The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 3: Medieval Japan
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STATUS DIFFERENCES AMONG PEASANTS 309
In the case of famine or natural disaster, when cultivation was
difficult if not impossible, transients were not an unusual phenome-
non. Faced with bleak prospects for the future, many were forced
to move on to another place and settle down for a time in a corner
of a community, appealing to various connections and human sympa-
thies.
Whether or not the term mow was used uniformly throughout
Japan, it is evident that temporary residents of agricultural commu-
nities who were neither vagabonds nor sedentary were probably
quite common.
Genin occupied the bottom level of the peasant class and had no
independent control over land. These peasants served
shoen
officials as
well as myoshu. Household bequests of shoen officials indicate that
genin
were inherited as part of the estate. Genin of either sex were often
bought and separated from their parents while still children or were
sometimes left with their mother. Even when a husband and wife of
this status had children, they were not normally allowed to live as a
family unless they had been in service to a master for many years. In
such cases they would often be lent a small amount of land to support
their family, in addition to serving their master.
The life of a genin could take a variety of forms, but they were
basically manual laborers of a master household. They were virtual
slaves and could be bought, sold, or inherited at their master's will.
Often they would escape. Although they could be treated as chattel,
they were not accumulated in great numbers of forced to work under
cruel conditions but, rather, were treated as part of the family in the
patriarchal system. It is not clear why most medieval shoen officials
and myoshu owned genin, but they were generally used for large-scale
agricultural work and land development.
These five categories constitute the major status divisions of the
medieval peasant class. In addition, there were eta, hinin, and
sanjo,
all
of whom suffered social discrimination.
10
Eta were primarily involved
in catching birds, disposing of animal carcasses, and making leather
goods - activities generally considered "unclean." Hinin were people
expelled from their communities for committing a crime. Neither
group can be included in the peasant class. Sanjo were involved in
transporting water or cleaning temples, shrines, or the residences of
aristocrats. They, too, strictly speaking, were not peasants. However,
10 On social discrimination in the medieval period, see Buraku mondai kenkyujo, ed.,
Burakushi no kenkyu, premodern vol. (Kyoto: Kenkyujo, 1978); and Keiji Nagahara, "The
Medieval Origins of the Eta-Hinin," Journal of Japanese Studies 5 (Summer 1979): 385-403.
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310 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
these groups formed communities on the outskirts of villages and were
often closely connected with village peasant life.
LAND DEVELOPMENT AND AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS
Forms
of land development
In the medieval period most of Japan, with the exception of the central
Kinai region, was still undergoing land development. In the ancient
period, the provincial and district offices of the
ritsuryo
estate orga-
nized large-scale projects using peasant labor as a form of tax to open
paddy land on nearby level ground. The government maintained that
this land was state owned because it was public (kdden), publicly
irrigated
(kosui),
and developed with state-organized labor
(koko).
Peas-
ants were allotted parcels of paddy land but in return could be forced
to participate in state land-opening activities. Powerful peasants often
abandoned their public paddy land and opened their own lands in the
mountainous back country. It was not difficult to maintain private
rights to such lands, and in doing so, they easily avoided the labor
demanded by the state. Tiny pockets of valley land tucked away
among the hills were suitable for such individual development because
water was readily available from springs and streams. This paddy
land, calledyachida, is found throughout Japan.
Leading peasant families chose land suitable for development near a
water source in the valley, where the wind was light and there was no
danger of flooding. Powerful peasants would gain control of the water
source and then develop paddy lands, extending from the area nearest
the water source deep in the valley to the level land below. They would
also maintain dry fields in the hilly areas adjacent to the valley in order
to supplement their diet by raising buckwheat and other grains besides
rice.
Even in the early
shorn
period, these valley paddy lands were not
beyond the proprietor's reach but were organized into
myoden,
and
leading peasant families were usually given the status of
myoshu.
Local
shoen
officials undertook activities similar to the
mydshu's
land
opening, although they had access to more labor and capital. These
officials developed large areas of land suitable for cultivation with the
labor of peasants. These lands were then divided among the relatives
in the area, and with the combined strength of the family group, the
peasants were pressed into
zomenbyakusho
status. On Koyasan's Ota-
no-sho in Bingo Province, the
shoen
official's exempted lands were
generally in low, damp areas along a large river, whereas nearly all the
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LAND DEVELOPMENT 311
myoden of ordinary peasants were yachida scattered throughout the
valleys. Shoen officials most likely reclaimed the low, damp lands that
had first been opened in the ancient period and had since fallen into
neglect. These they designated as privately opened lands with exemp-
tion rights.
Both yachida - the paddies in the valleys - and the low-lying
paddy land had their disadvantages. The yachida, dependent on local
water sources, frequently suffered drought. The low-lying lands, on
the other hand, were often flooded when the river overflowed its
banks.
Therefore, even though crops had been planted, in some
years there was no harvest, and in especially bad years planting itself
was impossible. Documents from this period contain expressions like
eifu (former paddy land unusable for some time) and nenfu (land on
which planting did not take place in that year)." The term kata
arashi was used frequently to refer to infertile paddy land, part of
which was left fallow.
12
For these reasons, the dependability of developed, arable lands was
important to the medieval peasant. On the central Kinai plain in
Yamato and Yamashiro provinces, many reservoirs and irrigation and
drainage ditches were built under the direction of the ritsuryo state or
shoen proprietors. As a result, agricultural conditions in this area
were particularly stable. In other areas, land-developing communities
strove to make the water supply more dependable by pooling their
resources to build irrigation ponds near springs in high and middle-
lying areas to offset the water shortage on the flood plain at the foot
of the valley. On the Toji's Ota-no-sho in Tamba Province, the prob-
lem was solved by creating an irrigation pond to store water in the
center of the valley. Even today an irrigation pond called Hoshi-
maruike can be found there. It was built by peasants in the late
thirteenth century to alleviate the water shortage problems of the
lower portion of the valley.'
3
Land development began in earnest in the twelfth century in eastern
Japan, the part of Japan slowest to develop. Here, the local warrior
overlord class, with its strong ties to the provincial office, took a
leading role. The Kanto plain was covered by natural forests, and
small peasant communities were usually unable to clear it. The local
11 For a more detailed discussion of the low cultivation rate of
arable
land, see Nagahara Keiji,
Nihon
no chusei
shakai
(Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1968), pp.
160-1.
12 For more discussion of the term kata arashi, see Toda Yoshimi, Nihon
ryoshusei seiritsushi
no
kenkyu
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1967), pp. 168-91.
13 Oyama Kyohei, Nihon
chusei nosonshi no kenkyu
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1978), pp. 231-87.
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312 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
overlords adopted two approaches. They would develop paddy lands
in the alluvial valleys of the plain and cut down forests to establish
agricultural settlements. Most peasants were subordinate to the local
overlord and were granted cultivation rights to the newly opened lands
as members of the community. These warriors, who later became
vassals of the Kamakura bakufu, were almost without exception the
center of such land development communities.
14
Those peasants who
became subordinate to these local developers could not establish inde-
pendence as
myoshu.
Local warrior overlords and powerful peasants were central to medi-
eval land development and reclamation, although the actual labor was
generally carried out by small communities of peasants. Medieval
land-opening communities were quite different from early peasant
society which was characterized by large-scale agricultural communi-
ties under one leader. These later medieval "communities" were
hardly worthy of the name, generally being small villages of a few
scattered cultivator households under the direction of a powerful peas-
ant or local overlord. Shden were an amalgamation of many small
communities and were not in themselves organic groups. The
myoshu
at the center of each small community cooperated with the
shden
offi-
cial in punishing unlawful behavior on the
shden,
but daily functions
were for the most part carried out within the individual community.'
5
Gradually, the peasants of these small communities became more inde-
pendent and increased in number. As a result, community relations
became more tightly knit. In the fourteenth century, village communi-
ties called
soson
were formed, in which even the small cultivators had
membership rights.
Agricultural
operations
and
techniques
Because they had access to labor, the local overlords and powerful
peasants were able to gain control of fertile, well-irrigated paddy land.
As a result, their agricultural operations were generally stable and
prosperous, unlike those of the small cultivators. The peasants' first
obligation was to furnish labor to the local overlord and
myoshu,
in
14 The Miura family, which became a powerful vassal (gokenin) of the Kamakura bakufu,
divided the entire Miura peninsula in Sagami Province among its members. They controlled
the highly developed valley lands throughout the peninsula and continued the process of
development. They often took place names as surnames, for example, Ashida, Owada, Wada,
Nagai, and Nobi.
15 On the situation in small communities, see Nagahara Keiji, "Shoensei shihai to chusei
sonraku," in Nihon chusei shakai kozo no kenkyu, pp. 169-254.
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LAND DEVELOPMENT 313
return for which they could borrow food, seeds, and, in lean years,
rice.
Wet paddy lands were very important to the agricultural operations
of powerful peasants who were prosperous enough to use oxen for
spring plowing. For weak, poor peasants, however, the wet paddy
lands were of little consequence, and dry fields or yakihata were the
most common form of cultivable land.
16
Wet paddy lands were devel-
oped using a compost of grass trampled by oxen and horses and cut
grass containing saplings and young leaves. During the second half of
the medieval period, they also discovered that the crop yield improved
when ashes from burnt trees were used. The average yield of one tan of
paddy land cannot be accurately estimated, but uplands generally
yielded about one koku, two or three to of
rice.
Dry fields were usually
planted with barley, and yakihata were usually planted with millet and
buckwheat. Paddy land with much richer soil and higher productivity
was planted with rice.
Various technological advances improved the agricultural output
starting in about the second half of the thirteenth century. New and
improved varieties of wetland rice were developed, and depending on
the climate, even triple cropping was possible. Run-off ditches were
built in both valley lands and moist lowlands. After the wetland rice
was harvested, the water was drained off, and barley was planted as a
second crop. Needless to say, the productivity of wet paddy lands
increased with such concentrated usage.
17
A variety of crops were planted in dry fields: grains such as barley
and soybeans, vegetables, hemp, mulberry for sericulture, and the
perilla plant. Until the mass production of cotton began in the six-
teenth century, hemp was the most widely used fabric for clothing.
18
Sericulture, including removing the silk from cocoons and making silk
floss and silk goods, was another endeavor of the peasants, although
strictly a luxury line. Silk floss was referred to as gofukumen (dry goods
cloth) and was taxed as nengu in many areas. The raising of cocoons
was difficult because in some years disease killed all the silkworms.'
9
16 On yakihata, see Kuroda Hideo, "Chusei no kaihatsu to shizen," in Seikatsu, bunka, shiso,
vol. 4 of Ikki (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1981), pp. 91-130.
17 Double cropping was already being practiced in some areas by the end of the Heian period,
but in the late Kamakura period the problem arose concerning whether nengu should be
exacted in the form of barley, the second crop on wet paddy lands.
18 Echigo Province was noted for its hemp thread in the Muromachi period, and hemp cloth was
one of its major products. The production of hemp, however, was not limited to Echigo but
took place throughout Japan.
19 The ritsuryo government required that mulberry, along with lacquer trees, be cultivated in
orchards and taxed the silk thread taken from the cocoons. In the medieval period, however,
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314 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
Oil for lamps was increasingly produced as a commodity in the four-
teenth century because of its expanding demand in the cities.
20
In order to prepare dry fields for planting, wood was burned on top
of the soil. Later, millet, buckwheat, and soybeans were sown. A
single plot was planted for a period of two or three years before rotat-
ing to another plot. The first plot was then burned again in prepara-
tion for another planting. Because these lands were not under the
proprietor's control and were outside the tax structure, such practices,
believed to have been common in the medieval period, were rarely
mentioned in shoen documents. Small and marginal cultivators
(kobyakusho
and
genin)
with families relied on these fields as a crucial
source of food.
Medieval agriculture took place on a combination of wet paddy
lands,
dry fields, and
yakihata.
In addition to drought and flood dam-
age,
which was unavoidable given the peculiar characteristics of medi-
eval cultivable land, insects and animals were also a frequent cause of
crop damage. The worst, and unpreventable, insect damage was suf-
fered when great swarms of locusts ate the water-planted rice seed-
lings.
Sparrows ate rice seedlings, and wild boars and deer caused
much damage as well. Devices such as clappers and deer fences were
used to combat the problem, but these methods by no means elimi-
nated the loss of crops caused by these animals.
21
Such unpredictable catastrophes often destroyed small cultivators
and
zomenbyakusho.
On Koyasan's Ategawa-no-sho in Kii Province, a
1246 document records that only one-sixth (three or four) of the house-
holds on the entire
shorn
were living with plenty, whereas untended,
fallow myb numbered thirteen in the upper village and eight in the
lower village.
22
In addition to being located on inferior mountain land,
this
shoen
was cursed with an abusive jito who engaged in illegal activi-
ties.
At the same time, it provides a good illustration of the volatile
agricultural conditions of the time. Peasants whose crops failed were
called mibiki (literally, "thinning") and were often forced to sell them-
selves and their families and become
genin
of a local overlord or power-
mulberry was gathered mainly in the wild. It was again cultivated in orchards during the Edo
period.
20 Starting in about the fourteenth century, the production and sale of the oil extracted from the
perilla plant were a specialty in several areas of the central Kinai region, such as Oyamazaki in
Yamashiro Province, Yagi in Yamato, and Abiko in Settsu.
21 Locusts, birds, and leafhoppers (unka), a rice insect, caused great crop damage. In mountain
fields where damage by boars and deer was great, deer fences made of bamboo and twigs were
erected around the fields.
22 Kdyasan monjo, vol. 6, Yuzoku
hokanshu,
no. 1433 (1276) in Shiryo hensanjo, ed.,DaiNihon
komonjo, iewake, vol. 1, pt. 6 (Tokyo: Tokyo teikoku daigaku, 1906), pp. 501-2.
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THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, TAXATION 315
ful myoshu. Or they might become transients and drift into lodgings
for hinin. The unpredictability of agricultural conditions in the medi-
eval village also created the peasant equivalent of
ronin,
or "masterless
samurai."
THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, AND TAXATION
Nengu, zokuji, and labor
service
The medieval peasant was required to submit two types of taxes to the
shoen proprietor: zokuji and nengu. Zokuji is generally understood to
include labor service (buyaku), in addition to miscellaneous dues on
various nonrice products. To avoid confusion, zokuji will be defined
more narrowly here as additionally taxed products and separate from
labor service. Nengu, on the other hand, was the tax paid by the
myoshu
to the proprietor on myoden, locally held rice fields constituting
the major part of the shoen's cultivable land. The usual rate of taxation
per tan of wet paddy land was three to five to of rice.
23
This form of
taxation differed greatly from that of the ritsuryo system, in which
peasants were taxed by categories of goods, and each tan of land was
assessed a grain tax amounting to no more than 3 percent of its total
yield.
The state depended on a tax on various products levied on individu-
als for income and on a labor tax called zbyo, about sixty days' service
per year for adult males. The household registry system, however,
declined along with the
ritsuryo
system, and the assessment and collec-
tion of taxes on individuals became impossible. Gradually, both labor
taxes and taxes on goods came to be calculated according to the area of
arable land. In addition, in the tenth century the provincial office
renewed efforts to collect taxes in kind, especially in rice. As a result,
the basis of taxation was changed from imposts estimated by categories
of goods to miscellaneous labor and rice submitted to the officials. The
latter, in most cases, amounted to three to of rice per tan of land. The
labor tax came to encompass a wide variety of goods and services. The
shoen system of taxation, including nengu, zokuji, and buyaku, de-
scended from this Heian system of taxation by the provincial office.
This was a natural development, given that most shoen were created
23 One medieval tan was equivalent to 360
bu
or about 12 are. (An are, a French unit of measure,
is equal to 100 square meters.) In Hideyoshi's cadastral survey,
1
tan was redefined as equal to
300 bu; 1 tool rice is equal to about 15 kilograms.
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3l6 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
when the lands
of
the provincial office were partitioned, and the over-
lord's right of control over the
shoen
evolved from the provincial gover-
nor's right
of
control over the province.
The nengu
tax
rate
of
three
to
five
to of
rice
per tan of
land
probably comprised, on average, one-third
to
one-half
of
the assessed
total yield, which was
a
rather high rate considering that yields were
often reduced
by
natural disasters and other conditions.
On
the other
hand,
the
land from which
nengu
was collected was
by no
means
all
the land under cultivation. The
shoen
proprietor formally recorded
in
his land registries
the
amount
of
cultivable land based
on
surveys.
But
in
shoen documents,
the
phrase "land
on
which nengu
is not
assessed" appears frequently, suggesting that there were "hidden
lands"
whose entire yield went directly
to the
peasants.
In
addition,
dry fields were
not
taxed comprehensively.
The
ritsuryo
government
considered
dry
fields
to be an
extension
of
immediate residential
lands
and,
thus, were privately owned
and not
directly taxed. Given
this precedent,
the
shoen
proprietor could
not be
excessively strict
about taxation
in
such areas. Under these circumstances, peasants
of
the
myoshu
class could make ends meet, even though
the
nengu
rate
was high.
The
life
of the
small cultivators, however,
was
difficult.
For
the
most part, they worked land
on
which only
nengu
was col-
lected,
but at a
relatively higher rate than myoden
and
usually
amounted
to
seven
or
eight
to per
tan. Many small cultivators also
worked part
of
a
myoden
and were therefore unable
to
avoid the labor
tax.
In
addition, they were often required
to
perform private labor
services
for
the
myoshu.
In most cases
nengu
was collected
in
rice, but
it
could take the form
of other products
as
well.
For
example,
on
shoen
in
eastern Japan,
nengu
was often exacted
in
silk
or
cotton.
The
reasons were both
the
paucity
of
paddy lands
and the
relatively undeveloped state
of the
eastern transportation routes, particularly
the
water routes, which
made
the
transportation
of
heavy items like rice difficult.
Nengu
from
shoen
in the
Inland Sea area often took the form
of
salt, marine prod-
ucts,
or
lumber.
The
form
of
nengu
was
often determined
by the
products
of
the particular region and by the condition
of
the transpor-
tation routes.
The shoen proprietor also collected income from zokuji.
In the
Kamakura period, zokuji on the Toji's Oyama-no-sho
in
Tamba Prov-
ince took
a
surprising number of
forms,
for example, vegetables, chest-
nuts,
barrels, and oil.
It
differed from
nengu
in
that anything from
the
village could
be
taxed, produce
as
well
as
finished goods, such
as
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THE PEASANTS, OVERLORD RULE, TAXATION 317
thread, fabric, and confections. Thus zokuji consisted of important
items of daily consumption exacted by the proprietor from his various
shorn. From shoen on the Chokodo lands belonging to the imperial
family, for example, products such as vegetables, fruit, sake, flowers
used for dying, pine torches, and bamboo blinds were collected for the
annual New Year's ceremonies.
24
The type of product demanded de-
pended on such factors as the specialized product of the region, dis-
tance from the shoen to the capital, and the state of the transportation
system. These products collected from individual
shoen
made the pro-
prietor virtually self-sufficient. There were a variety of ways to appor-
tion this burden on the peasants. A common method, called
myobetsukuji, was to collect zokuji from each myoden, although this was
a cumbersome method.
The typical
shoen
proprietor was an urban aristocrat who lived in the
capital. He almost never lived on the shoen
itself,
nor did he demand
large amounts of labor for operations on directly managed lands. One
exception was land called tsukuda, found on shoen near the capital.
Tsukuda were under the proprietor's direct control, although he did
not generally manage them personally. Instead, he forced the peasants
to cultivate them at a high nengu rate of one or two koku per tan of
land. Normally, the proprietor did not require labor service of the
peasants, but they were often required to transport zokuji to his resi-
dence in the capital or to serve guard duty there on a rotating basis.
According to the diary Yamashina keraiki, even in the early fifteenth
century when the proprietor's authority was at its lowest, peasants
from shoen in areas relatively near the capital, such as Settsu and
Mino,
took turns serving the proprietor at his Kyoto residence.
25
Peasants also provided customary labor service. Peasants often ac-
companied
shoen
officials on extended stays in the capital and provided
three-day service, which involved ministering to the needs of the pro-
prietor's representative when he visited the
shoen.
But compared with
the labor service exacted by
shoen
officials andyiro, the burden was not
heavy.
In addition to the nengu, zokuji, and labor demanded by the shoen
proprietor, there were also exactions by shoen officials and jito. As
explained earlier, shoen officials were allotted paddies that were ex-
24 The Chokodo was a private chapel erected by the retired emperor Goshirakawa at his resi-
dence. Numerous shoen lands were subsequently attached to it. Most imperial
shoen
were of
this type.
25 Yamashina keraiki, edited and annotated by Toyoda Takeshi and Iikura Harutake, 5 vols.
(Tokyo: Zokugunsho ruiju kanseikai, 1967-73).
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318 THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT
empt from the proprietor's
nengu
and
zokuji,
as well as
myo
from which
only
nengu
was required. Shorn officials also had the right to collect a
set amount of income from the shoen as a whole. This included
kachomai,
a tax in addition to
nengu,
amounting to about one-tenth of
the
nengu,
or about three to
five
sho
per
tan.
By comparison, there was
a great deal of labor service required. As stated earlier,
shoen
officials
were free to exploit
zomenbyakusho,
and they could also exact a set
amount of labor from the
myoshu
and peasants directly subordinate to
the proprietor. A local official of the Kangiji's Wasa-no-sho in Kii
Province demanded that
shoen
inhabitants provide agricultural labor
ranging from spring planting to fall harvest, including plowing, weed-
ing, cutting grass, and pounding the rice.
26
This labor service could be
demanded "as needed."
With the establishment of
the
Kamakura bakufu, limits were set on
the rights of jito on a case-by-case basis, but generally they were
determined by the limits established by those administering the
shoen
on behalf of the proprietors. In reality, however, because tht jito was a
warrior, he could make oppressive labor demands. According to docu-
ments of 1238, the jito of Sasakibe-no-sho, a holding of the Matsuno
Shrine in Tamba Province, made the peasants serve him in a wide
variety of ways. He forced the peasants to cultivate the land without
giving them food or land in return; he used nine peasants daily as his
servants; he made the peasants build his residence; and he requisi-
tioned peasants to accompany him on a journey to the capital.
27
Be-
cause relations between jito and peasants were strained by such de-
mands, in 1262 the Kamakura bakufu ruled that although the jito's use
of peasants for cultivation and farmwork could continue within the
bounds of custom, during the three summer months (four to six
months in the lunar calendar), peasant labor could not be used pri-
vately by the jito.
28
In addition, shoen officials and jito frequently
collected various commodities resembling the zokuji of the
shoen
pro-
prietor. Therefore, small cultivators and
myoshu
under the proprietor's
direct control were subject to two tiers of taxation, one by the propri-
etor and the other by the local
shoen
officials and
jito.
26 A 1327 income report by the recordkeeper
(kumon)
of Shimomura on Wasa-on-sho, in Kangiji
monjo.
27 This 1238 account of a dispute between the shoen administrator (zassho) and the jito on
Matsuno Shrine's Sasakibe-no-sho is found in Higashi
monjo,
vol. 1.
28 Kamakura bakufu supplementary law no. 424, in Sato Shin'ichi and Ikeuchi Yoshisuke, eds.,
Chiisei hosei shiryoshu, vol. 1 (hereafter cited as CHS) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1955; re-
printed 1978), p. 222.
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