9
Court and countryside 1200–1600
The articulation of local autonomy
Peter D. Shapinsky
Japan’s medieval period witnessed considerable appropriation of political and economic power
by local actors, especially warriors, at the expense of political centers. Debates over the dynamics
that generated this autonomy have long occupied the heart of medieval studies of Japan.
These debates connect constructs that are central not only to views of the medieval period,
but to modern Japanese national identity as well. Key among them are the issues of warrior
lordship, transformations of estates into villages, horizontal and hierarchical institutions, and
commercialization.
This chapter discusses these constructs through a lens of center and periphery in order to
demonstrate both the historical transformations and to highlight the ways in which studies of
local autonomy have enabled scholars to re- envision the history of Japan and its connections with
the rest of the world.
Territory
Under the system that emerged during Japan’s late classical era, authority remained thoroughly
centralized, and administrative rights over lands and peoples in the provinces were grounded in
centrally sanctioned titles, known as shiki.^1 By the medieval period, much of Japan’s population
had some connection to shiki. Titles differentiated by status, attached to particular posts respons-
ible for carrying out specific functions, and promised rights to income from land and sea territ-
ories designated as either private estates (shōen) or public lands (kokugaryō) administered on behalf
of absentee religious and aristocratic proprietors in Kyoto. The office and estate apparatuses built
flexibility into medieval Japanese systems of property and tenure. Shiki could be divided, sold, or
inherited; management could evolve without sacrificing the integrity of the corporate relation-
ships. Nevertheless, we may also heed Thomas Keirstead, who argued that structures like shiki
derived power from the shared realm of understanding generated through the administration
and habitation of estates.^2
The persistence and transformations of shiki and estates inspire considerable debate over the
demise of the estate and the emergence of local autonomy.^3 For Marxists, such as Nagahara Keiji,
the institutionalization of warrior vassalage under the Kamakura regime signaled the beginning
of the end of the estate system, which then met its demise in the “feudal- style” land ownership of