Court and countryside 1200–1600and Yoshinori (1394–1441), shugo were constrained by shogunal military power and a require-
ment to maintain a residence in the capital.^24 During the period of Ashikaga decline in the
aftermath of the Ōnin War, shugo houses either survived to become autonomous magnates or
were displaced by other provincial warriors.^25
While the earliest scholarship on shugo and daimyō focused on individual warlords, by the
1960s historians were analyzing both constructs in terms of categories and stages of develop-
ment, seeing daimyō as products of larger social structures. For Marxists, these schematic models
sought to chart the growth of “feudal” land tenure.^26 In contrast, John W. Hall presented a four-
stage (“shugo- daimyō,” “sengoku- daimyō,” “shokuhō daimyō,” and “kinsei daimyō”) theory of warlord
evolution, based on Weberian ideal types that plotted a course to the early modern polity.^27 More
recent scholarship, however, emphasizes continuity over categorical divisions, as the shugo title
remained a significant mark of status well into the sixteenth century.
Many debates related to shugo swirl around the concept of agency—how much power did
military governors have to influence events, in comparison to local warrior elites? Imatani Akira,
Nagahara Keiji, Sugiyama Hiroshi, and others saw the shugo as the “driving force in the feudal
overlord system,” the figures that developed systems of land tenure as daimyō and “established
regional feudal authority.”^28
The importance of land tenure to much scholarship early on placed in historians’ sights shugo
receipt of tax- collection privileges from the shogunate. These included the right to retain half the
tax from their provinces (hanzei) and the right to levy extra land taxes (tansen). Evaluations of the
effect of these tax privileges—which were justified by the need to ensure that the shugo had suf-
ficient military resources at their disposal—range widely, with some scholars seeing them as an
indicator of the end of the estate system, and others as an attempt to preserve the territories of
court powers by limiting warrior exactions. Many historians point to the importance of these
privileges for shugo seeking to break free of Kyoto as autonomous lords, develop a power- base,
re- organize retainer bands, and establish new controls over villages and cities.^29
Whereas shugo were once seen primarily as agents of change—destroyers of the classical
order—since the 1970s historians have also highlighted the degree to which they also repres-
ented, and depended upon, the traditional order. After all, it was their shogunal connections that
separated shugo from other provincial warriors. Preferential access to the shogun enabled military
governors to acquire licenses for overseas trade, grant toll exemptions (kasho), receive taxation
privileges, participate in central politics, and gain access to canonical warrior ritual texts (buke
kojitsusho) preserved by the shogunate. At the same time, as the heads (sōryō) of extensive familial
networks, they could also call on resources based on kinship.
Other scholars point to the continuities between late Kamakura- period and early Muromachi-
era shugo, and to the fact that military governors tended to rely on the estates and districts of the
old regime as administrative units. Sakurai Eiji, for example, has argued that shugo were able to
become powerful by positioning themselves as the saviors of the estates and then absorbing those
territories. They exploited residence in Kyoto to connect with aristocrats who hoped the shugo
would preserve their revenues, and simultaneously accepted complaints from estate residents
seeking relief from stewards’ exactions, while those same stewards also looked to the shugo to
attempt to reinforce their claims to the estate.^30
Sengoku daimyo ̄
As heroes and villains of Japanese national heritage, warlords of the Sengoku period have been
analyzed in myriad ways, but studies on them can be charted on interconnected axes that resemble
the debates concerning shugo, including the utility of studying daimyō as “great men” or as ideal