P.D. Shapinsky
types tied to social structures. Much scholarship on daimyō concerns the nature of their lordship
and whether they represented dynamic harbingers of a new age or more conservative forces.^31
Historians’ choices of precisely which daimyō they study impact their interpretations. The well-
documented Go- Hōjō, for example, represented paradigmatically strong, forward- looking
daimyō. Examination of earlier and smaller- scale figures, by contrast, reveals considerable
complexity and, in the words of David Spafford, that “the resilience of established ways of
thinking—the persistent medieval—conditioned action ... as a part of change itself.”^32
Many historians emphasize the degree to which sengoku daimyō relied on traditional sources of
authority and medieval styles of lordship. Even strong daimyō like the Ōuchi, Ōtomo, and Mōri
sought shugo titles. Warring among daimyō might, moreover, be brought to an end by the medi-
ation of even the weakest Ashikaga shoguns. On the other hand, daimyō were enmeshed in feuds
and alliances. Leagues of retainers (hikan ikki) could constrain the autonomy of their overlord.
Retainers felt free to abandon lords lacking the “ability” (kiryō) to enforce, confirm, and recog-
nize their territorial claims. To counter this, many daimyō made treaties with one another to
return wayward vassals who sought to change their locus of service.
Daimyō ideologies of duties and service drew on both public precedents and private law. Their
territories were often defined in terms of older ritsuryō nomenclature for provinces and districts.
Cultural diffusion to the provinces constituted not new centers, but the fruits of provincial war-
riors entering into networks of religious belief, patronage, politics, and art centered in Kyoto.
For John W. Hall, the sengoku daimyō were both symptomatic and a cause of the chaos of the late
medieval age in their attempts to “become absolute masters of land and people within their
territories.”^33
Katsumata Shizuo is representative of a group of scholars who interpret the daimyō as looking
forward toward the early modern polity. Whereas, he argues, the shugo possessed titles on a pro-
vincial scale, sengoku daimyō began from smaller power bases that they actually controlled and
transformed into quasi- states. These warlords centered their domains first on their extended
family (ichimon) and then expanded dominion through conquest and the incorporation of their
retainer bands (kashindan) into centralized institutions organized along fictive kinship lines
(yorioya). This family system, he contends, replaced the sōryō house- headship model of organiza-
tion. Daimyō identified their new corporate- family domains as “states” (kokka). They employed
new absolutist ideologies that depicted themselves and their lordship as “the public good” (kōgi).
Daimyō innovated new forms of territoriality. They surveyed lands, assessed value in copper cur-
rency (kandaka). They made war against their neighbors with impunity. They also made their
own laws. Katsumata argues that daimyō legal codes illustrate two trends. He sees absolutist ambi-
tions on the part of daimyō in their attempts to limit the autonomous action (jiriki) of retainers by
making the daimyō the sole arbiter of disputes. But he also shows how retainers constrained daimyō
by making them subject to the laws of their own kokka.^34
Historians credit daimyō with innovating castle construction, military revolutions, and urban-
ization—moving retainers into their new castle towns, which they turned into new political-
cultural centers, sometimes known as “little Kyotos.” Some scholars even interpret negotiations
between daimyō as “diplomacy” (gaikō) between “regional states” (chiiki kokka). Daimyō also
involved themselves in foreign affairs; daimyō of western Japan focused on foreign trade and
diplomacy as much as regional conquest.^35
Debates are further enlivened by regional variation among daimyō. Yamamuro Kyōko identi-
fied differences between daimyō of eastern and western Japan based on the ways that they appro-
priated and employed document forms from the shogunate, and the relative speed with which
they adopted changes in era names (nengō). Nagahara Keiji found implementation of tax assess-
ment and collection in cash (kandaka) most pronounced in eastern Japan, slightly weaker in