P.F. Souyri
concerned people of Okitsushima who were embroiled in a conflict with the estate administra-
tion over fishing on the lake. The document called for a clandestine alliance of all inhabitants
against the lord, and included the notion of ichimi dōshin, which means “community of spirits,”
and involved the willing participation of all, as desired by the gods. The vows and meetings took
place within the context of the shrine’s brotherhood, a village council (miyaza) that controlled
worship of the local deities. Those who joined had their conviction reinforced by divine approval.
They formed a league (ikki), which organized a unanimous solidarity among the inhabitants.
“Those who break this agreement will be expelled from their land,” warned the vow the
villagers took.
No structured messianic or millenarian ideology supplied a conceptual justification for these
peasant movements. The fact that resistance organizations were created in the context of assem-
blies of worship of the kami implies that the sacred was put to use for the cause. Conflicts involved
myōshu and small- scale tenant peasants united in sō increased during the fourteenth century.
Peasant communities drew their strength from their ability to resist feudal authorities, and from
their exceptional degree of cohesion. The smallest defection from the association would spell the
end of the sō.
During a general meeting (sō means “general meeting”) held in a consecrated place, members
swore that they would obey the rules. To disobey, then, was to break a sacred vow. Behind the
acts of resistance of a peasant democracy stood authoritarian—even totalitarian—practices. The
fight against the authorities and the leading classes required iron- fisted discipline and unques-
tioned unity. People who refused to bend to the law of the sō were expelled from the community.
They were no longer helped with their agricultural work, their fields were no longer flooded,
and they were shunned. There was nothing for them to do but leave the village.^22
Peasant resistance to the landlords was based on a combination of religious and folk beliefs, an
alliance between the divine and the community. Medieval rebels could call on the gods, to justify
their struggle. Folk religion came to the aid of peasant defense organizations: beliefs in kami or
Buddha were used to strengthen the union and the community, and those who acted against the
common will risked divine punishment.^23
The growing autonomy of communities that evolved into sōson often cost the local lords their
administrative, political, and judicial authority. The communities gained legal recognition and
became tax- collecting units, took over the right to manage their water (previously the lord’s
privilege), oversaw cleared land and forests, and organized to provide self- defense. They also
formed protection leagues with other communes in the area (then creating sōkoku) and by reach-
ing the old framework of the estate, these alliances caused the domination of the landowners to
disintegrate. Some villages joined with others to manage local resources and valley waters. In
several cases, however, bloody conflicts broke out when the sōson formed an alliance with a land-
owner or monastery in order to weaken a neighboring village.
Most communal villages organized themselves because of the inhabitants’ desire to resist inva-
sions by outside armies. The hamlets sprinkled across the estates were abandoned during the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries. The peasants seemed to have withdrawn to their villages, which
they intended to both defend and govern. This phenomenon, first apparent in Kinai, spread to
regions, such as Kantō and even Tōhoku, where feudal warfare was almost incessant. Villagers
deserted the insecure countryside, leaving it to outlaws and the armies that roamed the area, and
banded together behind fortified works (which makes the screenplay of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai
film historically unlikely). Or they fled to the surrounding mountains in what they called mura no
shiro (“castle of the village”), places in the mountains not easily accessible for those who do not
know the region. With this process of consolidation came a concomitant strengthening of the
inhabitants’ councils that met at the local shrine. War thus often encouraged peasant solidarity.