D. Taranczewski
Another question deserving special attention, because of its fundamental role in the analysis of
historical terminology and concepts of comparative history, is how to find constructs and nomen-
clature through which to express the patterns of cooperation in a society so different from our
modern, globalized, capitalist one. Social stratification, for example, seems to have been a ubi-
quitous phenomenon in classical Japan, yet one that was entirely different from modern notions
of “social inequality.” At least, that is the impression the sources convey. But these sources were
produced mainly by ruling elites endowed with privileged access to human and material
resources—the sources of their wealth and the very base of social inequality—and offer only the
barest of direct insight into the lives of the people who had to place their labor, their mental abil-
ities, and the products of their work at the disposal of the elites. I outlined these structures above,
but we must not forget that this outline largely represents only the line of vision of the elites.
We do not know very much about the real cooperative relations, the self–perception, or the
“agency” of members of groups not belonging to the elites. I presented some features above
mainly under the label of “peoples’ history” (minshūshi), but too often these depictions are
negative, in the sense they show what people avoided (taxes, etc.) or what they did not do (serv-
ices). New views of their activities within the system might be expected to emerge from research
on material culture, with help of archeology or ethnology. One example of this potential can be
seen in an excavation undertaken in the mountains of western Gunma prefecture, which revealed
a village that was probably founded in the late tenth century by peasants trying to build new lives
far away from the clutches of the ritsuryō bureaucracy.^52 But much more research remains to be
conducted on that kind of people.
The same qualification also applies—perhaps even more—to the relationship of individuals or
groups to the land, the most important resource in a premodern society dominated by agricul-
ture. It is tricky stuff for modern observers—members of developed, capitalist societies with a
clear idea of private property—to grasp landholding and land- exploitation within a society
devoid of any such concept. We can be sure that every social group in classical society had its own
view and its own notions of these relationships, and the vocabulary through which these various
groups communicated—apart from the nomenclature of the ruling class—is an interesting ques-
tion for exploration.
The task becomes even more complicated with respect to the era in which the shōen system
developed. In addition to what I pointed out above, we may understand shōen also as a legal
framework of respective “rights and duties” attached to various groups of central, regional, and
local actors who were motivated in their actions by the aim of guaranteeing mutual advantage
through each using his specific knowledge and labor force to make the shōen function.
The shōen system was, to be sure, established and developed initially in order to meet the needs
of central elites, and it was organized hierarchically, in analogy to the familiar bureaucratic order.
Nevertheless, it was more than a simple, top- down structure. It constituted a system of rights and
duties known—particularly from the eleventh century onward—as shiki. This term, which
originally meant “office” (a point that underscores its bureaucratic origins), cries out for deeper—
and perhaps more theoretically minded—examination and discussion.^53
In the classical era, the holding of shiki was restricted to central or regional elites—reflecting
the “official” or “public” character of shōen. But during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
a fundamental change occurred in the character of shiki, in parallel to a general trend toward
deregulation and market- orientation of socioeconomic relations. Thenceforth, shiki came to
designate the rights to income and administrative perquisites attached to titles within the shōen
hierarchy. The official or public aspect of shiki was largely lost, eventually weakening former
status restrictions, and a much broader range of social groups became holders of shiki. Thus, in
the medieval era, shiki also played an important role in the process through which peasants gained