Village and rural life in medieval Japanhad a sure, tangible value. Every year, it supplied a harvest. That is why possession meant first the
possession of land rights: for the lord, the right to administrate an estate and collect rents; for the
myōshu peasant, the right to cultivate a series of paddies; and for the small farmer, the right—a
new right—to exploit his holding. The affirmation of these rights was a central issue at
the time.
Village life was regulated by seasonal agricultural work. In the thirteenth century, religious
ceremonies and popular feasts were organized by the assembly of well- off peasants grouped in a
shrine brotherhood, or miyaza. Although poorest peasants, servants, and serfs were excluded
from organizing these events, they were allowed to take part in the festivities. Because the lords
were not included, the ceremonies served to bring the village community together. This assem-
bly of villagers offered a place for open discussion where decisions regarding worship (as well as
repairs to the local shrine, preparation of ceremonies, and related matters) were made, and internal
conflicts and various community problems were solved. Although decisions were made in a rel-
atively democratic way, the participants were forced to honor their obligations, and were
expected to uphold the village’s sense of community in case of outside aggression.
The slow emancipation of the lower rural classes
Historians are divided on the real status of peasants in servitude. Their social condition has not
been clearly established. Although it seems certain that there were slaves in the countryside until
Kamakura and Nanbokuchō periods, it remains an open question as to whether this means that
all serfs were slaves. Indeed, it seems that the myōshu did not use many slaves. Their agricultural
labor was provided mainly by small- hold peasants (kosakunin) who worked on their own land.
Thus they were not slaves but small independent farmers. They remained bound to the myōshu,
who were registered as being responsible for payment of land rents on the landownership docu-
ments, and the only interlocutors with the lords or their stewards.^20
But from the beginning of the fourteenth century, especially in the Kinai, the names of small
peasants were noted in the registers, because they paid rents to the lord. Their names appeared
also on documents written in common by the village peasants, a sign that they took part in
making decisions that affected the community. What had changed in regard to social relations in
the second half of Kamakura period? These peasants had clearly acquired a new position in the
peasant community and now had a right to speak. By the Nanbokuchō period, they were sitting
on the councils of the shrine brotherhoods alongside the wealthy peasants.
How had the serfs freed themselves? The burgeoning economy enabled the poorest peasants
to accumulate a bit of surplus that they could take to the market, which led a general improve-
ment in their life. But the key was dry land farming, because by growing the grain and vegetables
that they needed for daily sustenance, the poorer peasants had become independent of their
masters. The ascent of the lower peasant classes—former servants, serfs, and even slaves who has
become small scale—was an essential aspect of the internal transformation of peasant society.
The villages
Sō or sōson were based on a high degree of community cohesion. The first sō mentioned in the
archives were formed in the mid- thirteenth century, but their number grew considerably during
the wars of the fourteenth century, and by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they were the
basic units of the social system in the countryside. They drew up their own rules, independent of
the lords’ authority—and in fact, in reaction against that authority. The oldest written piece
about a sō is a “secret document” kept in a shrine in the Lake Biwa region and dated 1262.^21 It