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SHOGUN, SHUGO, PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION 199

tary law, issued in 1337, shows that the bakufu's principal concern was

to recall the previously awarded "temporary" tax powers to protect the

interests of the most highly placed noble and priestly proprietors. It

demanded that lands held by shugo and other military officers for

commissariat support "be immediately returned to the estate agents of

the civil proprietors."

A directive issued in 1338 accused the

shugo

abusing this privilege, by taking permanent possession of lands occu-

pied for military support and even distributing them among their own

retainers. The bakufu was clearly in a bind. Its primary interest in the

provinces was to build up the strength of its shugo; yet it could not

deny entirely the interests of the capital nobility and priesthood.

In 1352, in Supplementary Article 56, the bakufu began to protect

certain limited and specified proprietary interests.

The bakufu order

of 1368 singled out for protection "properties of the emperors and

empresses, of fully protected shrines and temples, and the hereditary

properties of the Fujiwara regents." Moreover, those parts of the es-

tates to which jito rights (shiki) had been awarded to the civil propri-

etor by the bakufu were to remain protected.

This policy thus pro-

tected the estate incomes of the most prestigious of the court nobility

and religious institutions, whose preservation was of vital concern to

the Ashikaga. Furthermore, because such a policy of selective applica-

tion of the half-tax at the provincial level could be carried out only by

the shugo, the court nobility accordingly became dependent on the

shogun as the only authority capable of dealing with the shugo.

Already the shugo had become involved in another fiscal practice

that increased the court's dependence. This was the practice of tax

contracting (shugo-uke). Under this system, Kyoto-based absentee pro-

prietors entrusted the shugo with collecting and delivering the taxes

due from their provincial holdings. The amount was generally agreed

upon in the abstract as a set figure or quota. Once a proprietor entered

into such a relationship, he relinquished all direct contact between

him and the estate.

Another fiscal device that derived from the practice of the civil

governors was the right to collect provincewide extraordinary taxes

(ikkoku heikin

yaku). The most common of these, known as tansen,

were imposts levied to pay for certain special events such as imperial

30 Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 25-26; Prescott B. Wintersteen, "The Muromachi

Shugo and Hanzei," in John Whitney Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass, eds., Medieval Japan: Essays

in Institutional History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 212; Shimada

Jiro,

"Hanzei seido no seiritsu," in Ogawa, ed., Muromachiseiken, pp. 61-65.

31 Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, p. 48. 32 Kemmu Shikomoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 64-65.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

200 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU

enthronements and abdication ceremonies or for the rebuilding of

palaces or important temples. Under the Muromachi bakufu, the

shugo

first served simply as executors of the bakufu's orders to collect

such taxes.

But gradually the practice was extended so that

shugo

could authorize

tansen

on their own initiative and even convert the tax

from an occasional impost to a regular one. The importance of this

development cannot be overemphasized. The collection of

tansen

had

become a private right. Beyond that it became possible for a

shugo

grant the use of this right to a subordinate as a

"fief,"

instead of land,

to cement a lord-vassal relationship.

The expanded authorities acquired by the shugo under the

Muromachi bakufu provided them not so much with power in hand as

with the tools with which to accumulate such power. A

shugo

could be

appointed to a whole province whether or not he possessed a power

base in that province. Even if

a shugo

did have such a power base, as in

the case of the Ouchi, many of the proprietary rights in his province of

assignment would still be held by court nobles, religious organiza-

tions,

other

shugo

houses, and other lesser military houses.

The most prevalent practice by which

shugo

sought to gain control

of their provinces was not the acquisition of private landholdings but,

rather, the enlistment of

local

warrior families as vassals.

In order to

accomplish this the

shugo

had to be accepted as the primary lawgivers

of the provinces and have the capacity to make, or pass on, grants of

office or land to the local warrior families. It is for this reason that the

added authority to carry out judicial actions involving land transfers

and the awards of

hanzei

tansen

privileges were so important to the

shugo.

The ultimate objective of

shugo

policy was to reduce, when

possible, all lesser warrior families in the province to a subordinate

status.

The trend toward the privatization of superior-inferior rela-

tions at the provincial level eventually resulted in the appearance of

what Japanese of the time called

daimyo

and what modern historians

call shugo daimyo, a condition in which

shugo

authority had been

translated into a considerable amount of actual regional power.

Up to a point, the increase in local influence that the

shugo

acquired

was beneficial to the bakufu. But there were limits to the amount of

independence that the bakufu could, or should, tolerate from its

33 During 1346, a large number of tsuikaho dealt with the problems of the violent seizure of

crops and property in the provinces. See Kemmu Shikimoku and Tsuikaho, pp. 33-47.

34 Arnesen, Ouchi Family's Rule, pp. 165-9.

35 Ibid., p. 23.

36 Sugiyama Hiroshi, "Muromachi bakufu," in Nihon rekishi koza, vol. 3 (1957): 51; Arnesen,

Ouchi Family's Rule, pp. 182-4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 201

shugo.

In many instances, the interests of shogun and shugo were at

odds with each other, and the bakufu would have to assert its primacy.

Of course, in principle the shogun

himself,

or the collective will of his

main shugo supporters, had the authority to exercise discipline. The

Ashikaga shoguns had a number of means for directly intervening into

provincial affairs. Unfortunately, we do not yet have sufficient informa-

tion concerning the shogun's own vassals' serving as jito-gokenin in the

provinces, but it does appear that the shogun could go over the heads

of his shugo by relying on less powerful but more directly controlled

provincial houses.

THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER

Once the battles of consolidation were over, the major shugo houses

were put in place, and the division between the Northern and South-

ern Courts was brought to an end; that is, in the years immediately

after 1392 when Shogun Yoshimitsu was in full command of the

bakufu, a reasonably stable balance of interests appears to have been

achieved among shogun, court, and shugo. This condition held for

roughly three-quarters of a century. The balance had both territorial

and political dimensions.

The usual impression is that the Muromachi bakufu, being located

in Kyoto, maintained a more or less uniform hold over the entire

country. In actuality, however, the bakufu had to accept a considerable

amount of regional variation in its political reach. The debate within

the Ashikaga leadership over whether to establish the bakufu in Kyoto

or Kamakura had been an issue of real consequence. It was recognized

that the Kan

to,

with its history of separatism from Kyoto and its

reputation as the place of origin of the buke estate, would be hard to

govern from Kyoto. And so it turned out to be. Takauji tried to set up

a branch bakufu for the Kanto area at Kamakura but never really

succeeded. The bakufu, however, had even greater problems in two

other areas: the Ou district in the far north and Kyushu in the south

west. The separatist tendencies of these regions were not caused onl>

by their distance from the capital alone but by political and economic

factors as well. The dominant military houses in these regions, left to

their own devices, tended to form their own local coalitions through

which they tried to ward off outside interference. The difficulty that

37 Arnesen, "Provincial Vassals," in Mass and Hauser, eds., Bakufu in Japanese

History,

pp. 99-

115.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

2O2 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU

the Ashikaga shoguns had in maintaining control over the more dis-

tant regions of the country was a consequence of their failure both to

develop the necessary machinery of government and to acquire the

power to impose a full military hegemony. Each area had its special

problems.

The Kanto area

It was clearly the intent of the early Ashikaga shoguns to retain direct

control of the Kanto provinces from Kyoto.

But this was easier

wished than done. The destruction of the Hojo regime had been

achieved by men like Takauji, heads of provincial warrior families,

who were seeking to extend their landholdings and their regional influ-

ence.

Those who survived the lengthy civil war had gained both land

and a sense of local independence. The central authorities were no

longer able to control the provinces by directive or by posting

deputy

there.

As the system of provincial administration by bureaucratic exten-

sion from a central authority failed, other forms of command had to be

found. Godaigo had tried to extend his political reach by capitalizing

on the imperial house's charisma. Fortunately for him, eight of his

sons survived into adulthood. In 1334 he sent his son Norinaga to

Kamakura as governor of Kozuke Province. In this instance, Takauji

insisted on supporting with military authority the prestige adhering to

the imperial person, by dispatching his brother Tadayoshi with the

prince to serve as guardian. This practice of combining the prestige of

royalty or of nobility with the enforcement capacity of a powerful

military family was a favorite device. But Tadayoshi lost Kamakura,

making it necessary for Takauji to lead his own forces into the Kanto

to restore the primacy of the Ashikaga house.

When Takauji returned to Kyoto, he left behind his young son,

Yoshiakira, then four years old, as his own representative in the

Kanto. As guardians he appointed three kinsmen related by blood or

marriage: Hosokawa Kiyouji, Uesugi Noriaki, and Shiba Ienaga. It

was expected that this combination of a main-line member of the

Ashikaga house backed by powerful military kinsmen could control

the Kanto. In 1349 Takauji sent his second son, AiOtouji, to Kama-

38 The main source for this section is Ito Kiyoshl, "Muromachi ki no kokka to Togoku,"

Rekishigaku kenkyu

(October 1979): 63-72. More recent is Lorraine F. Harrington's study,

"Regional Outposts of Muromachi Bakufu Rule: The Kanto and Kyushu," in Mass and

Hauser, eds., Bakufu in

Japanese

History,

pp. 66-88.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 203

kura with the title of Kanto kanrei and under the guardianship of

Uesugi Noriaki. The jurisdiction of the branch shogunate, now called

Kamakura-fu, included the "eight Kanto provinces" plus Izu and Kai.

Within these provinces the Kanto kanrei was given broad administra-

tive and judicial powers. These included the authority to raise military

forces, to make or withdraw grants of land, to make appointments to

local offices (including the naming of

shugo),

and to superintend the

affairs of temples and shrines. The Muromachi bakufu apparently

reserved for itself only the authority to approve succession in the

Uesugi house. To carry out its functions, Kamakura-fu created a full

assemblage of administrative offices based on the model of the

Muromachi headquarters.

Despite these efforts to keep the Kanto subservient to Kyoto, the

arrangement never worked well and ultimately failed. The sense of

separation remained strong in Kamakura, and this was kept alive by

the fact that among the leading Ashikaga collaterals on whom the

bakufu had to rely, many had been supporters of Tadayoshi and re-

mained resentful of the manner in which Takauji had brought about

his death. Furthermore, after Motouji's death in 1367, members of the

Kamakura branch of the Ashikaga house proved ill inclined to take

directives from Kyoto. Before long, the head of the Kanto Ashikaga

house had adopted the style of kubo (an honorific title reserved for the

shogun) and had passed the office of kanrei to the head of the Uesugi

house who had served up to that point only as guardian and chief

officer. The Kamakura kubo Ujimitsu and his successors, far from

keeping the Kanto tranquil, aggressively tried to expand their influ-

ence,

thereby provoking a series of disturbances. The wide gap be-

tween the two branches of the Ashikaga house is symbolized by the

Kanto kubo's eventual confiscation of Ashikaga-no-sho. Differences

between Muromachi and Kamakura came to a head between the sixth

shogun, Yoshinori, and the fourth Kamakura kubo, Mochiuji (1398-

1439).

Mochiuji, who spent much of his time in Kyoto, had hopes of

being named shogun

himself,

to succeed Yoshimochi. He resented the

selection of Yoshinori and created trouble by refusing to use the era

name

(gengo)

that was identified with Yoshinori's shogunate. Finally,

in 1432 Yoshinori felt obliged to send a punitive force into the Kanto

to punish Mochiuji for insubordination. Mochiuji was killed and

Kamakura-fu destroyed.

The Muromachi bakufu, however, was not prepared to lose the

Kanto. In 1449 and again in 1457, members of the Ashikaga shogunal

line were sent to the Kanto to reestablish a branch shogunate. But

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

204 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU

Kamakura-fu could not be revived. The Uesugi house, having taken

the title of Kanto

kanrei,

exerted as much of a centralizing force

was

possible under the circumstances. But this was exerted less and less on

behalf of Kyoto.

Ironically, despite the Kanto origin of the Ashikaga house, once

Takauji had pulled out of the area, he left behind remarkably few

supporters. Around 1400,

shugo

appointments in the Kanto provinces

were held by eight houses, not one of which was a cadet branch.

Clearly, the Kanto was too distant a region to be controlled by proxy

from Kyoto, given the means of communication and the military tech-

nology of the day. Failure to control the Kanto, however, did not

greatly affect the staying power of the Kyoto-based Muromachi

bakufu.

The Ou area

The two large undeveloped provinces of Mutsu and Dewa, known

together as the Ou region, north of the Kanto, suffered even more

from its remoteness from Japan's political center.

Under the

Muromachi bakufu, neither province was brought under the

shugo

system. Yet because the region lay "behind" the Kanto, no govern-

ment based at Kamakura could ignore its existence and its potential as

a place of military buildup or of refuge for enemies of Kamakura.

Minamoto Yoritomo had struggled with this problem in the aftermath

of the Gempei War and had posted agents there to keep the peace. The

provinces played a considerable role in the military action of the

Kemmu era, which began when Godaigo sent Kitabatake Chikafusa,

one of his important courtier generals, to the region as governor of

Mutsu. Takauji countered by naming Shiba Ienaga as the supreme

commander of Ou (Ou

sotaisho.)

In 1335 Takauji dispatched another

of his collateral generals, Ishido Yoshifusa, to the Mutsu provincial

office as protector (Mutsu

chinjo).

In the next few years, Yoshifusa

distinguished himself in battles with Southern Court adherents of the

region. In 1345, Takauji established the office of governor general for

the two provinces, to which he named two house generals,

Hatakeyama Kuniuji and Kira Sadaie. But the two generals proved to

have irreconcilable differences, having been on opposite sides of the

Tadayoshi quarrel. Muromachi next sent Shiba Iekane and Uesugi

39 Endo Iwao, "Nambokucho nairan no naka de," in Kobayashi Seiji and Oishi Naomasa, eds.,

Chusei Ou no sekai (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1978), pp. 84-124.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 205

Noriharu to serve jointly as kanrei. At one time there were four tandai

designates in Mutsu contesting for the office. In 1392, the Kanto kubo,

Ashikaga Ujimitsu, brought Mutsu and Dewa into the jurisdiction of

Kamakura-fu and named his son as kanrei. But with the end of

Kamakura-fu, the office of kanrei lost its political meaning and its

strategic importance to the Muromachi bakufu.

The Kyushu

area

Kyushu presented the Ashikaga with quite different problems of con-

trol.

Western Japan as a whole had never been securely dominated by

military regimes based in central or eastern Japan. Historically, the

provinces of Kyushu and of the western end of Honshu had been the

domains of strongly entrenched military houses like the Shimazu of

Satsuma and Osumi; the Shorn of Higo, Buzen, and Chikuzen; the

Otomo of Bungo; and the Ouchi of Suo. Takauji and his successors

had little choice but to leave these powerful houses in place as shugo.

Yet even though the western provinces had their own history of

independence from control from either Kyoto or Kamakura, it had

been customary to place a representative of the central government in

northern Kyushu as an outpost for the conduct of foreign affairs.

Since Nara times the Hakata region had been the location of Dazaifu,

an office of the central government with authority over foreign rela-

tions and trade. The Kamakura bakufu established the post of

Kyushu commissioner (Chinzei bugyo) to deal with local affairs and to

keep peace among the Minamoto vassals. In 1293, in the wake of the

Mongol invasions, the office of military governor of Kyushu (Chinzei

tandai) was created and given powers similar to those of the Rokuhara

tandai. The office was abolished at the end of Ho jo rule. But during

the period of rivalry between the North and South Courts, both sides

used these Kyushu regional offices to establish their presence in the

western provinces.

As a result of Takauji's retreat to Kyushu in 1336, we find him

establishing a regional office, the Kyushu intendant (Kyushu

tandai).

To this office he appointed a succession of collateral family

heads,

starting with Isshiki Noriuji. But there was strong support for

the Southern Court cause in Kyushu, and this was not easily over-

come. Emperor Godaigo had managed to send one of his many sons,

40 See Kawazoe Shoji, "Chinzei kanrei ko," in Ogawa, ed., Muromachi seiken, pp. 77-106.

41 This office was given a number of names such as Chinzei kanrei, Chinzei tandai, and Chinzei

taishogun. See ibid., pp. 78-79.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

206 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU

Prince Kanenaga, to Kyushu with the title of general of the western

pacification command

(sei-sei

shogun).

During the next thirty years the

Northern Court faction was kept on the defensive against forces mobi-

lized by Prince Kanenaga from local

shugo

families like the Kikuchi

and Aso. When envoys sent from China by the Ming emperor reached

northern Kyushu in 1369, it was with this office that they negotiated.

In 1371 the Muromachi, recognizing its weakness in the west, sent one

of its ablest generals, Imagawa Ryoshun, to Kyushu as intendant.

After strenuous fighting, in 1381 the Imagawa chief

finally

managed to

defeat the local partisans of the Southern Court. In 1395 he was re-

placed by Shibukawa Mitsuyori who had less success in maintaining

military command. But the office itself remained in the hands of this

family for the rest of the Muromachi period. Kyoto was never fully

able to rule the western end of the Inland Sea, so critical to the foreign

trade that flourished from the fourteenth century on. On the other

hand, the

shugo

of Kyushu were more apt voluntarily to support the

shogun, taking up residence in Kyoto in order to take part in the

cultural life of the capital.

The

central provinces

Between the Kanto and northern Kyushu lay the forty-four provinces

of central Japan over which the Muromachi bakufu exerted its most

direct and effective control. When historians write about the

"Muromachi state" or the "Muromachi government" they are usually

referring to this more limited portion of the country.

Shugo

appoint-

ments to these provinces were drawn from some twenty-two houses.

Of these, the majority were collateral branches of

the

Ashikaga house;

the rest were allies by marriage or pledge of loyalty, and as such were

considered "outside lords"

(tozama).*

A stable balance among

shugo

appointments was not easily achieved.

The war between the Northern and Southern Court factions, which

continued for more than fifty years after the founding of the

Muromachi bakufu, encouraged flux. The

shugo

were intensely com-

petitive and frequently switched allegiances to pursue their private

interests.

Even Yoshimitsu was forced to put down rebellions of

trusted shugo, among them the Akamatsu in 1383, the Yamana in

1394,

and the Ouchi in 1399. Yoshimitsu's successful termination of

42 Sugiyama, "Muromachi bakufu," pp. 58-59.

43 Ogawa Makoto, Ashikaga ichimon shugo haiten shi no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan,

1980),

presents the most insightful account of the early competition among the shugo.

THE MUROMACHI DISTRIBUTION OF POWER 207

the rift between the court factions in 1392 removed a major obstacle to

the achievement of a general cooperation between the shogunate and

the

shugo

of central Japan. The bakufu by that time was functioning

effectively as a central government, and the shugo found it to be in

their best interests to join with, rather than compete against, the

bakufu.

Besides the shogun's capacity as chief of the warrior estate to gener-

ate superior military force, two administrative practices proved crucial

to maintaining this climate of cooperation: One was the requirement

that the

shugo

of the central provinces take up residence in Kyoto, and

the other was the kanrei system of decision making. Given the diffi-

culty of communication in fourteenth-century Japan and the lack of

enforcement power in what remained of the court-based institutions of

provincial administration, any would-be hegemon was dependent on

direct, ideally face-to-face, contact with his subordinates to ensure

that his commands were carried out.

Yoshimitsu used various combinations of military force, political

manipulation, and intimidation in his efforts to keep the

shugo

in line.

His military actions against the Akamatsu, Yamana, and Ouchi have

been noted. His less militant displays of power took the form of grand

provincial progresses in the guise of religious pilgrimages, such as his

journey in 1389 into the western provinces to visit the Itsukushima

Shrine in Aki and, incidentally, to put pressure on the Ouchi house.

The private forces readily available to the shogun, though insufficient

to defend unassisted against a determined attack by a major shugo,

were large enough to turn the balance in the capital area and to im-

press local military houses. Of course, in the case of punishing a

recalcitrant

shugo

or quelling provincial unrest, the shogun had to call

on contingents from his shugo. The ability of a shogun to assemble

mixed armies of this sort depended on his continued success in moti-

vating a sufficient number of

shugo

to obey his commands. And to this

end the kanrei system proved to be of great value.

During the first few years of the Muromachi bakufu, Takauji and

Tadayoshi had used the post of general manager (shitsuji) as chief

administrative officer, to which a succession of hereditary retainers

like K6 Moronao were assigned. In 1362 this office was upgraded and

renamed kanrei (deputy shogun). The new post was assigned to the

heads of some of the most powerful of the shogun's cadet houses in

44 Sato, with Hall, "The Ashikaga Shogun," in Hall and Toyoda,

eds.,

Japan in

the Muromachi

Age, pp. 48-49.

2O8 THE MUROMACHI BAKUFU

hopes of pulling the

shugo

of the central bloc more closely together

behind the shogun. In 1367 Hosokawa Yoriyuki was named deputy

just as Yoshimitsu became shogun. Because Yoshimitsu was only thir-

teen years old, Yoriyuki's first years as

kanrei

resembled a regency. But

unlike what happened in Kamakura after Minamoto Yoritomo's line

ran out, the kanrei was not permitted to dominate the Ashikaga sho-

guns.

Nor was the post of

kanrei

allowed to become monopolized by a

single family until the end of the fifteenth century. Rather, it became

the practice to pass the appointment among the three foremost

shugo

houses of Shiba, Hosokawa, and Hatakeyama. These houses, known

as the Sankan (the three

kanrei),

among them held seventeen provinces

in Yoshimitsu's day. Together they formed an inner bloc of

shugo

committed to support the Ashikaga house. The

kanrei

functioned in

two directions. As head of the assembly of senior

shugo

(yoriai),

gave to the shugo a sense of involvement in bakufu affairs. To the

shogun, the

kanrei

was able to present the

shugo's

points of view and

advise against extreme action that they would resent.

In the early years the

shugo

were naturally preoccupied with estab-

lishing their presence in the provinces to which they had been as-

signed. But by the start of Yoshimitsu's rule, most of the

shugo

of the

central bloc had taken up more-or-less permanent residence in

Kyoto.

Although unlike the

sankin-kotai

requirement of the Toku-

gawa shogunate,

shugo

residence in Kyoto was not mandated by writ-

ten precept, by the end of Yoshimitsu's rule such residence had be-

come compulsory in practice. If a

shugo

left his Kyoto residence for his

home province without the shogun's permission, it was considered

tantamount to an act of rebellion. This obligation of residence in

Kyoto appears to have fallen only on the

shugo

of the central prov-

inces;

the

shugo

of the Kanto bloc were expected to live in Kamakura.

In western Japan, the Kyushu tandai, being simply another form of

shugo,

made no residence demands on the other

shugo.

But although

not compelled to do so, most of the

shugo

of the Kyushu provinces

built residences in Kyoto, both to keep in touch with affairs at the

center and to participate in the cultural life of the capital.

Enforced residence away from their assigned provinces meant that

the shugo themselves had to administer their provinces indirectly

through subordinates. The most common practice was to establish one

or more deputy

shugo (shugo-dai)

from among the

shugo's

closest retain-

45 Masaharu Kawai, with Kenneth A. Grossberg, "Shogun and Shugo: The Provincial Aspects

of Muromachi Politics," in Hall and Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age, pp. 68-69.

The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 3: Medieval Japan

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