D. Taranczewski
variations were allowed according to the precedents of each province. Diminishing the latitude
for action on the part of governors changed their role considerably, and an important cause of so
many conflicts in the provinces vanished.^43
Under the ensuing system, the provincial administration no longer dealt directly with the
levy of taxes and service. Instead, the territory of each province was reorganized into units under
a variety of titles that included traditional designations, such as gun or gō; as well as new ones,
such as bechimyō or betsumyō (“separate myō”; deriving from the fumyō discussed above). Tax col-
lection in these units was delegated to local and regional elites, who appear in the sources as gunji
(“district officer”), gōji (“community officer”), or myōshu (holder of a myō).^44 Taxation evolved
further into a system of tax farming or revenue leasing, as these officials over- collected taxes and
pocketed the difference.
In addition to their role in the tax system, their leading role in the agriculture of the region,
and their military skills, the new elites became the pillars of regional political association and
socioeconomics. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, their stabilizing control over the tax units,
in combination with their political and socioeconomic roles, amalgamated into a new form of
more extensive, generalized rule over land called shoryō (“things controlled, holdings”), under
figures dubbed zaichi ryōshu (“local lords”) by historians. This rule included rights over land, as
well as over the peasant farmers working and dwelling on it, with the latter bearing the duty to
pay taxes or rents and perform services by reason of their residence. Sometimes even the farmers’
homesteads were taxable as zaike (“rural houses”).^45 The areas exploited by these local lords were
no longer registered in the ōtabumi as taxable land, and the surplus from it became their
income.^46
The tax output of the provinces became less and less sufficient for the support of central elites.
In place of tax- derived revenues, shōen were playing a growing role as sources of income. Estab-
lishing shōen long term required close cooperation among the beneficiary (family or institution),
the central administration, provincial governors, and regional elites. Overcoming resistance from
parts of the central government, the number of shōen increased significantly from the late elev-
enth century. Shōen gained strong autonomy from the provincial administration, reflecting
regional characteristics and balances of power, and culminating in many cases in far- reaching
exemptions from taxation (fuyu) and even immunity from entry (funyū) by provincial officials.^47
The right to establish shōen was restricted to members of the central elite, called shōen ryōke by
historians,^48 who installed administrational networks connecting their household offices in the
capital with their shōen scattered all over the country. Rule over a shōen meant not only levying
tax and labor from the inhabitants in order to supply the ryōke and his officers, but also exercising
jurisdiction and the promotion of agriculture, fundamental elements of public order delegated to
them by the central state, which became the most prominent aspects of the ryōke’s social and
ethical role in the shōen.^49
Land not integrated into shōen—on average just over half of the entire provincial territory—
remained under control of the provincial government, as described above. Sometimes provinces
were allotted as a whole to members of the central elites, following a system historians call
chigyōkoku (“proprietary province,” or “provinces under somebody’s personal control”) that
granted the recipient the right to collect part of the province’s tax output and to bestow posts in
provincial administration on their followers. For members of the imperial house, a similar system
called bunkoku or in- bunkoku (“distributed province”), under which court institutions—usually
affiliated with a retired monarch, imperial lady or prince—received all tax revenues collected
from the province, emerged in the eleventh century.^50 Structural similarities between kōryō/
kokugaryō and shōen increased, and the so- called shōen-kōryō system emerged as the basis of power
structure characteristic of the Middle Ages.