Court and countryside 1200–1600western Japan, and weakest in the capital region, where traditional proprietors retained the most
control.^36
Studies of warlords have also laid bare processes of commercialization, showing how daimyō
domains grew in part by exploiting and administering commercial trade networks, which arose
in part from daimyō need to secure access to war materiel, foodstuffs, and other goods in order to
expand and preserve their new centers. Some historians attribute the success of magnates in
transforming themselves into daimyō to the development of regional economic systems based on
control of the “public spaces” (kugai): interstitial roads, sea- lanes, ports, barriers, markets, and
lodges. Others note that daimyō relied on and sponsored favored independent merchant contrac-
tors. Direct control often required daimyō to subdue those retainers and other warriors who made
a living through the taxation of commerce and operation of toll barriers. I have argued that
figures labeled “pirates” (kaizoku) actually innovated distinctive forms of maritime dominion by
developing and regulating access to shipping networks. They provided maritime military and
commercial services for land- based daimyō, appropriated rhetorics of lordship from those war-
lords, and projected identities as sea lords. Sea- lordship was then reified by the protection monies
given by travelers and grants from daimyō patrons.^37
Kokujin
By the 1960s, scholars seeking the origins of later medieval and early modern daimyō lordship had
begun to turn from the shugo to other, more localized warrior houses in the provinces, collec-
tively known as kokujin (literally “provincials”). This scholarly shift of attention to kokujin as the
engine of Muromachi society occurred for many reasons. First, studies of shugo showed that
while their jurisdiction extended to whole provinces, their actual territorial control tended to be
smaller—most of the lands in any given province lay in the hands of kokujin. Second, historians
noted that very few of the original shugo families survived into the Sengoku period. Most fell
victim to infighting or were overthrown by deputies or other provincials.
“Kokujin” is, in fact, a broad historical label that encompasses warrior houses from a diverse
array of backgrounds, including families of former jitō and other local estate officers, members of
shugo families, shugo deputies (shugo- dai), pirates, and villager elites. For jitō houses, the fall of
Kamakura meant that the original guarantor of their portfolio had disappeared, and possession
required physical control. Many historians focus on the emergence of kokujin such as the Mōri
and Kobayakawa, who made a choice to abandon far- flung territories, concentrate on a single
power- base, and expand it into contiguous territories. As David Spafford argues, however, this
treatment assumes a rational- choice motive, when, in fact, attachment to original holdings and
other territories took many forms, including efforts to retain scattered holdings.^38
Kokujin followed diverse routes to power. They might enter into patron- client relations with
the shogunate and serve as part of the Shogunal Guard (hōkōshū). They could also serve in the
administrative or military offices of shugo. Some kokujin exploited ties with villages, where they
combined military service with entrepreneurial roles in regional commercial economies. Others
developed power- bases in niches such as littoral holdings and ports, becoming overseers of ship-
ping concerns, ports, protection businesses, and maritime production, though Sakurai Eiji cau-
tions that their individual power- bases were often too small to control interregional commerce.
Increasingly, however, historians analyze kokujin as local warriors who collectively exercised
authority as parts of leagues, known as ikki.^39