P.F. Souyri
heads of agricultural operations, and were responsible for rent payments and corvée. The myōshu
had at their disposal the labor supplied by tenant farmers, to whom they rented land, and by serv-
ants, farmhands, and various dependents, whom they fed and lodged in return for their work.
The written sources mention them only in passing, and so they remain part of the great silent
mystery of Japanese medieval history.
Cultivated fields accounted for only half the total area of an estate. The rest was fallow and
uncultivated land, woods, marshes, flooded sections and the like. These areas were indispensable,
however, to the villagers, who counted on them as sources for firewood, and for the fish, edible
ferns, and various tubers that were essential supplements to their diet. Control of the unculti-
vated parts of the estate thus gave rise to increasingly bitter conflicts between lords and peasants
and between inhabitants of neighboring villages. Sources of the period supply two decisive clues:
the rise of intensive agriculture based on two annual harvests, and the institution of rural markets
on fixed dates.
Annual double cropping began in the mid- thirteenth century on the shores of the Inland Sea,
where the climate was particularly favorable. This ingenious arrangement was no doubt aimed at
circumventing the rigorous rent collection system. Landlords were very demanding about rents
on rice paddies and frequently checked yields and field sizes, but they were much more lenient
concerning dry fields, where the peasants grew crops for their personal consumption. Wider use
of fertilizer made these agricultural advances possible. The increase in production due to the
cultivation of new lands, and especially to technical improvements, provided the peasants with
surpluses.^19
Until the early thirteenth century, the rural estate economy was still almost self- sufficient.
There was little trade, and all consumer products, except for iron and salt, were produced on the
estate. By mid- century small, local markets had sprung up everywhere. Poor peasants brought
their meager foodstuffs to sell: soybeans, sesame seeds, string beans, and hemp. Wealthier farmers
traded in rice and barley. Traveling merchants came to sell lamp oil, paper, knives, iron hoes,
fresh fish, salt, and sometimes fabrics. Even small, purely local markets, helped increase trade and
circulate merchandise and introduced a rudimentary cash economy to even the most remote
regions. Increased production and the development of trade were part of an overall social move-
ment that was marked by the emancipation of the lowest class of peasants.
Although the agricultural economy was dominated by wetland rice cultivation, the import-
ance of rice has no doubt been overestimated. Historians may have been led astray by written
documents. Because the state and landowners paid greater attention to rice paddies and kept a
written record of everything pertaining to this type of land, it might seem that other agricultural
production was insignificant. Somewhat beyond the master’s purview, however, dry fields, in
which vegetables, hemp, and grains were grown, were carefully tended by the poorest peasants.
These fields were the basis of their subsistence, just as the rice paddies were the source of the
master’s living and the source of most of the rents the masters were collecting. The importance
accorded to rice paddies arose from the fact that the lords knew how difficult it was to clear such
land. The peasant knew that although he could farm a rice paddy, he could not create it by
himself; that the master was able to do so because he could supply the iron tools and requisition
the labor to build the irrigation system.
The rise in agricultural production was linked to the labor of former serfs, who took over
cleared parcels of land where they could grow food for themselves. A number of factors led to
the overall expansion of agricultural society: the diffusion of certain agricultural techniques, such
as double cropping and the use of fertilizer; the cultivation of dry fields, parcels to which the
poor peasants were even more attentive, since they owned them; the intensive work of these
farmers on their new holdings; and the sale of products in local markets. In medieval Japan, land