Village and rural life in medieval Japangoal was finally in sight, their condition was once more called into question by the penetra-
tion of capital from usury in the countryside.The struggle against debt (to continue this argument) became the origin of tremendous social
instability during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This fight did not end in complete defeat,
contrary to what some Marxists believed. Quite the opposite, it led to a new “historical compro-
mise” at the end of the sixteenth century, which was the source of the stability of the Tokugawa
regime. Admittedly, peasant leagues were defeated one after the other. But those peasants
dropped their weapons and renounced insurrectional leagues in exchange for the guarantee of
the part of the new state that they would obtain land ownership and a new status, that of farmer,
which was often said to be higher than that of other social groups such as merchants or craftsmen.
This “compromise” ensured Japanese society a century and a half of prosperity, from the end of
the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth centuries. It would thus seem that, deeply encroached
within the people’s mentality, there is a forgotten tradition in Japanese society of resistance, egal-
itarianism, and solidarity against the mighty, but also of struggles against injustice, which can
lead to social violence and a questioning of authority, forcing the mighty to dodge and weave, to
negotiate, and often to step back.
What can we say today of Japanese rural society that can be considered as certain and is not
contested or questionable? It would seem that three central elements can be distinguished: con-
tinuous economic expansion of rural society during the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries led to a
generalized betterment of the living conditions of the peasantry despite famines and the sorrows
of war, which in turn brought improvements in agricultural production that led to the creation
of independent village organizations (sō) and collective resistance by inhabitants against the
lords.
Economic expansion
With the beginning of the medieval period, Japanese society entered a phase of economic expan-
sion and increasing trade.^17 Because there are no quantifiable sources, it is impossible to measure
the exact scope of this phenomenon. The few surviving documents show a society that seemed
to be awakening from a long period of inertia. This ascent began with the great land- claiming
movements in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and by the thirteenth century, the countryside
seems to have been reshaped by the new economic situation. Although the clearing of land for
rice paddies slowed, except perhaps in the western provinces, the domains seem to have been
more integrated in the trade system of the archipelago. Also in the thirteenth century, peasants,
especially in the Kinai and neighboring regions, began to free themselves from their position of
servitude, a movement that expanded during the following two centuries. Economic and com-
mercial progress helped create a rural middle class, which sought to gain control over its own
affairs and eventually, to shake off the grip of the lords.^18 This improved economy was not,
however, enough to avoid sometimes violent food crises. Nevertheless, overall the middle ages
seem to have been a time of growth—slow in the thirteenth century, more rapid after the Mongol
invasions, chaotic in the fourteenth century, and then reinforced in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, especially in Kinai and around the Inland Sea.
Agricultural production was organized within the framework of the estate economy. What-
ever these estates were called locally and whatever their economic mode (wetland rice cultiva-
tion, dryland farming, exploitation of forests, horse pastures, harvest of seaweed and seafood,
and salt production on the beaches), their internal organization was more or less similar. The land
was controlled by wealthy peasants (myōshu) or low ranking warriors. These figures were the