Studies 9/1 (Winter, 1983), p. 29, s.v. shōen.