THE LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN 
 MEDIEVAL JAPAN 
 
 BY 
 
 K/ASAKAWA 
 
 Reprinted from the Annual Report of the American Historical Association 
 for 1916, Volume I, pages 311-342 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 .GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
 1919 
 
X. THE LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN. 
 
 By K. ASAKAWA, 
 
 Assistant Professor of History in Yale University . 
 
 311 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
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 https://archive.org/details/lifeofmonasticsh008800 
 
THE LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN.* 
 
 By K. Asakawa. 
 
 The sho hardly lends itself to a simple definition, for, in its pro- 
 longed career of 800 years between the eighth and the sixteenth 
 centuries; it epitomized, as it were, progressive changes in the general 
 institutional life of Japan during this unusually eventful period. 
 Taking the sho, however, at its full growth in the twelfth century, 
 one may perhaps define it as a piece of land which was held privately 
 under a lord by persons in varied and changeable tenures, and which 
 nevertheless formed an administrative entity enjoying a degree of 
 fiscal and judicial autonomy. This condensed description may per- 
 haps be clarified by means of a comparison. The sho has been trans- 
 lated by an English historian of Japan as manor. 1 Like the manor in 
 medieval Europe and England, the sho was a unit at once economic 
 and political, in which its public functions had become private pos- 
 sessions of its proprietors, and in which the rights and obligations 
 of persons were determined by their tenures of land. There was a 
 marked difference, however, between the two institutions. The 
 manor possessed features resembling those of a village community, 
 but the sho reminds one of a “scattered farm” system; instead of 
 comprising, like the typical manor, rectangular strips of arable land 
 laid out and administered by a joint intervention of lord and tenants, 
 the shd consisted, in its cultivated portions, of plots which were 
 irregular in shape, size, and position, and were for the most part 
 managed independently by their holders. 2 Again, these tenants, un- 
 like those in the manor, whose tenures were comparatively simple 
 and stationary, were bound together by a network of legal relations 
 between one another and between them and the lord which were not 
 only intricate but also capable, so long as the fiscal rights of the 
 lord were not affected, of continual change. If, therefore, a chief 
 problem of the origin of the manor concerns its element of common 
 management, the first question regarding the sho must relate to the 
 cause of its growth as a congeries of changeable interests and relations 
 loosely bundled together under a seignior. 
 
 This question will be partly answered in the brief account 8 of the 
 origin of the sho that follows. The agriculture of Japan in her 
 
 * The footnotes to this article will he found, arranged continuously, at the end of the 
 article. 
 
 /O' 
 
 313 
 
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 oarly historic ages seems to have been of a “ scattered farm ” system, 
 which was accompanied, at least as regards rice land, by a system 
 of private ownership, vested either in the family or in the indi- 
 vidual. These conditions were presumably due to the absence of 
 pasture 4 and, above all, the cultivation of rice 5 as the chief industry 
 of the peasants; the rice culture required irrigable lowlands. 6 a fact 
 which in that hilly country made a scattered farm system natural; 
 the rice culture also involved constant care and highly individualized 
 labor, 5 which were facilitated under a system of exclusive private 
 ownership in small fields. 7 In defiance of these conditions, the 
 government of the seventh century made a radical attempt to 
 arrange the free taxable population in artificial communities of 50 
 families, and to impose upon it a system of equal allotment of rice 
 land subject to a periodical redistribution. Within a short time the 
 new system broke down on all sides. The greatest breach was made 
 first through a natural combination of the immune classes of persons 
 with the immune classes of land that had been devised in the system ; 
 the nobility, the clergy, and the unfree, who were exempt from 
 tributes and forced labor, established connections with “imperial 
 lands,” lands granted by the emperor, and “ temple lands,” that were 
 free from the land tax. Far more serious troubles arose when im- 
 mune persons appropriated tracts of wild or newly tilled land 
 and sought to convert them into immune lands. The result was 
 the sho. Sho made their appearance from the eighth century, at 
 first few and small and not always immune, but gradually absorb- 
 ing other lands, including taxable lands, and making them partly 
 or wholly immune. This process was at length officially sanctioned 
 from the tenth century, 8 especially after the eleventh, when the 
 authorities were constrained to grant charters of immunity to some 
 of the sho, in order to distinguish them from others which were 
 still considered illegitimate. The creation and extension of sho 
 now went on apace at the expense of the State. 
 
 This would appear to be a reversion from an artificial village 
 community to a scattered-farm system, and to private ownership; 
 but these reappeared in a totally new form. The typical sho was 
 born of a newly-cultivated tract, and, with this as its core, it ma- 
 tured by a double process of absorbing neighboring tracts and di- 
 viding its growing self. But the annexation and subdivision were 
 not always made of the actual land. The native genius of the race 
 for adaptability found its expression here in a free division of the 
 various interests and rights relative to land, in their investment in 
 different hands, and in their almost indefinite redivision and con- 
 veyance. Thus were greatly facilitated transactions in proprietary 
 and usufructuary rights, the same piece of land cultivated by one per- 
 son soon giving titles and yielding profits to many. 9 A singular and 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SH& IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN. 315 
 
 important aspect of these real rights and interests was that they 
 usually retained upon them marks of the conditions in which they 
 had originated; the two main classes of relations being those that 
 arose from the voluntary commendation of land by a free owner to 
 a lord, and those that sprang from a grant by the lord to a tenant — 
 the former the freer, and the latter the more precarious in character. 
 And relations of these two classes again shaded into many grades of 
 quality as they changed hands and were further parcelled, sub- 
 limated, or burdened with conditions. The sho of the 12th cen- 
 tury that I defined at the outset was, therefore, characterized by an 
 intricate plexus of real rights and obligations that had been and con- 
 tinued to be interwoven upon the lands comprised within the area. 10 
 These lands and legal relations were loosely held together under a 
 seignior, the nature of whose authority varied greatly according as 
 to whether he was a civil noble, a military leader, or a religious cor- 
 poration. 
 
 The sho, at once like and unlike the manor as it was, became a 
 primary cause of the feudal regime in Japan; for, when the warrior 
 entered the sho and established himself as its “ resident,” manager, 
 or lord, it gradually in the course of a few centuries acquired char- 
 acteristics of the regular fief. Of this important transformation of 
 the sho into the fief, the exact process is still obscure. 11 I shall try 
 to see if any light may be thrown on it by the history of a non-feudal 
 sho. I now propose to take up a typical sh5, not under a military 
 chieftain, but belonging to a Buddhist monastery, and observe how it 
 was born, how it grew and changed, and how it died as a sho as such, 
 and, above all, analyze — tentatively, for the present — effects of the 
 influences that the stress of the times during the feudal ages exerted 
 upon the multiple tenures and institutions of the sh6. 
 
 I. 
 
 The historic monastery on Ko-ya San, or Mount Koya, in central 
 Japan, some 50 miles almost due south of Kyoto, the old imperial 
 capital, was founded in 816 by the priest Kobo. Kobo, 12 of all the 
 early apostles of Japan, has been the object of the most universal 
 veneration by Buddhists of all classes, places, and denominations. 
 As for the monastery that he founded, it is not too much to say that 
 almost every great event in national history has found reverberation 
 in the romantic career of this religious establishment. We are 
 concerned in this study, however, only with the position of the 
 institution as a seignior, for such it had become before the feudal rule 
 was established in Japan in 1186, and such it continued to be through- 
 out the feudal ages. The cartulary of the Koya monastery contains 
 more than three thousand documents 18 relating to the many sho 
 
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 it has controlled that form an invaluable material for the study of 
 the institutional and economic life of feudal Japan. 
 
 The early possessions of Koya, despite its later pretensions, do not 
 seem to have been extensive. Sixty years after its foundation the 
 rice lands, recognized as its immune “ temple-lands,” appear to have 
 aggregated but a little more than 100 acres. 14 To these were added 
 other tracts through purchases, grants by imperial personages, dona- 
 tions by nobles, and commendations by private owners. These lands 
 were, at the end of the twelfth century, all exempt from the miscel- 
 laneous impositions; some were free also from the chief land tax. 
 Apart from their immunity, these sho and other domains of Koya 
 differed widely among themselves, in their composition of lands and 
 tenures, in their private fiscal methods, and in the degree of control 
 the monastery as seignior exercised upon them. F rom the standpoint 
 of the later developments, a general distinction might conveniently 
 be drawn between the sho that originated in grants or gifts from 
 high personages 16 and those that arose from commendations made by 
 private owners with reservations of their rights. 16 In the former 
 sho the monastery could have a freer sway over their affairs than 
 in the latter, for in these it had to observe its agreements with the 
 original commenders. And it seemed to be the continued effort of 
 Koya to reduce to the level of the one class the more independent 
 sho of the other. 17 To this second and more interesting class be- 
 longed the double sho of Kono-Makuni — later triple 18 with the addi- 
 tion of Sarukawa — which will furnish the theme for this paper. 
 
 The Kono-Makuni shd was situated several miles southwest of 
 Mount Koya on both sides of a road leading to the city of W akayama. 
 The sho originated, like most sho, with one or two pieces of waste 
 land reclaimed, perhaps late in the ninth century, by a local resident 
 of some note. 19 In 911, a part of the modest income from the estate 
 w T as informally pledged to the monastery, 20 but the title over the land 
 was so insecure that provincial authorities classed it as public and 
 levied taxes upon it. 21 In order to receive the benefit of immunity, 
 in 1143, 22 the owner of the tract, a descendant of the original reclaimer, 
 commended it to a court noble of the Fujiwara family at Kyoto, as 
 the custom was, with the title of Possessor ( ryd-ke ), 23 with the under- 
 standing that the latter would himself commend the same land to 
 the ex-emperor, Go-Toba, as Lord (hon-sho) , 23 and that the first corn- 
 mender and his descendants in succession should serve as Managers 
 ( adzukari-dohoro ) under the direction of the Possessor. 22 The Koya 
 monastery was to be remembered with an annual payment in rice 22 as 
 a recompense for the religious service it should perform in behalf 
 of the ex-emperor. 24 The place was now for the first time formally 
 staked out as a sho, and a charter was issued from the ex-emperor’s 
 chamber summarizing the conditions and granting freedom from 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN. 317 
 
 the public land-tax and from the visitation of both local officials and 
 monastic agents. 22 This is the birth of the double sho of Rono- 
 Makuni. It will be noted that, in spite of the creation of the titular 
 Possessor, the real possessor and exploiter of the land was still the 
 commender, who had reserved his place as hereditary Manager; in 
 all probability he simply rendered a tribute to the noble Possessor, 
 who may or may not in turn have given up a part of it to the nominal 
 imperial Lord. As for the monastery, it was merely entitled to a 
 fraction o.f the income of the sho, to which it was forbidden even 
 to send a collector. 
 
 It could hardly be expected that Koya would rest content with 
 this meager lot. The monastery sought with some success to estab- 
 lish a direct contact with the inhabitants of the sho, 25 probably using 
 as a lever its right to an annual tax, and also by appealing to its 
 defunct title of 911 as a commendee. 26 Early in 1177, it seems to 
 have succeeded in gaining by a characteristically roundabout way 
 a promise from the Possessor of an additional annual due. 27 Nor 
 was Koya less alert to improve every opportunity to increase its claim 
 upon the control of the affairs of the shd ; and, as it happened, both 
 the Possessor and the Manager, by ill-considered acts, played into 
 the hands of the astute monastery. Especially the Manager, believ- 
 ing that he rightfully controlled the use of the land, commended 
 the sho in some manner to another monastery, 28 and about 1190 with 
 equal lack of thought, commended the sho in a vague title to Koya. 29 
 This the latter pretended, to believe to be the very managership of 
 the sho; it acted according to that conviction, reducing the former 
 Manager into the position of an agent. 30 
 
 II. 
 
 When a partial feudal rule was introduced into the governing ma- 
 chinery of Japan in 1186, Koya promptly enlisted the good-will of 
 the suzerain, Minamoto-no-Yoritomo, and secured from him an im- 
 munity of all its sho from a military surtax and from the interference 
 of the new military constables and stewards. 31 These privileges were 
 conceded by Yoritomo with the greater willingness, as it formed a 
 part of his conservative policy, so far as was compatible with the 
 real political power which he had won, to respect the class interests 
 and proprietary rights that he found in entrenchment everywhere. 
 And K5ya was one of the greatest landlords and one of the most 
 formidable religious institutions in all Japan. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest gain for the monastery was the recognition 
 it succeeded in winning from the new ruler of its alleged ancient 
 territorial rights. 32 Koya had for some time pretended — for the 
 claim can be proven to be a pretension — and now pretended success- 
 
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 fully, that at the founding of the monastery in 816 by Kobd, the 
 local* deity yielded to him, and the imperial government also 
 granted to him, 10,000 chd (nearly 30,000 acres) of land around the 
 mountain. 33 This wide area, to which Koya henceforth referred as 
 its “ancient domain” (hyu-ryo ) , 34 Avould include the double sho of 
 Kono-Makuni 35 as well as many other districts ; 36 and the claim 
 furnished grounds for the extension, not only of the land of the 
 various slio, but also of the power of the monastery as the dispenser 
 of benefits. Within the rather indefinite borders of this territory 
 K5ya seems to have been enabled to create or claim 37 lands and 
 landed interests under its direct control, 38 in juxtaposition with freer 
 tenures, and to try to assimilate the latter to the former. 39 
 
 As regards the Kono-Makuni sho, of which the monastery had 
 already professed the managership, a fortunate event occurred in 
 1221 to enable it to make its control of its land and people more 
 complete. The Fujiwara noble who still claimed the title of Pos- 
 sessor, 40 as well as the imperial Lord of the sho, were in that year 
 involved in a plot to overthrow the feudal government and were 
 defeated and exiled, and the titles seem to have lapsed. As the 
 actual Lord 41 and as Possessor and Manager as well in name 42 as in 
 reality, the monastery now had virtually no one over it and no other 
 magnate eclipsing its power as the seignior of the sho; it had already 
 begun to deal directly with the landholders of the sho, and now re- 
 doubled its effort, as will be seen later, to reduce its freer tenures to 
 a greater dependence upon its will. There was henceforth little 
 substantial difference in the character of the seigniorial control over 
 them between granted sho and this sho, which had originated in 
 commendations. 43 
 
 It was also in this period that the neighboring district of Sarukawa 
 was attached as a joint member to the double sho, 44 which appears in 
 documents from the middle of the thirteenth century as the triple 45 
 Kono-Makuni- Sarukawa sho. The previous history of Sarukawa had 
 been similar to that of most commended sho, having passed through 
 the familiar stages of original cultivation by a local magnate, 46 
 hereditary possession by his children, 47 and commendation with reser- 
 vation. 44 
 
 We have so far discussed the progress of the control of the monastic 
 seignior over the triple sho as a whole. This had come about simul- 
 taneously with the internal changes that occurred both in the tenures 
 of: the individual landholders in the sho and in the character of its 
 administrative machinery. To these changes we shall now turn. 
 
 It will be remembered that the triple sho had originated, not in 
 grants or gifts from high quarters, but in commendations with res- 
 ervations, first by one owner of his land and then by others of theirs. 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN. 319 
 
 Many of these men and others of their class were of families whose 
 members had for generations lived in the place, 48 owned lands, 49 car- 
 ried arms and kept retainers, 50 even had served in Kyoto as minor 
 officials and made influential connections at the capital, 51 and had 
 generally established their prestige as local chiefs. When they com- 
 mended their lands to a seignior, and perhaps even when they sold 
 or mortgaged them among themselves, what was actually combed 
 was often mere interests and profits; in these cases the lands them- 
 selves and their management — or “ the use of the original and inde- 
 structible powers of the soil,” to quote the Ricardian phrase — re- 
 mained in reality in the hands of the former owners ; 52 and these 
 lands, as well as others that they still held in more complete titles, 
 were transmitted by heredity or alienated with all the obligations 
 that encumbered them. 63 These men were chief among the yu-nin 
 (“residents”) or hyaku-sho ■ (bearers of family names), and ji-shu 
 (“landholders”), 54 who formed the backbone of the sho, supporting 
 its life and bearing its burdens. 55 The titular masters of the sho had 
 perforce to rely on the good faith and cooperation of these men, 
 whether in the administration of its affairs 56 or in its defense 57 
 against aggressions from without, which were frequent. 58 Such was 
 the condition in the middle of the twelfth century. 
 
 This state of things began to change gradually toward the close 
 of the pre-feudal period, and then more rapidly after the beginning 
 of the thirteenth century. First, we turn to the officials of the sho. 
 The cartulary happens to contain nineteen oaths of fealty 59 sworn 
 between 1271 and 1315 by the various officials of the triple sho that 
 reveal conditions quite different from those that must have prevailed 
 there even in 1221. It is true that the posts of these officials as the 
 financial and police agents of the sho, held as they were by members 
 of its representative families, were all hereditary 60 and regarded 
 rather as profits than as functions, even women 61 being permitted to 
 succeed to them. There now had appeared among the officials, how- 
 ever, a perceptible distinction between two classes, namely : the lower 
 ones representing more closely the actual holders of lands, 62 and the 
 higher ones who were in more direct contact with Koya, and who 
 perhaps were generally looked upon rather as servants of the mon- 
 astery than as the landlords that their forefathers were and that 
 some of them must still have been themselves. 63 The oaths given by 
 the latter class of agents indicate that their position was distinctly 
 more precarious than that of the former. 64 As a matter of fact the 
 services of the higher agents were rewarded with grants of land or 
 rice; 65 the more recalcitrant among them could be punished with 
 summary dismissal and their hereditary rights as agents revoked. 66 
 And Koya had already begun to employ agents appointed for the 
 sho from among the inmates within its monastic walls. 67 
 
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 At the same time, the tenures of the plain holders of land ( ji-shu ) 
 had also been modified. 68 (1) Though still hereditary and alien- 
 able, 69 they could now be confiscated and their holders banished for 
 serious crimes, 70 and the landed interests wrested from them were 
 granted by Koya as seignior to others in less free tenures. 71 (2) It 
 is significant that the so-called “name-lands” ( myd-den ), many of 
 which had presumably been small allodial areas reclaimed by their 
 owners, 72 are now seen in some instances to be grants from the 
 seignior. 73 ( 3 ) F rom the last half of the thirteenth century, a remark- 
 ably widespread tendency is noticeable in all the Koya sho, including 
 the triple sho, of many of their constituent pieces of rice land that 
 had still been held by residents to be acquired through purchase 
 or mortgage by monks of the monastery, and then commended by 
 them to Koya 74 — “ for the peace of the present,” as they said, “ and 
 the happiness of the next life,” or “ for the extinction of the pash, 
 present, and future sins.” 75 Apart from these pious formulas it ii 
 not clear what economic consideration had induced the monks so 
 commonly to have recourse to these transactions, unless we assume 
 that the commendation meant the surrender, in law, of the title over 
 the land, but in fact only of a fraction of its profit; and that the 
 commending monk lost through his act less in income than in the 
 freedom of his tenure; in other words, he presumably enjoyed a 
 major profit from the land which was thenceforth nominally a grant 
 from the seignior. 76 At any rate, it is plain that, at the beginning 
 of the fourteenth century, the tenures of land in the triple sho, like 
 the rights of its agents, though still normally transferable by heredity 
 and conveyance, had become partly dependent on the will of the 
 seignior. 
 
 I infer that this change had resulted not only from the progress in 
 the control of the sh5 by the monastery as lord that we saw taking 
 place in the early feudal period, but also from general conditions of 
 the age for which Koya should not be held responsible. Among these 
 may be mentioned the continued facility with which rights and inter- 
 ests relative to land could still be subdivided and transferred, causing 
 the position of some descendants of the original holders and corn- 
 menders of land to be generally weakened, and affording opportuni- 
 ties to the seignior to alter tenures. 77 Also the prevailing turbulence 
 of the time, from which even the consecrated mountain was not free, 
 compelled Koya to require from chief members of its sho a more fre- 
 quent and extensive service at arms’ 78 at the monastery than before; 
 these added burdens, together with the increased financial obligations 
 of the period, may have reacted unfavorably upon the condition of 
 the landholder. If he had not yet been obliged to forsake land alto- 
 gether and turn a mercenary warrior, he had been sorely tempted to 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN. 321 
 
 exchange some of his landed interests either for lower tenures or for 
 ready cash. 79 
 
 Side by side with the gradual alteration of the status of the “ land- 
 holder” ( ji-shu ), w T e begin to observe that the position of the “cul- 
 tivator ” ( sahu-nin ) of the soil also was slowly changing, though the 
 full meaning of both facts does not become obvious until we reach the 
 end of the next period. 
 
 The history of the status of the J apanese agricultural laborer dur- 
 ing the feudal ages would seem to afford a difficult but fruitful field 
 of study. Unfortunately, his position during the first feudal period 
 is extremely obscure. 80 But was the so-called “ cultivator ” a laborer ? 
 The question would seem to involve two points, his work and his 
 status. First, as regards his work: Were the “cultivators” actually 
 tillers of the soil? Whatever their original condition, 81 some of 
 them were, even in the early twelfth century, hardly real toilers 
 of the glebe ; 82 in the first feudal ages, at least those “ cultivators ” 
 whom we find bearing family names, holding cultivatorships of 
 several pieces of land, and even appearing at the same time with the 
 title of “ landholders ” of these and other pieces, 83 would seem them- 
 selves to have been employers of men. 84 We may safely infer that, 
 while some “cultivators” were tillers, others were holders of the 
 so-called “right of cultivation” ( saku-shiki ) — another class of real 
 rights that were sources of profits, and were hereditary, divisible, 
 and transferable. 85 Next, as regards the status of the “ cultivator ” : 
 In the early feudal period, he held his right under some form of con- 
 trol of the “landholder,” so that when the land changed hands, the 
 “ cultivator’s ” right was liable to lapse. 86 Soon, however, we find his 
 position tending to become securer and less dependent. 87 At least in 
 the triple sho, the “ cultivators ” appear even to have been placed par- 
 tially under direct control of monastic agents, apparently paying 
 dues to them 88 as well as to the “ landholders ” 89 of whom they held 
 their tenures. From the early 14th century, the name of the “culti- 
 vator ” is usually attached when a piece of land is mentioned, but that 
 of the holder no longer appears as a rule; or sometimes the latter’s 
 place is taken by a religious service or some other impersonal matter 
 for which proceeds from the land were devoted. 90 It even occurs that 
 personal names are given with pieces of land without specification 
 either as “ landlords ” or as “ cultivators,” 91 leaving one to imagine 
 that they may possibly have represented “cultivators” that were 
 virtually “ landholders.” However that may be, it is not too much 
 to conclude that, at the end of the first feudal period, at least some 
 of the “cultivators” were not employed tillers, still less serfs, but 
 men who derived the fruit of the soil, and, in the last analysis, bore 
 the whole burden of the dues from it; they had advanced halfway 
 23318°— 19 21 
 
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 toward the position that the “landholders” had occupied. Nor is 
 this strange when we admit that the original distinction between the 
 “ cultivator ” and the “ landholder ” must have meant primarily a 
 differentiation of rights and profits ( shiki ) of land, rather than of 
 personal status or even of person, and also remember that these 
 rights and profits were in a state of flux. 
 
 To recapitulate at this point: At the close of the first period of 
 feudal history, the “ landholders ” and the “ cultivators ” were drift- 
 ing toward each other in cross currents of social adjustment, many of 
 the formerj.cl3s§" slowly losing the freedom of tenure and many of 
 the latte imis slowly gaining the real possession of the soil. It is need- 
 less to repeat here that in this evolution at least the lowering of the 
 status of the “landholder,” if not the rise of the “cultivator,” had 
 been fostered by the seignior for his own interest; he likewise had 
 been engaged in an effort to reduce officials of the sho to greater sub- 
 serviency. The next feudal period of Japan opened in the triple sho 
 in the midst of this general movement, and, as we shall see, gave it a 
 stronger impetus and carried it to its consequences. 
 
 III. 
 
 From the second quarter of the fourteenth century Japan entered 
 upon dark ages of a prolonged civil strife and practical anarchy last- 
 ing till the end of the sixteenth century. If we leave Koya for a 
 moment and take a survey of the feudal Japan as a whole, we shall 
 find that, amid the utmost decentralization that ensued, the period 
 witnessed certain momentous changes taking place as if by concert in 
 the institutional life of the whole country. Among these the most 
 important for our present study are two double processes, one of them 
 begun earlier and now completed, and the other noticeable from the 
 latter half of this period and matured only after 1600. 
 
 The first of these double movements may be characterized as the 
 consummation of the feudalization both of the administrative agency 
 and of the land tenure of Japan. The evolution was necessarily long 
 and multifarious, and is still largely obscure, but the results stand 
 out in bold outlines. We may well say that the governmental appa- 
 ratus was at last completely feudalized when, as we find in 1600, all 
 the sho under civil control 02 and all the public offices of civil origin 
 in the provinces 98 had been annexed by groups of warriors held to- 
 gether by ties of vassalage. Similarly, it is just to say that land 
 tenure was finally feudalized when the conquering war lord assumed 
 a free disposition of the territory he had won at the point of his 
 sword, and reduced the multiple tenures he had found therein into 
 a nearly uniform tenure — a tenure which, though normally capable 
 of heredity and subinfeudation, was, under his dictatorial control, 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN. 323 
 
 subject to a reinvestiture at succession and liable to confiscation, and 
 entailed upon its tenants a definite personal service in arms toward 
 him. 94 The peculiarly complex sho, such as we found in the twelfth 
 century, was no more, 95 at least under military control; the sh5 had 
 been converted into a fief. 
 
 The year 1600 saw this double transformation practically finished ; 
 it witnessed another twofold movement already begun but still in- 
 complete. This was, in one aspect, a growing differentiation between 
 the military and the argicultural classes, and in another an increas- 
 ing tendency among the latter to reverse the earlier custom of sub- 
 dividing landed rights and interests ( shiki ) and to unify them once 
 more with land itself. The growth of a class of professional war- 
 riors, many of whom now lived near the castles of the lords and re- 
 ceived rice or money instead of land for the service they offered, 
 and the consequent partial separation of arms from land 90 — these 
 phenomena had resulted from the continued and increasingly better 
 organized warfare 97 that had characterized the intervening period. 
 The peasants in the field on their part were becoming at once more 
 unprotected, because unarmed, and freer in status and in feeling, 
 because more independent of immediate military control, than in the 
 earlier period ; 90 these conditions tended to make the ambitious lord 
 regard the peasantry as an object of paternal solicitude, to be at 
 once protected and feared. 90 And the improving position of the peas- 
 ant was coincident with the progressive unification of real rights 
 and land, a tendency which he embraced and nursed. Scarcely did 
 the seignior imagine himself to have succeeded in reducing the 
 u landholder ” into a dependent tenant, 98 when the latter found him- 
 self on the road to become the practical owner of the land which, 
 under the name of a grant by favor, he in fact exploited and passed 
 on to his heir. 99 
 
 It may be presumed that these great social changes, whatever 
 their causes and their exact processes, must have reacted upon^an- 
 other. The increasing reunion of land and landed interests must 
 haV’e tended to strengthen the position of the peasant ; and that posi- 
 tion in turn must have been influenced by his growing freedom from 
 the proximity of warriors ; while the partial liberation of the warrior 
 himself from the cares of economic production must have facilitated 
 the feudalization of the governing machinery of the domains under 
 armed control. Nor might we suppose that the simplification of the 
 sho and its transformation into the fief were completed without an 
 impetus received both from the ascendency of the military nobility 
 over the civil, on the one hand, and, on the other, from the consoli- 
 dation of various interests of land in the hands of its holder. We 
 shall find in the next period that these changes not only had together 
 brought the feudal development to its culmination, but also had 
 
324 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 created forces tending to undermine the feudal structure of society. 
 We must first observe how the movements to which we have alluded 
 were reflected in the triple sho during the second period of Japanese 
 feudal history. 
 
 It was inevitable that the landed interests of the K5ya monastery 
 during the period of general commotion should, as they did, suffer 
 many alterations and encroachments ; 100 but, thanks to their religious 
 and immune character, the monastic sho, unlike the civil sh5, held 
 their own, on the whole, recovering many of their losses and Weather- 
 ing the storm as best they could. If the truth must be told, both the 
 sh5 and the monastery on the mountain were armed not altogether 
 inadequately and not always for purely defensive ends. 101 What 
 must we think when we are told that about 1580 Koya held posses- 
 sions much more extensive than it ever had or has held, 102 and that 
 its warriors defied and for a time defeated an army of the suzerain 
 of half feudal Japan? 103 
 
 As regards our triple sho, the documents relative to its changes in 
 this period are regrettably few, but, along with the examples of other 
 monastic domains, give us a sufficient ground to infer that much of 
 the social evolution enacted abroad repeated itself here. 
 
 The historic effort of the monastery to increase its seigniorial con- 
 trol over the various tenures and tenants of the sho seems now to 
 have been well nigh consummated. At last all the officials of the shd 
 were treated by Koya as employed agents at once hereditary and 
 precarious, 104 rather than as representatives of the peasants. 105 Even 
 when warriors had encroached upon the sho and wrung from the 
 monastery a grudging recognition for a time as petty seigniors, 106 
 Koya recovered its control of the affected districts at the first oppor- 
 tunity, and thereafter treated the intruders who remained as de- 
 pendent agents. 107 The “ name-lands ” ( myd-den ) had changed 
 hands, and many of them had been annexed by Koya, and granted to 
 its agents. The title “name- [land] holder” ( myd-shu ) had been 
 given to minor officials of the sho who were not always actual holders 
 of this species of landl^In many, perhaps in all, instances the very 
 peasants were regarded as holders of granted titles; that is, as pre- 
 carious thought hereditary.^ 8 
 
 These marks of the added authority which Koya as seignior 
 thought to have gained were, however, offset by more substantial 
 changes that had been silently taking place from below. The uni- 
 fication of land and landed interests, to which I have alluded in re- 
 gard to the feudal domains, manifested itself in Koya sho, as perhaps 
 in other parts of Japan, in a signal progress of the equalization of 
 status between “landholders” and “cultivators” that had begun 
 earlier. This social evolution is epitomized in certain historic terms 
 that designated the changing social classes. The old term hyaku - 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN. 
 
 325 
 
 sho 109 (bearers of family names), 'which represented, in ancient 
 times, free taxable citizens, 110 but, in the twelfth to early fourteenth 
 century, the class of landholders, including the local chiefs upon 
 whom devolved the duty of defending the sho and the monastery, and 
 assisting in the administration of the former, 111 was now seen again 
 to be changing its meaning. In the -period of civil war the 
 term was beginning to be applied, as it invariably was after 
 1600, to peasants pure and simple, dissociated from armed serv- 
 ice and depending upon the seignior and his agents for sheer 
 protection and no longer bearing even family names. 112 At the 
 same time both the terms “landholder” and “cultivator” had 
 also changed their signification. The landholder (now the same 
 characters ji-shu being pronounced ji-nushi) was a hyaku-sho 
 possessing a free title over plants of land, which were no longer 
 burdened with subtle division of rights and relations, and paying 
 regular dues upon them; he had become, all but in name, a plain 
 landowner. The term “cultivator” ( saku-nin ) denoted more and 
 more commonly a relatively small 113 class of free tenants who rented 
 lands owned by others and paid to them the economic rent ; 114 they 
 appear neither as the institutional descendants of the old “ culti- 
 vators” nor as serfs, but rather as regular tenant farmers such as 
 would come into being without special antecedents. I do not forget 
 that neither the old hyaku-sho nor the old “cultivators” had been 
 a simple class, but each had comprised several grades of status; 115 
 what seems likely is that the grades in each class had now drifted 
 apart, and some of the former two classes coalesced in a new social 
 alignment. In other words, it is probable that if some of the “ cul- 
 tivators ” had remained as or become free tenants others had risen 
 to the status of the better hyaku-sho ; the “ landholders ” were like- 
 wise differentiated between those who had been joined by the risen 
 “ cultivators,” no longer so designated, and those that had turned 
 professional warriors or their retainers, they either remaining in the 
 shd, boasting their family names and living the lives of petty lords, 112 
 or perhaps more frequently toward the end of the period having left 
 the soil and attached themselves to barons. The old terminology 
 persisted but represented changed realities. The new composite 
 hyaku-sho , including peasant proprietors and tenants, would seem to 
 have formed the bulk of the new rural class, with the absent seignior 
 above and the hired farm hands 116 below them. The distinction be- 
 tween the old “ cultivator ” and the old “ landholder,” 117 like the 
 earlier difference between the relatively free commender and the 
 relatively precarious grantee, and like the sho itself whose inhabitants 
 they all had been, had passed into history. 
 
 As we complete our survey of the second feudal period, let us ask 
 ourselves, How much did the changes in the sho reflect those of the 
 
326 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 feudal Japan to which we referred? What was common to both 
 and what was the difference between them? These questions, are 
 elusive. We may say that the increased seigniorial control, on the 
 one hand, and the new social alignment, on the other, were due to the 
 natural effort made by the monastery and by the peasants to advance 
 their respective interest in the midst of the general tendencies in 
 which the whole of Japan had been involved; namely, the separation 
 of arms from land and the coming together of the landed interests 
 that had ramified. Behind these tendencies we can not for the pres- 
 ent try to penetrate. While we grant to this extent the community 
 of institutional life between our sho and the outside world, we must 
 also admit that there was an important difference between them : the 
 Koya sho, religious and not civil in character as it was, escaped 
 a military conquest and so escaped a feudalization of its adminis- 
 trative organs ; again, the sho, having never been wholly 118 annexed 
 by a great baron or brought into a feudal relation with him, was 
 never converted into a fief in the technical sense. Only the general 
 simplification of its tenures that the monastery seemed to have 
 effected may be said to connote a sufficient will on the part of the 
 seignior that, had he been a military lord thrown in the vortex of a 
 struggle for ascendency, would have turned the sho into a fief ; it was 
 only the religious character of the seignior that prevented that 
 outcome. It might, therefore, be said that the very failure of the 
 sho to be feudalized indicates the chief cause of the success of that 
 development in the military domains; that is, the dictatorial power 
 of the war lord who took land with one hand and gave it with the 
 other. Finally, we suggest that the common nature of the influences 
 to which the triple sho and the military fiefs were exposed in this 
 period is further demonstrated by the common destiny which, as we 
 shall see, overtook them all in the next period. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The third and last period of Japan’s feudal history — 1600-1868 — 
 may be dismissed with a few words. It will be remembered that 
 during the preceding centuries the feudalization of the local Gov- 
 ernment and the land tenure of Japan as a whole was completed, and 
 the separation of land and arms and the reunion of land and landed 
 interests began. A little reflection will show that, if these move- 
 ments operating together carried to its consummation the feudal 
 organization of Japanese society, they would, as they did, also create 
 conditions subversive of it ; for no regime could remain purely feudal, 
 if its peasants were too free, and if too many of its warriors were 
 detached from land. And yet these conditions were not only fully 
 recognized, but also greatly extended, in the remarkable government 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN. 327 
 
 that the Tokugawa suzerains erected in the early seventeeth century ; 
 they, in their own domains, deliberately increased the number of 
 landless, stipendiary warriors, and gave a generous measure of self- 
 government to the peasant communities, making them the foundation 
 of the economic and financial life of the new regime. And the ex- 
 ample was largely copied by the barons in their respective domains. 
 Moreover, the suzerain, having at last unified all Japan torn for 
 centuries by civil war, extended to his rule of the whole the principles 
 of feudal government and feudal land tenure that had been estab- 
 lished separately in its parts; he regarded the entire realm as a vast 
 domain, as it were, with its control centralized as far as was prac- 
 ticable in his council at Edo ; carved the area into feudatories, many 
 of them arbitrarily, and assigned them, under the name han , 119 to 
 his barons as fiefs held of him. The result was a regime in which 
 were combined and balanced with great care both feudal and non- 
 feudal elements of society, and centralizing and decentralizing ten- 
 dencies and forces of government. This is the regime that, despite 
 the comparative inferiority of its later rulers, held sway over Japan 
 till 1867. 
 
 We finally return to the Koya sho to observe its institutional 
 position in this last of the feudal periods. We shall not linger to 
 tell how the tyrant Hideyoshi had crushed for all time, as it proved, 
 the armed power of the monastery and curtailed its landed pos- 
 sessions. 120 Entering the new era in this attenuated state, the Koya 
 monastery was regarded by the Tokugawa suzerain virtually as on 
 a par with the barons, and its domains were collectively treated 
 as a fief 121 held of him. As a species of baron, K5ya gave its 
 fealty to the successive suzerains at Edo and rendered them annual 
 tributes. As a fief, the Koya domains were formally reinvested to 
 the monastery by each suzerain at his accession to power. 122 In a 
 word, Koya was autonomous in the administration of its own af- 
 fairs, but dependent upon Tokugawa as overlord. Interesting as 
 this period is, therefore, it is less significant for our study than the 
 preceding ages. The triple sho of Kono-Makuni-Sarukawa was no 
 longer triple, but was separated into four mutually unrelated sho 
 with shifted boundaries; nor was each of the four sho, though still 
 retaining that name, anything more than a collective name of units 
 called mura , which were self-governing communities of hyaku- 
 sAd, 123 comprising no “name-lands,” no fortresses, and no warriors 
 rendering military service. The life of the district as a real sh5 
 had long ceased to be ; what had survived was its name retained for 
 an altogether altered institution. 
 
 1 F. Brinkley, “A History of the Japanese People,” New York and London, 1915, pp. 
 251-252, 270. See also James Murdock, “ A History of Japan,” Tokyo, 1910, I, 213, 
 228, ff. 
 
328 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 2 This contrast is drawn between the full-grown manor and sh5, both, say, of the 
 twelfth century. It need not be noted that in the ninth and tenth centuries there were 
 in southern France domains in which holdings were irregular and, with their tenants’ 
 houses, isolated and scattered over the estate. See Seignobos’s chapter, “ Le regime 
 fSodal,” in Lavisse and Rambaud’s “ Histoire ggngrale,” II, 5. 
 
 3 For a fuller discussion, the reader is referred to my article, “ The Origin of the 
 Feudal Land Tenure in Japan,” in the American Historical Review for October, 1914 
 (XX, no. 1), pp. 1-23. 
 
 4 When there are both pasture and rice land, a communal form of management which 
 is expedient for the pasture may tend to retard the development of individual ownership 
 even in the rice fields, as seems to be the case in some parts of Java. In Japan, on 
 the contrary, pasture has not existed within historic times ; the race has not depended 
 on sheep and cattle for material for clothing and food, cotton and grass cloths being 
 used for raiment, and the numerous streams and the north ocean currents supplying an 
 abundance of fish ; bulls and cows used in husbandry have been few, and, though peasants 
 have commonly kept horses, they as a rule were not left in the field to graze, but kept 
 in stables while unemployed ; there they were made to tread grass into manure ; sufficient 
 fodder was found by the wayside or in non-arable lands. This last condition precluded 
 the need of reserving extensive meadows. 
 
 The practical absence of meadows and pastures has formed one of the great peculiari- 
 ties of Japanese economic life and has produced far-reaching results. Not only was the 
 development of individual ownership of rice land, and then of other kinds of lands, 
 thereby stimulated, but also the people were enabled to utilize a telatively gi’eater part 
 of the arable land for cultivation, and to maintain a larger population than would be 
 possible in a half-farming and half-grazing country. Minor yet important effects might 
 be traced in a variety of ways. 
 
 * The predominant place occupied by the rice culture in Japan’s agriculture constitutes 
 its second chief characteristic. Its effects on the institutional life of the nation can 
 hardly be exaggerated ; it at least fashioned the life of the sho from its very birth and 
 in all its ramifications. These and other effects would merit a careful analysis. Among 
 the minor effects I may refer to the fact that, because of the use of rice, both as the 
 staple food and as the material for brewing sake , there has been no necessity of reserving 
 vineyards ; also, rice being used in grain, the mill has not played in Japanese social 
 history the part it has in Europe. 
 
 • About the Irrigation and the intensive nature of the rice culture, see the article 
 “ Influence of geographical conditions upon Japanese agriculture,” by Miss E. C. Semple, 
 in the Geographical Journal for December, 1912. 
 
 7 If we bear in mind the intensive nature of the cultivation of rice in irrigable lowlands 
 and the comparatively high value of the product, and also remember the absence of 
 pastures and meadows, we shall be able to see why the relatively small area of the arable 
 land in Japan admitted a relatively dense population ; we may also understand why rice 
 fields were, and needed to be, small. 
 
 It is not unlikely that during the feudal ages the general tendency with rice fields was 
 to become smaller, both for more effective culture and for readier division of rights. 
 However that may be, the very first fields must have been diminutive enough. The 
 following instances are taken from among the sho belonging to the monastex-y of Mount 
 Koya. In 1136, 78 plots showed an average of IS acres ; in 1273, 18 plots averaged 
 0.27 acre ; and in 1424, 1020 plots averaged 0.23 acre. In the last instances, plots larger 
 than 0.6 acre and those smaller than 0.05 acre were few, the large majority, 896 plots, 
 being between the two. Ko-ya san mon-zho, III, 358-386, V, 356-389, 486-8. It will 
 probably be possible some day to show that the diminutive size of rice fields in Japan 
 was responsible for many of the characteristics of the history of the sho. 
 
 8 Some charters date as early as 950. Most early charters seem to have been issued 
 by the provincial, not the imperial, government. See Iwashimidzu mon-zho, I, 270-299. 
 
 •The division of land itself (shita-ji, as it would be called in old Japanese), rather 
 than of interests and rights relative to land (shiki), practised in the peasant holdings in 
 medieval France, is considered by Seignobos as one of the causes of their consisting in 
 narrow strips. Lavisse and Rambaud, op. cit., II, 8. 
 
 10 T%t ^ resident of one shd could have a right over a piece of land in another sh5 
 and cultivate it ; the nonresident holder or cultivator was obliged to pay his usual dues 
 to the sho in which he exercised his rights. K6-ya san mon-zho, I, 508. 
 
 11 A Japanese critic of the article mentioned in note 3 above was oblivious of the 
 fundamental difference between the sho and the fief and other institutional problems of 
 prime importance. See Shi-gaku zasshi, XXVI, 378-379 ; my reply, ibid., 776-780. 
 
 12 Kobo (posthumous name of Kukai), 774-835, on his return from China in 807, 
 established the mystic ritualism of Shingon Buddhism. The imposing, mysterious per- 
 formances of the sect, reinforced, as they were, by the priest’s extraordinary versatility 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN 
 
 329 
 
 and winsome character, fascinated and captivated the Court. He also entered deeply 
 into the hearts of the common people of all subsequent ages through his many travels, 
 his artistic activity, and his founding of the Koya monastery, which has been a Mecca 
 of Buddhist pilgrimage. 
 
 13 Published between 1904 and 1907 under the title, Ko ya san mon zho (hereinafter 
 abbreviated as Koya), 8 vols., in the great series Dai Ni-hon ko-mon zho, edited by the 
 
 t Historiographic Institute of the Imperial University of Tokyo. I suspect that the mon- 
 astery must possess unpublished documents not reproduced in this series. The Ki-i no 
 kuni zoku fu-do ki (hereinafter abbreviated as Ki), compiled c. 1808-1839 by Niida Yoshi- 
 furu and others in 192 chapters (printed in five large volumes in 1910-1911) contains 
 some hundreds of documents of the Koya sho not included in the published cartulary. The 
 v documents relating strictly to the triple sho alone in these two works number about 130. 
 
 14 San-dai zhitsu-roku, chap. 29 (Koku-shi tai-kei, IV, 432). 
 
 16 Such as the Mandokoro, Arakawa, and Minabe sho. 
 
 10 Such as parts of the Adegawa sho and of our triple sho. 
 
 17 1 think that this theory should explain many an act of the monastery towards 
 its freer sho. Its powers as seignior were specially ample in the granted Mandokoro 
 sho, already in 1125 (see Koya, VII, 266-268), which must have served as a model 
 in the treatment of the other sho. See notes 26, 39, and 43 below. 
 
 18 The exact size of the triple sho, which must have continued to increase even 
 
 after the annexation of Sarukawa in the thirteenth century, is stated nowhere in the 
 documents. When we remember that the life of a sho as a terrain was built upon 
 its cultivated area, it is not strange that its value should usually be expressed, as 
 it was, in terms of its productivity measured in rice, not of its lineal extent. About 
 1830, when the extent of what had before been the triple sho may be presumed to 
 have reached its utmost, the total productivity of all kinds of tilled land comprised 
 in this area was rated as 5,027 koku (about 25,000 bushels) of hulled rice, produced 
 by 5,413 members of 1,245 families. Taking the average yield of a Ssho as 8 koku (or 
 about 15 bushels per acre), 5,027 koku would represent a total of 628 Ssho (about 1,550 
 acres), which should be regarded as a very rough estimate for a very late date. 
 
 Some idea of the range of the sizes of early sho may be gained from the following 
 data from the domains of the temple at Iwashimidzu. In 1072, of the 34 sh5 that were 
 
 enumerated, the smallest included about 20 acres of tilled area, and the largest 
 
 % about 100 acres. Larger sho seem to have contained waste or wooded land, and 
 
 therefore can not be used for comparison. Iwashimidzu mon-zho, I, 270-299. In an 
 undated list of 104 sho in Kyushu, the smallest measured 15 acres, and there was 
 another less than 30 acres ; the largest had more than 2,400 acres, which was ex- 
 ceptional, the second covering but 390 acres ; and there were two more sho that com- 
 ♦ prised 300 acres each. (Ibid., II, 141-147.) 
 
 To return to the triple sho, each of its three component sho seems always to have 
 bad its administrative offices at the “ sho-house ” (corresponding to the French in- 
 tendant’s house or the German Frohnhof), but at no time was there any central 
 bureau for the triple district as a whole. 
 
 The triple sho happened to possess a central market place in Kono, at least since 
 the end of the thirteenth century (Koya, IV, 636), where later regular fairs occurred 
 six times annually. Kono was otherwise most populous, producing cotton and paper 
 besides rice ; Makunl was probably the most sterile. Economically, the triple skS 
 was hardly self-sufficient, and the market served as a distributing center not only 
 for this but also for neighboring sh5. 
 
 Each part of the triple sh5 consisted of rural districts which were called mura, 
 at least in the third feudal period, some 40 in all, about 1830. Each mura, sup- 
 ported Shinto and Buddhist shrines and temples, their total number for the entire 
 region, about 1830, being 70 ordinary and 140 smaller ones for a population of 
 5,400. Each sho had its chief shrine and temple. The burden of these religious 
 institutions was less formidable than their number would lead us to suppose, for most 
 of them were tiny shrines by the wayside or on hilltops, unattended by priests, and 
 costing hardly anything for maintenance. The annual festivals at these houses, not 
 only in the triple sho, but in all districts in rural Japan, were days of gathering and 
 diversion that played an important part in the social life of the people. 
 
 There were, in accordance with the custom of the time, public bathhouses. They 
 are seen as early as 1271. Koya, I, 506, VII, 194. 
 
 See Ki, I, 784-786, 823-827, 846-865. 
 
 19 Of the Osa (or Naga?) family, who claimed relation to the great Taira clan. 
 See Ki, V, 243. Members of this family are seen among chief residents and officers 
 of the sho, at least till the early fourteenth century. Koya, VII, 197, 229, 233, 237- 
 240, etc. 
 
 80 Ki, V, 243. Also Koya, VII, 229. 
 
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 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 81 Koya, VII, 230. 
 
 22 All these conditions are explicitly stated in the ex-Emperor’s charter establishing the 
 sho in 1143 ; Koya, VII, 229-232. This is one of the most complete specimens of char- 
 ters of this class. 
 
 23 The titles ry5-ke and adzukari-dakoro are explicit in the charter, hut that of hon-sho 
 
 Is inferential. « 
 
 24 Koya, VIII, 384. 
 
 26 In 1164, 1177, 1179, etc., Koya, VII, 179, 232, 235-236, etc. 
 
 20 Probably also by applying to this commended shd the example of the granted Mando- 
 koro sho, over whose men Koya had been exercising a direct control. See Koya, II, 
 546-558, VII, 266-268. 
 
 27 Koya, VII, 178. 
 
 28 In 1175, to the monastery on Mount Yoshino, Koya, VII, 234, a good example of a 
 letter of commendation. Yoshino did not succeed in tightening its hold upon the sho, 
 and its influence was in the course of a few years completely overshadowed by that 
 of Koya. 
 
 29 This is inferred from documents about 1176 and of 1199. Koya, I, 581, VII, 236— 
 237. The letter of commendation has not been preserved. 
 
 80 See Note 19, above. 
 
 31 Ki, V. 124, 128, 135 (cited in a document of 1333) ; Adzuma-kagami, bk. 7, edition 
 Kikkawa, I, 161 ; Koya, I, 369, VII, 181-182, VIII, 23-24. 
 
 82 In 1184, Adzuma-kagami, bk. 3, edition Kikkawa, I, 90-91 ; Koya, I, 449. 
 
 33 The sole evidence for these claims that Koya could advance was an account of the 
 founding of the monastery and instructions to the disciples said to be autographic com- 
 pilations made in 834 by the founder, Kobo (Ki, V, 113-115 ; K6-b§ dai-shi zen-shu, I, 
 769—780), but their authenticity, though not the veracity of Kobo, was questioned even 
 by the pious imperial court, in 1219 and 1334 (see Ki, V, 46, 136). The very improbabil- 
 ity of some of the place names and of the stories of the deity and the Emperor Ojin is 
 apparent. The documents of 740 and 816, that are often adduced to support the claims, 
 exist only in alleged citations in the account of 834, referred to above. If the official 
 grant of 816 were genuine, the possessions of Koya in 876 could not be so small as they 
 were (see Note 14, above) ; nor could the monastery so completely forget, as it did, its 
 claims till the latter part of the twelfth century. See next note. 
 
 34 1 have not yet discovered any authentic document earlier than 1177 (Koya, VII, 
 178) in which Koya appealed to its “ ancient domain.” The one dated early in 1048 
 (Ki, V, 269) I regard as spurious. From the end of the twelfth century, however, appeals 
 are common (e. g., in 1199: Koya, VII, 236; in 1218: Ki, V, 119; etc.). Between 1331 
 and 1354 Koya’s title over it was repeatedly confirmed by the civil and feudal govern- 
 ments (ibid., 136-140) ; in 1584, by the suzerain Hideyoshi (ibid., 146). 
 
 35 Documents of 1199, Koya, VII, 236-240 ; of 1221, ibid., I, 292 ; Ki, V, 128 ; and of 
 1280, Koya, VII, 259. 
 
 36 A list in 1285 of the districts included in the “ ancient domain ” gives 34, of which 
 the triple sho is counted as three. Ki, V, 130-131. 
 
 37 Koya, VIII, 393-396 ; Ki, V, 119. 
 
 88 Direct control over a piece of land was designated as ichi-yen chi-gyo (i. e., complete 
 control). This has been erroneously identified by some Japanese scholars with the 
 possession of shita-ji (i. e., the soil). The latter was the actual use and enjoyment of 
 soil, while the former apparently meant a complete right over the dues from the land, 
 which was used by the tenants paying the dues ; this point is inferred from the fact that 
 a grant in 1270 of a half of an ichi-yen chi-gyo in the triple sho was in reality a cession 
 of one-half of the taxes of the district. Koya, VII, 198, 259 ; cf. 246, 253, VIII, 
 128,130. 
 
 89 To cite instances only within the triple sho. An entire mura in Makuni, which had 
 not been commended, was given in fief by Koya to a body of religious servants, Koya, I, 
 501. Ogawa and Saime mura were considered as “ land of ichi-yen chi-gyo ” by Koya 
 (Ki, V, 48) ; it commanded their inhabitants to swear fealty to itself (Koya, VII, 185), 
 and allowed monastic servants to settle here, who were naturally under its direct con- 
 trol. Ibid., VII, 247. 
 
 40 Despite the transfer of the title sometime before 1183 to the abbot of the Takawo 
 monastery, and despite the lapse of the title in 1199 occasioned by his fall. Ki, V, 124 ; 
 Koya, VII, 236. 
 
 41 Residents of the sh5 so styled Koya in 1199. Koya, VII, 236. In 1221, the fallen 
 ex-emperor’s family exercised a shadowy control over the use of the income of the sho 
 (ibid., I, 294; VIII, 387), but even that soon passed away. In fact, in the same year, 
 the monastic lordship of the sho was recognized by the imperial government. Ibid., I, 
 29L 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN, 
 
 331 
 
 43 An imperial order of 1221 and a feudal order of 1227. Koya, I, 291-292, 295; 
 
 VII, 253. 
 
 43 The immunity from the visitation of feudal stewards (ji-to) was claimed and granted 
 in 1228 for the triple sho, as for other sh6 of Koya. Koya, VII, 181-182, 253. In 1271 
 officers of the same sho were made to swear, among other things, that they would, as 
 in other monastic sho, resist the intrusion of the military constable’s (shu-go) agents. 
 Ibid., I, 507. When the shu-go demanded the delivery of incendiaries resident in 
 Makuni, the order was not complied with. Ibid., VII, 224. 
 
 44 The date of the commendation of Sarukawa can not be determined. See the next 
 note. 
 
 45 Although the term “ triple sh5 ” (san ga sho) is not met with in the documents 
 before 1276 (Koya, VII, 187-192), the reality of the grouping of the three sho as a 
 composite one may be traced back at least to 1254. Ibid., I, 217-220 ; VI, 308-309. 
 Later use of the term is common (e. g., 1425; ibid., IV, 445). 
 
 As a matter of fact, the word sho is often used carelessly even for parts of regular 
 sho, a fact that betrays the private origin of this institution ; e. g., Ishibashiri mura, 
 which appears in 1294 as a sho (ibid., IV, 636), and again a mura in 1303 (VII, 254), 
 and Ogawa and Saime mura, called a sho in 1333 (VII, 246, 253) ; the latter becomes 
 a real sho only later in the 14th century (I, 410). 
 
 48 In 947 by a Kunimagi Ki, I, 863. 
 
 47 There is a letter of conveyance from father to son, dated 1025. Ki, I, 863. The 
 Kunimagi appear in the triple sho among its chief holders till the end of twelfth cen- 
 tury. Koya, VII, 233, 238-239. The Sarukawa family, whose names occur as com- 
 mendors as late as the fourteenth century, may be of the same blood. Koya, II, 226 ; 
 
 VIII, 483. 
 
 48 The personal names of those landholders in the middle of the twelfth century who had 
 not assumed Buddhist names (Koya, III, 366-386) betray the gentility of their owners. 
 When their family names, too, are given, the aristocratic origin of many of them 
 is unmistakable. Ibid., I, 217-220 ; VI, 308-309 ; VII, 233, 237-240 ; Ki, V, 43. A list 
 of 1185 for Mandokoro sho gives 288 names, of which 94 bore Buddhist names and 194 
 belonged to 53 families, including the most illustrious in history. Koya, II, 547-559. 
 The presence in the triple sho of some of these families may be. traced for centuries ; 
 some in the thirteenth century had so far identified their interest with the districts in 
 which they lived as to have taken the names of the latter as names of their own branches 
 of the larger families. E. g., ibid., I, 220 ; II, 226 ; III, 538-539, etc. 
 
 It is quite likely that the practice which became notable in later ages among local 
 warriors of assuming noble descent on slight or no grounds may already have begun 
 in this period. It would, however, be strange if many of the claims for high birth were 
 not still well founded, for older official records abound with instances of persons of im- 
 perial or noble ancestry who had settled in the provinces. As a matter of fact, these 
 persons of real or pretended nobility were to be found among chief residents in all parts 
 of Japan, and constituted a main source of the feudal warriors. 
 
 43 Acts of bequeathing “private estates in hereditary succession” (sen-zo so-den no 
 shi-ryo) by these men are frequently met with. Ki, I, 863 ; Koya, III, 556 ; etc. 
 Though usually the holdings, specially of rice land, were small (e. g., in 1218 rice land 
 held by 108 men in Ota sho averaging less than 5 acres, Koya, VIII, 592-597), every 
 list contains larger holders ; in 1164 the largest among the 46 men that are mentioned 
 being 45 acres of mulberry fields in 46 plots, and in 1218 a tenant of 41 acres of rice 
 fields being first among 108 holders. Ibid., and III, 366-386. About 1090 a resident 
 of Mandokoro controlled some 250 acres (VII, 267), probably inclusive of uncultivated 
 land. It would be impossible, as said a proprietor in 1064, properly to manage a large 
 holding, when it was in actual possession, without dependent laborers ; he would rather 
 commend it to a seignior (Iwashimidzu mon-zho, I, 299). Cf. Note 116 below. 
 
 60 Most of the men, including even the secular shavelings (nyu-do) that are re- 
 ferred to in note 48 above, seem at least to have been capable of bearing arms, and 
 the dependent folk suggested in note 49 were in times of need followers in arms (e. g., 
 Koya, I, 501-502; III, 660; IV, 636). The general social unrest of the period had 
 made this condition natural. These men were as much to be feared as occasional 
 disturbers of peace, in frequent .collusion with lawless elements in neighboring sho 
 (I, 291; IV, 657; V, 464; VII, 184-186; etc.), as they were to be relied upon by 
 the monastic seignior as the bulwark of the sho against uprising or invasion (II, 546). 
 See also note 57 below. 
 
 61 About 1269 two Miyayoshi brothers, presumably of the triple sho, whose titles 
 Indicate that they had been guardsmen at Kyoto, led an invasion into a Koya estate 
 in the interest of another religious seignior, and went to the capital in order to appeal 
 for aid to their powerful acquaintances there. Koya, IV, 657 ; VII, 185. About the 
 same time a Fujiwara. residing in Makuni, at the request of officers of the sho, car- 
 
332 
 
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 ried out with success a difficult litigation at Kyoto with the imperial and feudal 
 authorities. VII, 250-251, 254-255. These instances may be multiplied. 
 
 62 It has been shown in the text how our very sho originated in a commendation 
 in 1143, made by an owner who thenceforth reserved for his family the hereditary 
 right of possession and management, and with what little scruple his descendants 
 commended similar rights of the same land to others. A commendation of 1325 by a 
 priest in the remote Awa is typical : A piece of land situated in Makuni itself, that 
 is, part of the triple sho of which Koya had long been seignior, had been bought by 
 this stranger, and what he now gave up to the monastery was in reality a half of 
 his income from the land. Koya, I, 192-193. The possessor of another estate in the 
 same Makuni commended it to a Shinto temple which was, it is true, allied with the 
 monastery; here too, merely an interest was yielded, while the soil itself was passed 
 from father to son in the commendor’s family and even sold to others. Ill, 556; 
 VII, 183. Such were usual processes with commended lands. 
 
 Sales, especially sales “for all time” (yei-dai or yei-nen), usually involved actual 
 conveyances of the use of the soil, but it is doubtful whether this was true in all 
 cases ; at least it is a plain fact that sometimes certain rights or interests were ex- 
 plicitly reserved by the seller. Ill, 543, 608, 610. 
 
 63 It may be readily inferred that there could exist no piece of land in any sho that 
 was not thus encumbered ; and the encumbrances were often many, and usually much 
 varied in the same district. Of this variety, one immediate cause was the custom 
 which was increasingly prevalent of assigning definite pieces for the maintenance of 
 individual officials, Koya priests, and religious houses and services. For the twelfth 
 century, Koya, V, 651, 655 ; VIII, 409-414 ; for the thirteenth, ibid., IV, 352-356. 
 
 That conveyances necessarily carried these encumbrances needs no explanation. In- 
 stances are too many to be cited, e. g., ibid., VII, 235, 183 ; VI, 324, and III, 447, 
 500 ; VI, 283, etc. These accompanying conditions naturally affected the price of 
 land. E. g., the last references in note 52 show how the price of the same piece 
 changed as its conditions altered. 
 
 54 That ju-nin and hyaku-sho were once practically identical may be gathered by 
 comparing documents of 1164 and 1199 (Koya, VII, 233, 237-240), both giving the 
 names of chief residents of Kono. (Cf. the list of hyaku-sh6 in Mandokoro sho in 
 1185 ; ibid., II, 547-559.) The word yo-nin (chief men) appears in a Mandokoro 
 document of 1125 (ibid., VII, 267) ; still earlier, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, 
 the word yoriuto (settlers) is used interchangeably with ju-nin (Iwashimidzu mon- 
 zho, I, 270-299, etc.). Ju-nin (residents) is a word continually used in the feudal 
 ages for warriors established in rural districts. As for the word hyaku-sh5, its import- 
 ant history will be discussed later in this paper. 
 
 The word ji-shu (landholder), which later is pronounced ju-nushi, is often met 
 with (e. g., Ki, I, 863). The history of this term will also receive notice later. 
 
 BB These men could not, of course, have been the only family heads of the sh5, but 
 assuredly were its foremost inhabitants, as may be judged from the interchange- 
 ability that we observe, among other things, of the phrases “ the place [office] of the 
 hyaku-sho ” and “ the house of the sho,” or “ the officials of the sho ” and “ sho 
 officials and hyaku-sho ” and “ administrators of the sho house,” or “ the group- 
 heads and hyaku-sho ” and “ all men of the sh5 ” (e. g., Koya, VII, 183, 184, 186- 
 187, 246). They were also called sho-min (people of the sho). Ibid., VII, 267. 
 
 It was these men upon whom the seignior depended for the rendering of the dues 
 and services of the sho, and whom he persuaded to make oaths of general or fiscal 
 fealty. In the triple sho: in 1164, Koya, VII, 232; in 1199, VII, 236-240; in 1269, 
 IV, 657 ; VII, 184—186. 
 
 * 6 Descendants of the original owner and commendor of the tract which later grew 
 to be the triple sho served as its officers at least till 1291 (Koya, VII, 197), and very 
 likely till much later. Examples of hereditary sho officials among chief residents are 
 frequent in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century (e. g., ibid., I, 217, 219 ; III, 
 659; VI, 308-309; VII, 250-251, 254-255, etc.) ; it is probable that nearly all the respon- 
 sible officials of the sh5 were these residents, and that most of them were hereditary. 
 
 87 The monks of Koya abstained from following the pernicious examples of those of the 
 Hi-ei and Nara monasteries of making armed demonstrations against one another and 
 against the imperial court, and of taking an active part in the more decisive battles of 
 the day. However, even the seclusion of the mountain did not afford it sufficient protec- 
 tion against the general unrest of the age, and the monastery was, despite its pacific 
 professions, often compelled to arm Itself for sheer defense. The guards consisted of 
 warriors supplied by the various sh5 and of the more warlike of the monks themselves. 
 Ki, V, 45, 135-136 ; about weapons of sh6 officials in 1233, see Koya, VIII, 610. 
 
 Once provided, the armed force was prone to abuse; for example, from 1140 till about 
 1175, and again in the next century, there were bloody conflicts between the two factions 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN, 
 
 333 
 
 that had resulted from a schism following the secession of the monk Kaku-ban. Ki, V, 
 40-44. The attempt made in 1228 by the feudal government to disarm the monks (Koya 
 
 I, 657) probably was but a temporary success. As regards the warriors sent from the 
 different sho for the defense of the monastery, it is not possible to learn details of this 
 form of service. 
 
 There is an example of military service under another religious seignior. In 1276, a 
 t family in Kyiishfi whose members held about 80 acres of rice land was able to supply 
 four warriors, two of them mounted, besides three attendants, all equipped. This must 
 have been an unusually strong family, and its service the utmost it could render ; the 
 occasion was during the time of the Mongol invasion. Iwashimidzu mon-zho, II, 190-191. 
 
 The various monastic sho, which were much more exposed than the sacred mountain, 
 v had perforce to be guarded by their chief “ residents ” against internal discord and 
 external aggression. The men swore that they would “ take and hold ” turbulent monks 
 and that “the younger men would beat them back”^(at Mandokoro sho in 1185; Koya, 
 
 II, 546-558) ; that “ if agents of the shu-go [military constable of the province] intruded 
 on the sho, its officials would protect it against them ” (at the triple sho in 1271 ; ibid., 
 I, 507) ; that “ if men of another sho invaded the monastic domain,” “ not only the, offi- 
 cials of the sho, but all men, high and low, would, as soon as they heard of the trouble, 
 vigorously put a stop to it” (same in 1276; ibid., VII, 189). Here again conditions of 
 the military or police service of the residents are as yet obscure. 
 
 Neither the monastery nor its sho, however, owed any service in arms to the feudal 
 authorities, either central or provincial ; and Koya appealed to this exemption whenever 
 its aid was solicited by rivaling political parties. Ki, V, 135. There is reason to sup- 
 pose, however, that In the early feudal period the monastery at times rendered volun- 
 tarily a service which was obligatory upon all feudal lords, namely, of furnishing men as 
 periodic guards of the imperial palace at Kyoto. See the shogun’s order in 1197. Koya, 
 VIII, 23. Nor is it certain whether Koya was not called upon, as was Iwashimidzu 
 (Iwashimidzu mon-zho, II, 148-191), to take part in the defense of Japan during the 
 period of the Mongol invasion in the third quarter of the thirteenth century. 
 
 68 Frequent warlike aggressions came either from men who claimed and would enforce 
 titles to land in the sho (1199; Koya, VII, 236), from agents of neighboring seigniors 
 (about 1186 ; Koya, VII, 146 ; 1218 ; Ki, V, 46 ; about 1215-1258 ; Koya, V, 288-291, 501 ; 
 
 VII, 250, 255; 1269; IV, 657 ; Vlf, 185), from ambitious warriors on their own account 
 (1298 and 1300 ; Ki, V, 49), from feudal provincial authorities (1221 ; Koya, I, 369-370), 
 or from lawless, unattached elements in the surrounding districts that were now culti- 
 vators of soil and then freebooters and mercenaries (1207 ; Adzuma-kagami, bk. 17 ; ed. 
 Kikkawa, II, 29). But for the presence of the last-named factor in various parts of 
 Japan, she could neither have been so readily disturbed nor so simply protected, as the 
 case might be, as she was in this period. 
 
 69 Koya, I, 503-518 ; V, 464-465 ; VII, 187-197, 199-214, 216-223, 225-226, 241-246 ; 
 
 VIII, 121-124, 126-128. 
 
 00 The case of the descendants of the original commendor of Kono-Makuni has been 
 referred to. The post of Ku-mon in Kono was plainly held by men of one family at 
 least between 1256 and 1315 (Koya, I, 509, 518; VII, 197, 223), and probably for a 
 much longer interval. In 1254, the offices of so to-ne in both Kono and Sarukawa were 
 declared to be hereditary possessions of the Taira ; their incumbents, lately dismissed, 
 were now reinstated, for, as said an interesting order from Koya, “ in the custom of all 
 sho, officers invested for successive generations, if they were temporarily removed, owing 
 to an appeal by the residents or an accusation by the Possessor (ryo-ke), were usually 
 restored when they offered a satisfactory explanation.” Koya, VI, 308-309. Both these 
 families had presumably descended from the first commendor. At any rate, the princi- 
 ples of hereditary office holding dated from much earlier than 1254. Cf. Note 66 below. 
 
 81 The ku-mon of Makuni in 1303-1315 was a woman (Koya, I, 518; VII, 254, 256) ; 
 though she was sometimes represented by a masculine deputy, it is not clear whether 
 that was due to her sex, for male sho-officials also used deputies. In this period, even 
 stewards (ji-to) in districts representing the central feudal government were sometimes 
 women. 
 
 There was little difference in the understanding of the time between succession to a 
 right of land and that to an office ; both were regarded as sources of profit, and a woman 
 could inherit an office as naturally as she could a title on land. Ibid., VI, 288 ; VII, 
 184 ; in the former document an eldest daughter, whose name is quite mannish, signs a 
 deed of sale together with her father ; in the latter, Kdya gives an interest in land to 
 a nun. 
 
 82 To ne, ban-gashira, and other responsible residents bearing no titles. Koya, I, 
 509-513; VII, 199-200, 211-214, 225-226; VIII, 121, 123-124, 126-127. 
 
 63 The so tsui-ho shi and ku-mon of each part of the triple sh5. Koya, I, 503-508 ; 
 VII, 187-192. It would be vain to try to translate the titles.- These higher officials, as 
 
334 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 “ men invested in the sho,” had the duties to defend it, to respond to the summons from 
 the seignior (“ if he [the official] himself is afflicted with a grave illness, he should offer 
 a solemn oath and present his son [in his stead] ; if he has no son, then some one like 
 himself”)- One man was a resident in a district, served as so tsui-ho shi in another, 
 and held an office land in a third (I, 509; IV, 633; VII, 192) ; the meaning of this is 
 patent — he is an example of an invested servant. 
 
 64 The oaths of the one class contain the statement which those of the other class do 
 not, that if the official violated some one (in oaths of 1276 and 1315), or any one article 
 (in oaths of 1271, 1291, and 1303) of his agreement, “ his office would be revoked.” 
 When, in 1254, the dismissed so to-ne of Kono and Sarukawa were on f heir prayei 
 reinstated, the monastery improved the opportunity to make each of them swear that 
 “in all things I [he] would obey the command of the monastery,” that “La my [his] 
 management of all affairs, great and small, the interest of the monastery would be my 
 [bis] chief consideration,” and that “ if any of my [his] descendants violated this 
 pledge, he would be totally disabled to hold this office.” Koya, I, 217, 219. 
 
 In this connection I might give a version of the unabridged oath with which the 
 officials, irrespective of the degree of their freedom, concluded their solemn pronounce- 
 ments : “If I fabricate a lie and violate this pledge, divine punishments of Brahma and 
 Indra, the Four Great Heavenly Raja, all the great and small kami of Japan, [the deities 
 of] the four shrines of Amano and their relatives and attendants, Dai-shi and Vajrapffni, 
 and all the deities of the two mandala, will enter through the 84,000 pores of my body, 
 and I shall be in this life afflicted with the grave ills of white leprosy and black leprosy, 
 and in the next life fall into the limitless hell, with no opportunity to issue therefrom. 
 Thus I swear.” 
 
 65 In Adegawa, 1138 and 1193 (Koya, V, 651, 654-656) ; Ota, 1198 (VIII, 590-592) ; 
 Arakawa, 1254 (VII, 117) ; Hamanaka, 1298 (IV, 354) ; Nade, 1271 (III, 438) ; etc. 
 For the triple sho : The ku-mon of Ishibashiri, in 1263 (VII, 186-187) ; so tsui-ho shi 
 of Sarukawa, who lived in Shibame (Saime), and was granted land in Kono (cited in 
 note 63 above) ; to the holders of the same office in 1291 were assigned peasant families 
 (men-ka) whose members they could employ and who probably paid them dues (VII, 
 193-197) ; these officers seem to have held land (article 18) which probably accompanied 
 their post. 
 
 It may at the same time be taken for granted that there still were some sho officers 
 who received no special compensation in land or rice, but in their direct contact with 
 the taxpayers had sufficient opportunities to reward their service. The intend ants in 
 French manors are said to have been farmers and received no remuneration from the 
 lord, but had comfortable personal incomes. 
 
 ca Having been freed of the Possessor (ry5-ke) of the double sho in 1221 and of its 
 feudal steward (ji-to) in 1227, Koya, at length a seignior of full power, soon found the 
 first opportunity to assert its authority over the sho officials. In 1228, for certain al- 
 leged offenses, Koya without scruple dismissed and banished the powerful ku-mon of 
 Ivono, whose family, as descendants of the original commendor of the sho, had held the 
 post for generations. If the culprit made an effort to return with the aid of great 
 families at Kyoto, his descendants would be “ debarred even unto the seventh genera- 
 tion.” Koya, I, 296 ; VII, 182. It is likely that this man soon repaired his wrongs and 
 was restored to his office. His successor also was in 1254 dismissed and restored. See 
 
 Note 60 above. In each case were both the principles of hereditary office holding and 
 
 of seigniorial authority allowed to prevail through a compromise. 
 
 The banishment and confiscation of a ku-mon of Arakawa in 1293 was the penalty 
 for a specially heinous crime, and there was no compromise (III, 659). Other seigniors 
 may have been more arbitrary. Cf. Iwashimidzu mon-zho, II, 254-256. 
 
 07 In the document of 1228 referred to in the last note are mentioned agents of the 
 
 monastery who held land in the sho. Koya, VII, 181. In 1269 the administrator 
 
 (zassho) of Shishikui sho was a monastic agent and his tenure revocable. Ki, IV, 905. 
 
 63 Among the titles of documents listed in 1246 appear “A table of wet and upland 
 fields of the triple district of Kono, etc.,” and “A map of the sho.” Koya, II, 389-390. 
 These documents might have thrown light on the tenures of that date, but unfortunately 
 they have not been preserved. 
 
 69 Instances of hereditary transmission and of mortgage and sale of lands are too 
 common and numerous in the cartulary to need references. In each case, all documents 
 that had in the past successively established the titles to the given piece of land were 
 handed over by the old holder to the new, so that their number increased as convey- 
 ance was repeated. Cf. Note 79 below. In each case a duplicate of the deed seems 
 to have been presented to the office of the sho, and thence to the monastery, this consti- 
 tuting apparently the only formality that the se.ignior required. There is no evidence of, 
 nor was there yet any reason for, the exaction of a seigniorial relief or droit de muta- 
 tion. Usually the conveyor was the only signer of the deed, but in certain instances a 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN, 
 
 335 
 
 child, usually the eldest, whether son or daughter, signed with the father and some- 
 times the buyer as well. Rarely did officials of the sho affix countersignatures to such 
 documents. Koya, III, 510. 
 
 70 The expulsion of offending landholders and the confiscation of their tenures were 
 not only established in law (as in the oaths of 1271, 1276, and 1291 ; see Note 59 
 above), but actually enforced (e. g., in 1291 Koya, VIII, 122). The offenses stated in 
 
 J the oaths as meriting this penalty were the robbing of the fruit of harvest in another’s 
 land, arbitrary exaction of rice or money from people, and willful confusion of juris- 
 dictions with other seigniories. 
 
 The instances cited above are from the triple sho, and all date from the latter half of 
 the twelfth century. In Mandokoro sho, where, as has been said (Note 17 above), the 
 monastery wielded large powers from relatively early times, confiscations had occurred 
 already in TWO*. Ibid., VII, 267-268. 1 0 ? ° 
 
 71 The confiscated lands at Mandokoro, just referred to in the preceding note, were 
 granted in perpetuity to residents on payment of certain sums. Instances of such pay- 
 ments are rare. A case of a simple grant of dispossessed land occurs in the double sh5 
 in 1260 (Koya, VII, 184) ; another in Nade sho in 1271 (III, 438). As the seignior was 
 eve- n the alert to multiply the more precarious tenures in his domains at. the expense 
 of me freer ones, he as naturally availed himself of confiscations as he also did of 
 abandoned holdings (e. g., in Makuni about 1218, ibid. VII, 180) and of disputed cases 
 that he adjudicated (e. g., in Kono in 1271, ibid., Ill, 583), to create dependent tenants. 
 
 72 Despite the orthodox theories regarding the history of the myo-den (cf., e. g., 
 
 T. Yoshida, Sho-yen sei-do no tai-yo, p. 147), the study of the whole subject needs to 
 be rebuilt upon documents. In the present state of critical knowledge, I hardly dare 
 go beyond the suggestions I offer in notes 73 and 108 below, and must refrain from 
 presuming to answer such questions as follow : What is the institutional difference, 
 as well as relation, between the myo (na) and the azana, both proper names of 
 lands, and what is the origin of each? Why did similar myo suggesting the per- 
 sonal names of noblemen occur in many parts of Japan? Was the my5-den, usually 
 only a few acres in extent, often as large as a sho, and could it as such become a 
 sh5? Can the current theory be verified that the myo in the words dai-my5 (great 
 lords) and sho-my5 (petty lords) was derived from the myo of myo-den? How often 
 was a myo-den an antecedent of mura (rural division) of the Edo period, like Agegai 
 
 4 in Kono? Kono contained, in 1425, at least 11 myo. Koya, IV, 445-446. 
 
 73 The granting of common myo-den in our sho occurs as early as before 1183’ (Koya, 
 
 VI, 300; for the date, compare Ki, V, 124), and continues ever after (e. g., Koya, I, 
 
 218; IV, 632-634). Similar grants to officeholders in the sho and to monks are as 
 often met with from the latter half of the thirteenth century (I, 509 ; III, 652-660 ; 
 
 + IV, 633 ; VII, 186, 192 ; these names to be studied together ; Iwashimidzu mon-zho, 
 
 I, 322-323, 393, 418), as myo-holders (myo-shu) serving in official capacities. Koya, 
 
 IV, 632-634. There had even appeared myo-den bearing official titles, in lieu of per- 
 sonal names, as their designations (Ji-to myo : ibid., VIII, 612-613 ; So tsui-ho shi 
 myo: IV, 632-634; Ku-mon myo: VII, 186-187; etc.). 
 
 Like all holdings (ryo, possession ; chi-gyo, holding) — or at least all those that had 
 originated in private ownership — the myo-den was transmissible by heredity, divisible, 
 and alienable (Koya, III, 540, 543, etc.; IV, 632-634; VII, 187, 250-252), so that the 
 same piece continued to change hands and the memory of the origin of its proper 
 names was often lost. Whether such free conveyance was either allowed or practiced 
 with myo-den attached to officials can not be asserted. 
 
 74 It is true that “ residents ” of sho who had assumed Buddhist names (men called 
 nyu-do) also commended landed interests to Koya (e. g., Koya, II, 226), but more re- 
 markable are commendations made by monks of the monastery (many of whom them- 
 selves had doubtless beeD “residents”) ; some of the interests thus transferred had been 
 held by monks in heredity or master-to-pupil succession (III, 420), some had circulated 
 among monks (V, 487-488), and some had been bought by them with a view to giving 
 them to the monastery (II, 145 ; III, 447, where the commendation was carried out the 
 day after the purchase). A catalogue of the commended pieces in all the Koya sho 
 which seems to have been first compiled about 1333 (VIII, 466-532), though imperfectly 
 preserved, contained more than 400 entries, including a few repetitions ; and a great 
 majority were recent commendations. The history of many of these pieces of land may 
 be partially traced in other documents scattered through the entire cartulary. In one 
 instance, an estate that had been held by a family for five generations was from 1272 
 divided into separate plots, each following an independent course in the next 60 years, 
 and all apparently having been commended to Koya by 1333 (II, 193, 241 ; III, 402, 446, 
 
 500, 539, 583; VIII, 472, 475-476, 500, 528). 
 
 These significant phenomena, it will be readily inferred, reflect the earnest desire of 
 the monastic seignior to see the monks acquire secular holdings and hold them securely 
 
336 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 In their hands pending commendation. When, in 1263, the disputed title to a my5-den in 
 Kono was granted by Koya to a monk, he was made to swear that he, “ as one of the 
 monks of the monastery, would manage the affairs [in the place] exactly as in the other 
 monkish holdings,” and lhat, if he “ ceased to live on the mountain, he would convey the 
 title to one -who lived there, and would not let it fall into the possession of anyone 
 below the mountain or living elsewhere” (I, 218). 
 
 76 Koya, II, 193, 226. “In order to requite the munificence of the High Founder 
 
 [Kobo] and to pray for the bodhi [Buddhist wisdom] of my benefactors.” Ill, 421. “I 
 pray that, for this slight offering, I might in the future reach the court of the reincar- 
 nated Maitreya and serve at the presence of the enlightened Dai-shi [Kobo].” II, 
 193. “ For the deliverance of the late master and parent and for the enlightenment of 
 
 the pupil and child.” II, 241. 
 
 78 As the monastery had a greater insurance of its income from a piece of land when it 
 was in the hands of one of its own monks than when it was held by a sho-resident, one is 
 not surprised to find that Koya encouraged monkish acquisitions by granting them certain 
 exemptions. Koya, Y, 487-488. When the land was commended to Koya, even though 
 the commendation may in most cases only have secured the seigniorial right of Koya of 
 formally investing the successive holders or “ cultivators,” the monastery gained in the 
 increased dependency of the tenures and their added uniformity that resulted. These two 
 points seem clear ; what is not as clear is the advantage derived by the monk by his act 
 of commendation that must have been so great as to make it, as was the case, a universal 
 practice in all the sho of Koya. The supposed reason stated in the text finds confirma- 
 tion in the fact that, in 1286, a commendor reserved in his family the hereditary right 
 of “ cultivatorship.” Koya, III, 410. 
 
 77 It -may well be imagined how strongly the monastery was aided by the ready di- 
 vision and conveyance of landed rights and interests practiced by the ji-sbu, in its 
 eager effort to convert myo-den and other holdings into more dependent tenures (note 
 73) and to induce commendations through monks (notes 74 and 76). 
 
 78 Already for decades the monastery had been harassed by its own unruly inmates 
 and by intruding marauders, when from the end of the thirteenth century the power 
 of the central feudal government waned and the general commotion grew more in- 
 tense throughout Japan. Koya was obliged to guard its sacred grounds with heavier 
 garrisons raised in the sho than ever. One or two references to contemporary docu- 
 ments will reveal the condition without further comment. 
 
 In 1242 the monastery asserted : “ When it is rumored or discovered that a lawless 
 act has been committed by wicked men within these precincts, it has been customary 
 in this monastery from olden times to establish guards and man the various squares 
 and avenues.” Ki, V, 43. Representative monks themselves said in a solemn docu- 
 ment dated 1271 : “ ... It has of late been reported at the various houses [of this 
 monastery] that night attacks, robberies, incendiarisms, and murders have increased 
 
 yearly and been repeated daily, and that gambling has been continual . . .”. Koya, 
 
 I, 482. In 1228 and about 1310 ineffectual efforts were made by the feudal and im- 
 perial governments to interdict warlike behavior of monks. Koya, I, 557 ; Ki, V, 136. 
 There is an order from Koya dated 1307 commanding that officers of a sho should 
 present on appointed dates its full quota of warriors for attendance on the moun- 
 tain, on pain of forfeiting their trust. Koya, VIII, 77-78 ; cf. 184. See note 57 above. 
 
 79 Cf. note 69 above. It is here necessary to cite only notable cases from the 
 
 triple sho. During the 15 years after 1254, a piece of land that had been held by 
 members of the strong Magami family was transferred so often that its conveyance 
 In 1269 was accompaniel by 11 deeds. Koya, VI, 288 ; VII, 183-184. Within 30 
 years after 1303 a rice land with an extent of barely a quarter of an acre changed 
 hands at short intervals and was finally commended to Koya with seven documents. 
 Ill, 540, 543, 608, 610 ; V, 599 ; VIII, 515. 
 
 80 This is another knotty problem which may be solved, if at all, only by the study 
 
 of actual documents of the time. And a part of this important problem is the his- 
 
 torical relation of the agricultural laborers of this period with the numerous do- 
 mestic slaves (shi nu-hl, shi sen) of the earlier ages. As for the hired agricultural 
 laborers after the close of the second feudal period, see note 116 below. 
 
 81 It is altogether likely that in the early lifd of a sh5 the landholder and the 
 
 cultivator were often one and the same person. Compare, for example, the word 
 
 “settlers” (yoriuto), meaning the first inhabitants of a new sho (see note 54 above), 
 that appears in a document of 1072, with the phrase “ to settle and cultivate ” (yori- 
 tsukuru) used in reference to the same place 60 years later (Iwashimldzu mon-zho, 1, 
 827). As a matter of fact, when a sh6 was created around a cultivated area, it was 
 necessary to procure men to settle on the still uncultivated places to develop them. 
 We find from the end of the eighth century that it was the custom of the managers 
 of sho to welcome outlaws to settle (yori-sumu) there, apparently for this very pur 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN, 
 
 337 
 
 pose (Rui-zhu san-dai kyaku, bk. 8, in Koku-shi tai-kei, XII, 708) ; there may have 
 been law-abiding settlers as well. At any rate, we here seem to see the origin of 
 the yoriuto, who in the course of time differentiated into “ landholders ” and “ cul- 
 tivators.” 
 
 It is obvious that the differentiation between the “ landholdership ” and “ cultivator- 
 ship ” as rights (shiki) developed still later, though the manner of this differentia- 
 tion has not yet been investigated. 
 
 82 1123. Imashimidzu mon-zho, I, 343. 
 
 83 Instances of “cultivators ” bearing good family names : Koya, II, 172 ; VIII, 
 483-484. Those mentioned with the honorific title dono (esquire) : V, 487 ; VI, 288. 
 The same “ cultivator ” holding the right in several plots : Koya, V, 48611. ; VIII, 122, 
 409-414, 483-484. The “ cultivators ” who were also “ landholders ” : Inferentially, 
 Koya, I, 218 ; III, 410 ; VIII, 122, 409-414. Clear cases from the next period : Ibid., 
 V, 504-518. 
 
 As will be readily seen, it had resulted from the prevailing fluidity of real rights 
 that the same person held both the “ landholdership ” (ji-shu shiki) and the “ culti- 
 vatorship ” (saku-nin shiki) of a plot of land, or the one right of a plot and the 
 other right of another plot. Logically, also, a tenant of many “ cultivatorships ” 
 might also 'be a “ landholder ” and otherwise be an influential “ resident.” 
 
 “The so-called ge (or shita) saku-nin — did it mean “undercultivator” or “cul- 
 tivator of the shita-ji,” that is, the soil? — did the actual work of tilling (cf. 1263: 
 Koya, I, 218), but it is not clear whether they worked under the ordinary “culti- 
 vators,” and whether the prefix ge (under) had been added because a differentiation had 
 developed between these actual tillers and the holders of “ cultivatorships.” 
 
 81 The sole “ cultivator ” of a district in Yamashiro had, in 1123, “ granted it to his 
 friends” (Iwashimidzu mon-zho, I, 343) ; whatever the terms of the “grants,” the same 
 man probably retained his title of “ cultivator ” and its attendant profit and obligations. 
 I construe in the same light the case of those “ cultivators ” in a Koya sho, in 1273, 
 who had “ sold ” the rights to others, but officially were still titular “ cultivators ” ; the 
 “sales” were private and the buyers were not recognized. Koya, V, 486-487. 
 
 As a result of division and transfer, “ cultivators ” from the latter half of the thir- 
 teenth century not infrequently held saku-shiki in other districts or even sho. Ibid., I, 
 508 ; II, 193 ; V, 513 ; VIII, 470, 526. 
 
 86 A man begged Koya that he be allowed to succeed to the “ nam& land ” that his 
 
 father had held and lost, and that “ people of the sho be made its cultivators ” under 
 him. 1263 : Koya, I, 218. “ Cultivators ” are mentioned under monkish “ landholders.” 
 
 1273 : V, 486-488. Oaths of 1271 (art. 15) and 1291 (art. 33) contain provisions 
 against offensive behavior of the “ cultivator ” toward his master “ landholder.” I, 508 ; 
 VII, 196. It is also remarkable that the “ landholder ” sometimes retained his rights 
 over the cultivatorship of a piece of land whose interest he alienated ; he remained as 
 master over the “cultivator” (II, 186; III, 403, 608-609), deriving a profit from the 
 continued control. 
 
 In 1164 a “ cultivator’s ” right had to be renewed at the change of his master “ land- 
 holder.” Koya, II, 172. Even when the heredity of the right had later become a matter 
 of course, a semblance of its originally precarious character was sometimes retained in 
 formal documents ; in 1237 a former “ landholder ” swears to the buyer of his right : 
 “As regards the cultivatorship [that has been held by Gempachi, a third party], it 
 should without doubt be at your disposal, but I understand that it will, because of my 
 intercession, remain in the same hands for the time being, and that if its holder fails 
 in his duties, you will dispose of it.” Ibid., VII, 240. 
 
 87 The retention of the same “ cultivators ” by “ landholders ” who followed one 
 another by heredity or alienation is common after the middle of the thirteenth century 
 (inferred from cases that occur in Koya, V, 486ff. ; in II, 145; and VIII, 494). Some 
 were called jo saku-nin, “ fixed cultivators ” ; e. g., Gempachi between 1304 and about 
 1333, in ibid., Ill, 540, 543, 608, 610 ; VIII, 515, etc. ; the catalogue of 1333 ( ?) contains 
 many other “fixed” instances (VIII, 466-532). 
 
 That “ cultivators ” were sometimes defiant of their “ landholders ” is reflected in the 
 oaths of officials of the triple sho of 1271 (art. 15) and 1291 (art. 33). Ibid., I, 508; 
 VII, 196. 
 
 88 That “ cultivators ” in this sho were in direct relation of some kind with its officials 
 and seignior over the heads of “ landholders ” is inferred from the following passages. 
 In a document, probably of the late 13th century, occurs this obscure statement : “Any 
 case of an error of [? committed by] ‘ cultivators’ shall be reported [to the monastery] 
 with joint signatures of the myo holders and district chiefs ; if they neglect to do so, 
 they shall pay a sa-da ryo [?“ administration fee”] for the ‘cultivators’” (Koya, IV, 
 634) ; the oath of 1291 by a sho official says, among other things : “ When a ‘ cultivator ’ 
 is guilty of an offense, I will not put up a placard in a monkish estate and cause it 
 
 23318°— 19 -22 
 
338 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 trouble” (VII, 193), and “I will not, in behalf of a ‘cultivator,’ act unreasonably to- 
 ward a ‘landholder’ or myo holder” (VII, 196). In the next period, a direct payment 
 of dues by “cultivators” to monastic agents is evident (VIII, 227). 
 
 When increasing numbers of plots were bought by monks and commended to Koya 
 (see Note 74 above), the “cultivators” of the plots passed naturally into a more direct 
 relation with monastic agents. The catalogue about 1333, mentioned in the same Note, 
 gives the name of the “ cultivator ” for almost every entry it contains. 
 
 89 There is a reference to “ the cultivator’s dues ” as early as 1072 in another seign- 
 iory. (Iwashimidzu mon-zho, I, 298.) In Koya sho the conveyances of landholderships, 
 in 1272 and 1307, by men who reserved to themselves a control of cultivatorships, betray 
 the existence of profits derivable from this control (Koya, III, 403, 608-609), while 
 documents of 1308 and 1317 specifically give the rates of the “ cultivator’s ” dues to 
 the “ landholder.” II, 186 ; VII, 240. 
 
 90 Koya, V, 651-652 ; VII, 280-301 (I presume these names to be those of “ culti- 
 vators ”) ; VIII, 409-414 ; etc. 
 
 From the late 13th century, in defining the boundaries of a plot, the old custom of 
 mentioning geographical features in the four bounding directions (e. g., east, to the river ; 
 west, to the road; south, the district so-and-so; north, hill so-and-so), gave place in 
 an increasing number of cases to a new way, that is, of giving the names of the “ culti- 
 vators ” of the adjoining plots (e g., south, Tomoyoshi’s saku, or “ cultivation ” ; north, 
 Tokugoro’s saku). Koya, III, 500, 539; VI, 288. Rarely do the holders’ names of these 
 plots appear for this purpose. 
 
 91 The list of 1218 may be of “ landholders.” Koya, VIII, 592-597. Those of 1337 
 (VII, 280-302) and 1368 (VIII, 452-455) are doubtful. 
 
 02 Near Kyoto, civil nobles continued to exercise control over their sho at least until 
 the middle of the 14th century (Yen-tai reki, diary of Fujiwara-no-Kimikata ; 1345, 
 the memorial by the governor of Settsu ; Yale ms., V, 132-133). Even here, however, to 
 say nothing of the remoter parts of Japan, it was not long before the military ji-to 
 (stewards) in the sh5 succeeded in defying and completely ignoring the feeble, impover- 
 ished civil hon-ke (lord) and ryo-ke (possessor) at Kyoto; the old sho documents were 
 held in scant respect, for might alone made right. On the other hand, the ji-to owed 
 dues and services to his feudal lord. The private warrior who had first entered the sho 
 under a civil lord in the humble capacity of a manager, had ended in becoming its lord 
 under a military* overlord. 
 
 93 The military shu-go (constable) of the province had obliterated its old civil gover- 
 norship and become its supreme lord ; all the ji-to and other chiefs in the territory he 
 regarded as his vassals. The province had become a domain that comprised fiefs arranged 
 in the descending series of a hierarchical organization. Public functions had become pri- 
 vate possessions, while private rights had been so extended as to coalesce with public offices. 
 
 It is needless to say that all domains were not coextensive with provinces (kuni). A 
 few comprised several kuni each, while the majority were fractions of kuni. The tend- 
 ency with the military domains was in the direction of an amalgamation into fewer and 
 larger domains. 
 
 °* In the first period, the policy of the suzerain seems to have been to keep the domains 
 of his immediate vassals intact by restricting their freedom of sale and mortgage ; there 
 still remained distinctions of tenures among them and among the rear-vassals. During 
 the period of civil war, however, the general tendency was to reduce all military tenures of 
 land to precarious grants in fee. It may be said that the most powerful lords, like the 
 Hojo and the Shimadzu, were those who had best succeeded in enforcing this policy, as it 
 contributed powerfully to the necessary discipline and coherence. This was another 
 result of the same need and the same power that had established the vassal’s duty of 
 primogeniture and the lord’s interference in his marriage and succession. 
 
 96 Cf. T. Yoshia, Sho-yen sei-do no tai-yo, ch. 17. 
 
 98 For a fuller discussion of these points, see my “ Notes on the village government in 
 Japan after 1600 ” in the Journal of the American oriental society, Vol. XXX, pt. 3, and 
 Vol. XXXI, pt. 2, 1910-1911. 
 
 97 In the first feudal period the chief weapons in warfare were the bow and arrow, and 
 combat was individual ; only in close quarters were swordsmanship and wrestling resorted 
 to. At the end of the fourteenth century the sword had largely replaced the bow and 
 arrow as the first arm, and from the sixteenth the spear found favor beside the sword. 
 Each of these successive innovations was accompanied by more organized methods of 
 war, without entirely doing away with displays of individual skill and valor. Gun- 
 powder and a firearm were accidentally brought in by shipwrecked Portuguese about 1543, 
 and their use and manufacture quickly spread over Japan, though they never succeeded in 
 replacing the older weapons, even the bow and arrow. The adoption of the new arms 
 greatly accelerated the progress of organized tactics, under the impact of which petty 
 seigniories were absorbed or crushed out of existence between domains that grew larger 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN, 
 
 339 
 
 and fewer ; and the civil strife became more universal and intense. This was attended 
 by those far-reaching social effects to which I refer in the text. 
 
 98 The theory that the land-holding peasant was not an owner but merely a tenant 
 entitled to the hereditary use of the soil on the condition that he rendered his dues and 
 services to the lord was expressed at the end of the period in such current terms as the 
 peasants’ cbi-gyo and ade-okonai, common expressions for grants in tenure. Iwashi- 
 midzu mon-zho, III, 654, etc. The same idea, as a theory, persisted throughout the 
 third feudal period in some domains. See note 30 in the article referred to in note 96 
 above. 
 
 99 When Hideyoshi made a general cadastral survey of Japan in 1594-1599, he frankly 
 recognized the actual state of things. Note the following instructions issued by his 
 commissioners to their subordinates : “ The right of cultivation over a wet or upland piece 
 of land belongs to him under whose name it was registered during the recent survey. It 
 is forbidden to allow the land to be taken by another person, or to take another person’s 
 land under the pretext that one has once had the right of its cultivation.” “ It is 
 strictly forbidden to give to the lord any of the cultivated lands recorded in the register.” 
 (Both quoted in T. Yoshida, Dai Ni-hon chi-mei zhi-sho, introduction, p. 94.) In these 
 words are plainly implied the facts that the peasant had gathered in his hands the inter- 
 ests in his holding that had been split, and that he had established a practical ownership 
 .o' the holding. During the next period, therefore, the sale or other act of alienating 
 land meant a downright conveyance of the complete use of the land, and rarely again a 
 fraction of interest. 
 
 i°o Encroachments upon Koya sho were continual throughout the period (Ki, V, 136- 
 140), and some districts were temporarily absorbed into military fiefs (Koya, I, 554). 
 The monastery was compelled repeatedly to seek imperial and feudal edicts recognizing 
 its inviolable rights in its domains (Ki, V, 142-143). These continual turmoils retarded 
 the economic and financial life of some sho. Note large decreases in tilled areas and 
 proceeds from them in later years, in Koya, VI, 568-591 ; VII, 5-14, 24, 27-34, 46-53, 
 55-57, 62-66, 69-95, 101-111. 
 
 101 It seems that till 1584 the monastery strongly guarded the seven passes of the 
 mountain. Ki, V, 148. For general service the various sho owed to the monastery the 
 duty of sending up armed contingents. Koya, VIII, 183-184. There is an imperial 
 mandate to Koya dated 1463, ordering that a body of monastic troops should serve under 
 the command of a feudal lord in an expedition against a rebel (III, 34) ; such cases of 
 external military service for men of Koya domains are extremely rare, and only serve 
 to indicate the armed strength that the monastery could command. And it is not sur- 
 prising to find that, in this age of anarchy, lawless warriors in some sho "attempted 
 aggressions upon surrounding countries. Ki, V, 145-146. 
 
 102 About 1580 Koya is said to have controlled 2,063 mura, or peasant communities, 
 aggregating an annual yield equivalent to 173,000 koku, or 865,000 bushels of hulled 
 rice (Ki, V, 146), and to have comprised within the precincts on the mountain more 
 than 7,700 buildings. However that may be, the fact that the proprietary power of Koya 
 was the greatest when it was the most exposed to aggression bespoke its ability to take 
 care of its own interest. 
 
 103 In 1581 Koya. defied Nobunaga after he had razed to the ground the powerful 
 monastery on Mount Hi-ei, killed his envoys, gave battle to his expeditionary army, 
 and, though it lost more than 1,300 monkish warriors, succeeded in repelling the invaders. 
 Ki, V, 145-146, etc. Documents of that time reveal that Koya’s influence was felt even 
 beyond its domains, and it commanded the service not only of local chiefs and their 
 followers, but also of four large bodies of religious men in the province of Kii who were 
 readily convertible into troops. Ibid., Ill, supplement, 187-188. 
 
 1M Officials in the Kdya sh5, including those in direct contact with the peasants, were 
 obviously treated by the monastery as its employees, whose service was rewarded with 
 rice or land. Koya, IV, 154-157 ; VII, 247 ; VIII, 461. They were consequently all 
 dependent on the seignior for their positions. In 1422 Koya summoned all officials, 
 squires, and chief peasants, on pain of punishment, to attend in person on the monastery 
 for an important conference (VIII, 237) ; previously, in 1367, the monastic council had 
 decreed that “ officials of all sho ” who did not respond to a summons would be dismissed 
 and never reinstated (VIII, 330). 
 
 Such probably was a universal tendency in Japan, perhaps more advanced in military 
 fiefs than in religious domains ; in some of the latter the higher agents in sho had even 
 ceased to be hereditary, but had merely farmed out certain fiscal rights for terms of 
 years. Cf. Iwashimidzu mon-zho, I, 455—459, 469-470 ; III, 403-404, etc. The process 
 whereby the seignior had gradually succeeded in replacing representative residents with 
 paid or farmed-out appointees as sho officials is well reflected in a feudal order of a late 
 date, which stated that “ in those places where the people owed various services [to 
 the officials], their control should be assumed by the monastery as soon as vacancies 
 
340 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 occurred” (ibid., Ill, 182) ; these posts then could be given or farmed out to others on 
 more precarious tenures than before. 
 
 105 Towards 1600 thefe reappeared in many parts of Japan rural officials who were 
 in various ways selected from among the peasants and represented their interest (e. g., 
 Koya, III, 135 ; about 1599) ; this is one of the most significant phenomena of the 
 last part of the second feudal period. The one thing that characterized these peasant 
 agents, wherever they appeared, was the greater responsibility imposed upon them 
 for the obedience and the good conduct of the peasants than the merely employed 
 agents had assumed or could have been expected to assume. I think the meaning of 
 this is patent : The peasantry was unarmed and therefore physically weaker than in 
 the earlier times, but was higher in proprietary status and politically freer ; no lord 
 or seignior could be a successful ruler in that age of competition who failed to enlist 
 the good-will of the people who were at the foundation of the economic life of society; 
 the consideration of the interest of the peasantry thus became an essential art of 
 feudal statesmanship. And it was a most delicate human art ; it had been studied, 
 discussed, and practised in China during the centuries of her long history as an agri- 
 cultural state. The chief principles underlying the art, as it was evolved in China, 
 and in Japan after the sixteenth century, would seem to have been : Paternal care by the 
 lord for the peasant nature and peasant interest, and a large degree of responsibility 
 for order and good behavior imposed upon the peasants themselves. Official pater- 
 nalism and peasant responsibility were the very texture that made the elaborate fabric of 
 village government under the Tokugawa in the third feudal period. The importance of 
 the peasant agent as the medium between ruler and ruled is obvious. Cf. Note 96 above. 
 
 Peasant agents were usually known as sho-ya or na-nushi. The origin of the 
 
 latter term will be referred to in Note 108 below. Sho-ya, like sh6-ka (both meaning 
 “ sho-house ” ; see Note 18 above), was first used as early as 1293 (when the pro- 
 nunciation was perhaps sho-oku for the later sho-ya), to designate the house in which 
 were the offices of the sho-agents (Koya, III, 660) ; both terms also applied to the 
 officials themselves in general. Now, sho-ya stood for representatives of peasants, and 
 long survived the institution of sh5. 
 
 106 Late in the fourteenth century two vassals of the lord of the province of 
 
 Kii took Sarukawa, and K6ya thought it expedient to treat them as its officials till 
 the lord was changed. Koya, I, 554. The monks made a general statement in 1403 
 of similar conditions that occurred in other places, in these terms : “ The domains 
 of this monastery . . . were formerly managed by sho-officials and people under the 
 direct control of the monastery, and the civil and military governors of the province 
 did not interfere. When changes occurred in monastic domains, however, the military 
 
 governor’s vassals encroached upon them, pretending that some were grants [from 
 
 the monastery] and others vacancies . . . ”. Ibid., IV, 38. 
 
 m The Tajiri, from Chikugo, and the Kono, from Iyo, who in the sixteenth century 
 migrated into the triple sho, appropriated land, and made themselves lords, are seen 
 toward the end of the second period merely as district officials capable of armed 
 service, recompensed with money and exemptions from forced labor, not with fiefs. 
 Ki, I, 848 ; III, supp. 187, 189. 
 
 108 As has already been said (in Notes 72 and 73 above), sales and transfers of “ name- 
 lands ” are common in the Koya cartulary. What resulted from the frequent convey- 
 ance of lands of this variety, however, seems somewhat more easily traceable in do- 
 mains of Iwashimidzu than in those of Koya, though I presume the process must have 
 been similar in both. 
 
 1. In many instances the obvious trend during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was 
 the gradual replacing of the few large holders of “ name-lands ” by many small holders ; 
 a myo, for example, which once formed a part of one man’s holding was in less than 
 a century split among several myo-shu (e. g., Iwashimidzu mon-zho, I, 478-482 ; II, 
 259, 269). The result was that myo-holders were no more than chief peasants of the 
 community. Cf. ibid., Ill, 389, 420. 
 
 2. In the course of transferring titles of “ name-lands,” they not infrequently were 
 placed in the hands of the seignior or his agent (ibid., I, 507) ; in the Koya domains, 
 as it will be remembered (see Note 74 above), this process had been actively carried on 
 through monks. It was then natural that “ name-lands ” should lose all memory of 
 their origins, and be freely disposed of by the seignior ; and that some of them should 
 be regarded as appanages to certain offices in sho the tenure of which was accompanied 
 with grants of these lands. Cf. ibid., 441-442. 
 
 3. The next development was that the title na-nushi (the new reading of the two 
 characters once pronounced myo-shu), having been identified with principal peasants 
 and minor officials, was now used regularly, in an identical sense with the term sho-ya 
 explained in Note 105 above, for designating the representative chief of the peasant 
 community, quite irrespectively of the nature of his landholding. In fact, most na- 
 nushi held no “ name-lands.” 
 
LIFE OF A MONASTIC SHO IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN, 
 
 341 
 
 The course of this evolution of the “ name ” outlined above is indicative of the im- 
 portant general developments that were taking place among the peasantry. 
 
 loo The literal meaning of hyaku-sho (Chinese, po-sing) is “one hundred family 
 names.” It originated in China, where it generally meant the subjects of the State 
 who bore the burden of taxation. This central meaning has been the same in Japan 
 as in China, but there are two conditions which should be noted if one would clearly 
 understand the word as used in Japanese history. In China, the number of family or 
 clan names has seldom exceeded a few hundreds ; in Japan, on the contrary, family 
 names had indefinitely multiplied as old families branched out and scattered, until, to 
 make the confusion worse confounded, the very people who were called hyaku-sho in the 
 last feudal period were not permitted to bear family names (sho) at all. Again, in 
 China, the po-sing have in the past ages shown a remarkable stability as social classes, 
 while in Japan the conditions of the taxable classes had undergone important changes 
 before the close of the feudal periods, both in their social character and in their rela- 
 tion to other classes. Many a scholar has misled himself by facitly assuming that the 
 term has always meant the tax-paying peasants in rural communities ; this was, in 
 fact, its meaning only in the last feudal period, when peasants bore no family names. 
 Reflection should show that the term could be applied to them in such condition only 
 because It had come down from an earlier age when it was first adopted from China 
 and really designated taxable people bearing the comparatively few family names then 
 in existence. The borrowed term was germane to the real condition in the seventh cen- 
 tury, but an incongruous survival a thousand years later. 
 
 That this was the meaning of the term after the reforms of the seventh century 
 is clear in the annals and laws of the period. The term was nearly identical with ryo- 
 min, free people, as distinguished from the sen min, unfree. The latter seems to have 
 been a fairly large class, and the former smaller in proportion than the hyaku-sho in 1600. 
 
 111 See Notes 47-56 above. 
 
 112 This was a universal phenomenon. A single illustration from a Koya domain will 
 suffice : In Shibuta sho, about 1422, besides hayku-shfi, administrative officials (sa-da 
 nin), and servants (shimobe), there were some men collectively called tono-bara (squires) 
 who bore family names and boasted that they had never been subjected to menial service. 
 Koya, VIII, 224, 233, 235. Note the distinct differentiation between the tono-bara and 
 the Hyaku-shS. The monastery was determined to subject both to forced labor and gen- 
 erally to bend them all to its will. Ibid., 224 ff. 
 
 This is a transitional state of things. A more advanced picture is revealed in a domain 
 under Iwashimidzu ; its hyaku-sh5, in the middle of the seventeenth century, still con- 
 tained men bearing family names, but these were hereditary servitors of a Shinto institu- 
 tion and therefore more or less genteel ; some 20 years later the hyaku-sho are seen to be 
 a body of meek, unresisting peasants ; and thenceforth men with family names were seldom 
 mentioned among them. Iwashimidzu mon-zho, III, 550-565, 581-598, 623-626, 637-639. 
 
 The term ji ge nin (men working the soil), which was common at least from the 
 latter part of the fourteenth century (ibid., I, 469, 455, etc.), perhaps at first implied a 
 lower status than the term hyaku-sho, but about 1600 the two had become identical 
 (e. g., ibid.. Ill, 654, 663-664; Koya, III, 82). The Ji ge nin probably had not changed, 
 but the hyaku-sho had gradually come round to his position. 
 
 As the hyaku-sho had become Incapable of defending themselves, the old policy of the 
 seignior to insure the security of their lives and property (e. g., Koya, I, 217-220, VI, 
 308-309, and the oaths referred to in note 59 above), received added emphasis and was 
 made an article in the political creed of the administrator, not only in the Koya sho but 
 in the feudal Japan at large. 
 
 m The tenant farmers in the late second and during the whole of the third feudal 
 period in Japan could not have formed a large class, for the strong reason, among others, 
 that the small margin of profit which was left to the landlord between the economic rent 
 he could receive and the heavy land tax he ‘had to pay effectively precluded the growth 
 of extensive tenant farming. 
 
 114 For the conditon of the tenant farmers in Japan after 1600, I refer to my “ Notes ” 
 (15 and 37) in the Journal of the American oriental society, Vol. XXX, pt. 2. 
 
 116 It was natural that from the beginning of the feudal period there were among the 
 hyaku-sho small peasants who were too poor to provide themselves with arms, and were 
 compelled to flee before an invading warrior or an arbitrary tax collector (e. g., Koya, 
 VII, 180, 236) ; but large armed “ landholders ” were also among hyaku-sho. The early 
 condition of “ cultivators ” was also varied and the variety increased for a time. I take 
 it that the rural classes in France had also been complex before they were settled as 
 serfs and villains. 
 
 u# The hired agricultural laborers (saku-otoko, cultivating men) were attached to 
 families, not to land, usually for limited terms, though sometimes for generations. They 
 neither possessed nor rented pieces of land for their own exploitation, but it wa»i not 
 
342 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 unusual after 1600 to see a thrifty saku-otoko buy or rent land with his savings and start 
 his career as a tenant or an independent peasant. These laborers could not properly be 
 called serfs, for they had no assigned holdings, owed no dues or fixed forced labor, but on 
 the contrary worked for wages or other forms of remuneration, and were unrestricted in 
 marriage and succession, and in the acquisition and disposal of poperty ; nor was it cus- 
 tomary to transfer them with the land on which they had worked for their employers. 
 They were domestic hired men, no more nor less. 
 
 They formed a necessary institution in Japanese agriculture, for the reason that there 
 was a narrow limit to the working capacity of a peasant in his intensive rice-culture. 
 
 Since peasant holdings were small and distributed without extreme inequalities, the 
 
 average number of men hired in a peasant family was probably one or two, making their 
 presence unobtrusive though universal. See also notes 7 and 49, above. 
 
 117 It is needless to say that this process had been gradual in the second period ; in 
 some parts of Japan the evolution may not have been completed for some time after 
 
 1600, whereas in others it was in evidence so early as the middle of the fourteenth 
 
 century (e. g., see the memorial of the governor of Settsu in 1345, in Yen-tai reki, 
 diary of Fujiwara-no-Kimikata ; Yale ms., V, 133, 135), if not still earlier. See notes 
 90 and 91 above and text. Generally speaking, from the fifteenth century it becomes 
 more and more difficult to distinguish between “ landholders ” and “ cultivators ” in 
 lists of men in Koya sho (Koya, Y, 356-389 ; VIII, 452—455 ; Iwashimidzu mon-zho, II, 
 264) ; toward the end of the sixteenth, the distinction had largely vanished (Iwashi- 
 midzu, III, 426—515) ; then the term saku-shiki (right of cultivation), which had 
 formerly meant the right of “ cultivatorship ” (saku-nin shiki), had come to mean 
 the right of exploiting the soil, and no longer indicated a “ cultivator ” as its sub- 
 ject ; one who had the new saku-shiki was the very holder of the land, ji-nushi (ibid.. 
 Ill, 629-630). See also a document of 1391, in Ko mon-zho rui-san, 3d. ed. 225. 
 Compare the instructions of Hideyoshi’s agents quoted in note 99 above. 
 
 n8 That Koya domains had partially and temporarily been taken by warriors was 
 shown in notes 106 and 107 above. During the sixteenth century parts of religious 
 domains were treated by the feudal lords in whose jurisdictions they happened to be 
 situated as if they were fiefs granted by them to K5ya (Koya, V, 636) or Iwashimidzu 
 (Iwashimidzu mon-zho, III, 33, 386, 658) ; but neither institution had been com- 
 pelled to submit itself to the position of receiving all its domains in fief from a lord 
 or suzerain till the time of Hideyoshi late in the century. 
 
 119 The word han (Chinese, fan), meaning “fence,” “boundary,” “frontier,” and, 
 hence, “ march,” as well as “ protective barrier,” also designated in China large sections 
 of the empire charged to the administration of great princes. The Tokugawa suzerain 
 adopted the term for the domains that he assigned in fief to his barons. The han was, 
 therefore, primarily territorial in its signification, and the principles that ruled its 
 social organization were essentially feudal. No real tie of blood relationship bound to- 
 gether the entire population of a han. It is unfortunate that both native and foreign 
 writers in English on feudal Japan continue to translate the term as “ clan.” The error 
 is, historically and sociologically, too gross to be tolerated. 
 
 120 Hideyoshi tamed the proud monastery with the irresistible art of a great despot. 
 In 1584—1586 he first peremptorily ordered Koya to surrender all arms and all the land 
 it had taken beyond the limits of its “ ancient domain ” ; when the monastery seem- 
 ingly complied with his will, he gave back the bulk of the land just revoked, and guar- 
 anteed an armed protection of the mountain. Koya, II, 602-606, III, 64-65, 679-680. 
 When later he decreed a general survey of land to be made in all Japan, and Koya 
 pleaded the inviolability of its domains against official intrusion, Hideyoshi summarily 
 confiscated them all, made a complete survey of them — when he was astonished to find 
 that Koya had been holding large undeclared possessions besides its “ ancient domain ” — 
 and then gave back in fief definite portions of the “ ancient domain ” that represented 
 an annual productive power of 21,000 koku Of hulled rice in all, and otherwise showered 
 favors upon the subdued monastery. Ibid., II. 607-609, 622-623 ; Y, 645-646. This 
 was substantially the same domain the grant of which was renewed to Koya in 1600 
 by Tokugawa Iyeyasu ; it was but a fraction of the vast possessions Koya could boast 
 at the height of its power about 1580. 
 
 121 The monastic domains, not being military, were not called han, but were referred 
 to as zhi-ryo or san-ryo (domains of the monastery, of the mountain). 
 
 122 The investiture of the entire domains as fief was begun by Hideyoshi in 1590 and 
 1592. Koya. V, 644-G46. All fiefs, feudal and religious, received a renewed investiture 
 from the hands of each new Tokugawa suzerain ; samples of the letters of investiture 
 of the domains of Iwashimidzu by the suzerains between 1600 and 1860 are given in 
 Iwashimidzu mon-zho, III, 660-672. 
 
 123 For a description of these mura about 1830, see Ki, I, 784-786, 823-827, 841-859, 
 861-865. 
 


 
 
 
 
 
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