Shoen
Encyclopedia
A was a field or manor in Japan
. The Japanese
term comes from the Tang dynasty
Chinese
term zhuangyuan.
Shōen, from about the 8th to the late 15th century, describes any of the private, tax-free, often autonomous estates or manors whose rise undermined the political and economic power of the emperor and contributed to the growth of powerful local clans. The estates developed from land tracts assigned to officially sanctioned Shintō shrines or Buddhist temples or granted by the emperor as gifts to the Imperial family, friends, or officials. As these estates grew, they became independent of the civil administrative system and contributed to the rise of a local military class. With the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate
, or military dictatorship, in 1192, centrally appointed stewards weakened the power of these local landlords. The shōen system passed out of existence around the middle of the 15th century, when villages became self-governing units, owing loyalty to a feudal lord, or daimyo
, who subdivided the area into fiefs and collected a fixed tax.
After the decay of the ritsuryō
system, a feudal system of manors developed. Landowners or nameholders commended shares of the revenue produced (called shiki) to more powerful leaders often at the court, in order to be exempted from taxes and to subvert the Chinese-style "equal fields" system
, whereby land was redistributed after certain periods of time. In the Kamakura period
a hierarchy of nameholder, manor stewards (jitō
), shugo
(military provincial governor), and the shogun
in Kamakura had evolved. These shōen were completely free from interference from the government, which therefore had no say or control of what occurred within the shōen's boundaries.
By the end of the Heian period
virtually all Japanese land had become shōen and continued to be through the Ōnin War
until the Sengoku period
marked the defeudalization of Japanese society.
, are now called shoki-shōen (初期庄園, lit. "early Shōen"). Shōen of the second type, which continued from the middle of Heian period
to the Sengoku period
, are called chūsei-shōen (中世荘園, lit. "medieval Shōen"). Note that these names and the distinction between the two are modern concepts, and were not used historically and cannot be found in the historical record.
system or taika reform
, land was divided up between powerful families historically called gōzoku
(豪族) or influential Buddhist temples, and they placed facilities called yake (宅) in those lands in order to preside over agricultural management, armament, traffic, and trades. In early documents, the terms yake and tatokoro were used almost interchangeably to refer to those administrative facilities, and so tatokoro are thought to have had functions similar to yake. Before long, however, the meaning of tatokoro was extended to represent not only the originally indicated administrative facilities but also the cultivated land which they administrated.
was called handen-shūju-sei (班田収受制), and was similar to Chinese equal-field land system
(均田制), but there was a difference in the treatment of reclaimed fields. If someone reclaimed wasteland in Japan at that time, the field would be dispossessed and he could not cultivate the field; while if someone reclaimed a field in China, he could cultivate the land providing that the field was smaller than legally prescribed dimensions. Therefore, there was no incentive to reclaim land and develop new fields, and little land was reclaimed although the population was steadily increasing. The shortage of fields thus became a social and economic problem. To solve this, in 723 the central government promulgated the law of sanze-isshin-hō (三世一身法), which promoted reclamation. This law allowed one to cultivate any field one reclaimed, and if certain conditions were satisfied, the fields reclaimed by one's parents or grandparents. Twenty years later, in 743 the central government promulgated a further law promoting reclamation, called konden-einen-shizai-hō (墾田永年私財法) which provided for the succession of the right to cultivate reclaimed fields in perpetuity. This law resulted in massive reclamation by wealthy people, and this reclamation in turn had a significant impact on the development of shōen.
Another feature of shoki-shōen is annual rental system of paddy fields. There were no permanent inhabitants of shoki-shōen and the fields of shoki-shōen did not have regular cultivators, so cultivation rights were rented out on a contract of a year to peasants who inhabited the neighborhood around the shōen. Therefore it was indispensable to recruit help of peasants, who did nearly all the work of cultivation, in order to ensure stable labor force for cultivation and reclamation of new fields. An owner of a shoki-shōen often utilized the local government system of Daijō-kan, kuni and kōri to meet this need; an owner of shoki-shōen who usually had been assigned by the central government as a kokushi (国司, a head or officer of kuni) appointed a local chief of the peasants to be a gunji (郡司, a head or officer of kōri) to recruit and administer labor for the shōen.
, came to discard the connection with the central government and to cultivate their power over local peasants.
Another distinguishing feature of chūsei-shōen are their exemptions from some kinds of tax imposed by the central government. In the middle or the end of the Heian period
there were two types of tax. One type of tax was corvee
labor under the supervision of kuni, and the other was a tax on farm products (about three percent of rice or other farm products). To evade these taxes, peasants wanted to be ruled and protected by the shōen owners, which was usually a politically influential Buddhist temple, Shinto shrine or court noble. To achieve this protection by the shōen owners, peasants donated the nominal land ownership of the fields they cultivated to shōen owners. These fields, nominally donated to a the ownership of a shōen were historically called kishinchi (寄進地). Then shōen owners who received kishinchi, according to shōmin's request, negotiated with the kokushi or directly with the central government and achieved tax exempt status. Most chūsei-shōen gathered vast amounts fields through the process of receiving donated lands from peasants as kishinchi. In this sense, chūsei-shōen is sometimes called kishinchi-kei-shōen (寄進地系荘園, lit. "estates of donated fields").
Meanwhile there also appeared shōen which gathered territory by depriving peasants of land ownership. In some cases, shōen owners would demand tribute from peasants cultivating neighboring fields and if the peasants could not pay that tribute, the shōen confiscated the fields. In other cases, a peasant could not repay the rent for cultivation rights of shōen land, and the shōen owner who was the cultivator's creditor foreclosed on the cultivator's land rights as substitution of the credit, in which case the peasant became bound to the shōen as a shōmin, rather than a tenant cultivator. This kind of shōen is sometimes called konden-shūseki-shōen (墾田集積荘園, lit, "estates of accumulated fields").
There were several kinds of chūsei-shōen, and each kind of shōen had particular process of achieving exemption from tax:
Kanshōfu-shō (官省符荘):
Kanshōfu-sho is shōen where exemption from so (租, a kind of tax, three percent of total harvest of rice) was allowed in official procedures. In the ritsuryō
system, powerful Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples had the right to receive rice as support from the central government. Each shrines or temples were allotted particular fields to, and the rice was levied as so from peasants cultivating the allotted fields. In the eighth century in some shōen, semi-permanent land ownership of the fields and exemption from so in the fields was permitted by Daijō-kan, which administered exemption of tax, and minbushō notified the owner of the fields about the permission using the document called minbushōfu or shōfu. Later the permission by Daijō-kan not for temples or shrines but for powerful noble was gradually increased.
Kokumen-shō (国免荘):
Kokumen-shō is shōen allowed exemption from so or other tribute in bempo or binho (便補) system. At that time kuni had an obligation to pay to shōen owner the benefits the amount of which was determined as to his dignity by the central government. Bempo system is a means usually used when kuni could not prepare the benefits since the taxation from peasants cultivating public fields did not function well; kuni transferred shōen owner its right of taxation from fields the dimensions of which was corresponding to the amount of the benefits. This field was usually selected, according to shōen owner's request, from fields which shōen owner had received from peasants as kishinchi, and this means practical exemption from tax. This system was not admitted by the central government and a contract of bempo became invalid when the term of tenure of the kokushi who contracted was over. However, in most case the new kokushi could not refuse shōen owner's request of continuation of a contract because they felt sorry for accumulated debt of the delinquent benefits, which had not paid while bempo was performed as substitution of payment. Consequently these fields were established as an area exempt from so or other tribute imposed by the central government.
In the tenth and eleventh century kokumen-shō was rapidly increased, and in 1040 the central government was not able to continue ignoring kokumen-shō and finally explicitly prohibited kuni 's new permission of exemption of tax. This ordinance is now called chōkyū-shōen-seiri-rei ("The Order for Disposal of Shōen in Chōkyū Era" in Japanese).
Rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen (臨時雑役免除荘園):
Rinjizōyaku is a general term of variant labor imposed to peasants as tax by the government from the middle to the end of the Heian period
, and rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen is shōen allowed exemption of rinjizōyaku. There were two main processes of formation of rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen. One was the process of shōen owner's negotiation with kokushi; shōen owner abandoned the right of using a part of labor force of rinjizōyaku and instead achieved exemption from rinjizōyaku of peasants living in particular area. The other is the process of bempo system. However, repeated exemption of rinjizōyaku resulted in the shortage of kishinchi of some shōen owners which was remained not exempt from rinjizōyaku. While practicing bempo, if all the kishinchi of the shōen owner was exempt from rinjizōyaku, shōen owner was provided with the right of using labor force of particular public fields. This resulted in absorption of public fields into shōen territory, and in the eleventh century new exemption from rinjizōyaku of fields which had neither exemption of so nor that of other tributes was prohibited.
, the power of the shōen disappeared as new daimyo came in control of the court. These daimyo dissolved or destroyed the shōen, preferring to keep the peasants under their direct control, and effectively making them serfs
in return for their protection.
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. The Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
term comes from the Tang dynasty
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
term zhuangyuan.
Shōen, from about the 8th to the late 15th century, describes any of the private, tax-free, often autonomous estates or manors whose rise undermined the political and economic power of the emperor and contributed to the growth of powerful local clans. The estates developed from land tracts assigned to officially sanctioned Shintō shrines or Buddhist temples or granted by the emperor as gifts to the Imperial family, friends, or officials. As these estates grew, they became independent of the civil administrative system and contributed to the rise of a local military class. With the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate
Kamakura shogunate
The Kamakura shogunate was a military dictatorship in Japan headed by the shoguns from 1185 to 1333. It was based in Kamakura. The Kamakura period draws its name from the capital of the shogunate...
, or military dictatorship, in 1192, centrally appointed stewards weakened the power of these local landlords. The shōen system passed out of existence around the middle of the 15th century, when villages became self-governing units, owing loyalty to a feudal lord, or daimyo
Daimyo
is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
, who subdivided the area into fiefs and collected a fixed tax.
After the decay of the ritsuryō
Ritsuryo
is the historical law system based on the philosophies of Confucianism and Chinese Legalism in Japan. The political system in accord to Ritsuryō is called "Ritsuryō-sei"...
system, a feudal system of manors developed. Landowners or nameholders commended shares of the revenue produced (called shiki) to more powerful leaders often at the court, in order to be exempted from taxes and to subvert the Chinese-style "equal fields" system
Equal-field system
The Equal-field system land system was a historical system of land ownership and distribution in China used from the Six Dynasties to Mid-Tang dynasty....
, whereby land was redistributed after certain periods of time. In the Kamakura period
Kamakura period
The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura Shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo....
a hierarchy of nameholder, manor stewards (jitō
Jito
were medieval land stewards in Japan, especially in the Kamakura and Muromachi Shogunates. Appointed by the shogun, jitō managed manors including national holdings governed by the provincial governor ....
), shugo
Shugo
was a title, commonly translated as "Governor," given to certain officials in feudal Japan. They were each appointed by the shogun to oversee one or more of the provinces of Japan...
(military provincial governor), and the shogun
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
in Kamakura had evolved. These shōen were completely free from interference from the government, which therefore had no say or control of what occurred within the shōen's boundaries.
By the end of the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
virtually all Japanese land had become shōen and continued to be through the Ōnin War
Onin War
The ' was a civil war that lasted 10 years during the Muromachi period in Japan. A dispute between Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sōzen escalated into a nationwide war involving the Ashikaga shogunate and a number of daimyo in many regions of Japan....
until the Sengoku period
Sengoku period
The or Warring States period in Japanese history was a time of social upheaval, political intrigue, and nearly constant military conflict that lasted roughly from the middle of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th century. The name "Sengoku" was adopted by Japanese historians in reference...
marked the defeudalization of Japanese society.
History
Shōen appeared in the eighth century and disappeared in the sixteenth century. They can be distinguished by historical period, and a shōen of each period had specific features in its formation and relationships with the cultivators of its fields. There are two primary periods of shōen development, although in fact smaller and more detailed categorizations exist. The first type; which developed in the middle of the Nara periodNara period
The of the history of Japan covers the years from AD 710 to 794. Empress Gemmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō . Except for 5 years , when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the capital of Japanese civilization until Emperor Kammu established a new capital, Nagaoka-kyō, in 784...
, are now called shoki-shōen (初期庄園, lit. "early Shōen"). Shōen of the second type, which continued from the middle of Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
to the Sengoku period
Sengoku period
The or Warring States period in Japanese history was a time of social upheaval, political intrigue, and nearly constant military conflict that lasted roughly from the middle of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th century. The name "Sengoku" was adopted by Japanese historians in reference...
, are called chūsei-shōen (中世荘園, lit. "medieval Shōen"). Note that these names and the distinction between the two are modern concepts, and were not used historically and cannot be found in the historical record.
Before ritsuryō system
The earliest antecedent of the shōen are tatokoro or naritokoro (田庄); which is thought to be one of the etymologies of the term 'shōen'. Before the ritsuryōRitsuryo
is the historical law system based on the philosophies of Confucianism and Chinese Legalism in Japan. The political system in accord to Ritsuryō is called "Ritsuryō-sei"...
system or taika reform
Taika Reform
The ' were a set of doctrines established by Emperor Kōtoku in the year 645. They were written shortly after the death of Prince Shōtoku, and the defeat of the Soga clan , uniting Japan. Crown Prince Naka no Ōe , Nakatomi no Kamatari, and Emperor Kōtoku jointly embarked on the details of the Reforms...
, land was divided up between powerful families historically called gōzoku
Gozoku
is a Japanese term used to refer to powerful and wealthy families. In historical context, it usually refers to local samurai clans with significant local land holdings. Some were almost locally independent, and held strong ties to important commoners such as wealthy merchants...
(豪族) or influential Buddhist temples, and they placed facilities called yake (宅) in those lands in order to preside over agricultural management, armament, traffic, and trades. In early documents, the terms yake and tatokoro were used almost interchangeably to refer to those administrative facilities, and so tatokoro are thought to have had functions similar to yake. Before long, however, the meaning of tatokoro was extended to represent not only the originally indicated administrative facilities but also the cultivated land which they administrated.
Land policies in the Nara period
New policies of the central government during the Nara period, initially designed to encourage reclamation, played an important role in the development of shōen. The land policy of the ritsuryōRitsuryo
is the historical law system based on the philosophies of Confucianism and Chinese Legalism in Japan. The political system in accord to Ritsuryō is called "Ritsuryō-sei"...
was called handen-shūju-sei (班田収受制), and was similar to Chinese equal-field land system
Equal-field system
The Equal-field system land system was a historical system of land ownership and distribution in China used from the Six Dynasties to Mid-Tang dynasty....
(均田制), but there was a difference in the treatment of reclaimed fields. If someone reclaimed wasteland in Japan at that time, the field would be dispossessed and he could not cultivate the field; while if someone reclaimed a field in China, he could cultivate the land providing that the field was smaller than legally prescribed dimensions. Therefore, there was no incentive to reclaim land and develop new fields, and little land was reclaimed although the population was steadily increasing. The shortage of fields thus became a social and economic problem. To solve this, in 723 the central government promulgated the law of sanze-isshin-hō (三世一身法), which promoted reclamation. This law allowed one to cultivate any field one reclaimed, and if certain conditions were satisfied, the fields reclaimed by one's parents or grandparents. Twenty years later, in 743 the central government promulgated a further law promoting reclamation, called konden-einen-shizai-hō (墾田永年私財法) which provided for the succession of the right to cultivate reclaimed fields in perpetuity. This law resulted in massive reclamation by wealthy people, and this reclamation in turn had a significant impact on the development of shōen.
Shoki-shōen
One feature that distinguishes early or shoki-shōen from medieval shōen is their manner of formation. Most shoki-shōen were established by a Buddhist temple or a central noble by obtaining ownership of either of two kinds of paddy fields: those that had existed prior to the temple's or noble's ownership; and those that were reclaimed under the order of the temple or the noble which ruled a shōen. Shōen composed primarily of newly reclaimed land characterized shoki shōen, and accordingly shoki-shōen are sometimes called kondenchi-kei-shōen (墾田地系荘園, lit. 'estates of reclaimed fields.').Another feature of shoki-shōen is annual rental system of paddy fields. There were no permanent inhabitants of shoki-shōen and the fields of shoki-shōen did not have regular cultivators, so cultivation rights were rented out on a contract of a year to peasants who inhabited the neighborhood around the shōen. Therefore it was indispensable to recruit help of peasants, who did nearly all the work of cultivation, in order to ensure stable labor force for cultivation and reclamation of new fields. An owner of a shoki-shōen often utilized the local government system of Daijō-kan, kuni and kōri to meet this need; an owner of shoki-shōen who usually had been assigned by the central government as a kokushi (国司, a head or officer of kuni) appointed a local chief of the peasants to be a gunji (郡司, a head or officer of kōri) to recruit and administer labor for the shōen.
Formation of Chūsei-shōen
Medieval or chūsei-shōen are different from shoki-shōen mainly in existence of shōmin (荘民, peasants permanently residing on shōen land) and in the power the owner of the shōen had over the shōmin. While shoki-shōen did not have any shōmin and the owner's rule of cultivators was weaker than that of the government, chūsei-shōen had shōmin and most of the cultivators were shōmin, and the shōen owner's rule became more powerful than that of the government. The owner of a shōen could expel peasants who were not obedient to him from the shōen, and could promulgate his own penal codes for criminal offenses or treason in order to ensure this control over the shōmin. That is to say shōen owners, who originally cultivated influence with the government in the capital during the Nara periodNara period
The of the history of Japan covers the years from AD 710 to 794. Empress Gemmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō . Except for 5 years , when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the capital of Japanese civilization until Emperor Kammu established a new capital, Nagaoka-kyō, in 784...
, came to discard the connection with the central government and to cultivate their power over local peasants.
Another distinguishing feature of chūsei-shōen are their exemptions from some kinds of tax imposed by the central government. In the middle or the end of the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
there were two types of tax. One type of tax was corvee
Corvée
Corvée is unfree labour, often unpaid, that is required of people of lower social standing and imposed on them by the state or a superior . The corvée was the earliest and most widespread form of taxation, which can be traced back to the beginning of civilization...
labor under the supervision of kuni, and the other was a tax on farm products (about three percent of rice or other farm products). To evade these taxes, peasants wanted to be ruled and protected by the shōen owners, which was usually a politically influential Buddhist temple, Shinto shrine or court noble. To achieve this protection by the shōen owners, peasants donated the nominal land ownership of the fields they cultivated to shōen owners. These fields, nominally donated to a the ownership of a shōen were historically called kishinchi (寄進地). Then shōen owners who received kishinchi, according to shōmin's request, negotiated with the kokushi or directly with the central government and achieved tax exempt status. Most chūsei-shōen gathered vast amounts fields through the process of receiving donated lands from peasants as kishinchi. In this sense, chūsei-shōen is sometimes called kishinchi-kei-shōen (寄進地系荘園, lit. "estates of donated fields").
Meanwhile there also appeared shōen which gathered territory by depriving peasants of land ownership. In some cases, shōen owners would demand tribute from peasants cultivating neighboring fields and if the peasants could not pay that tribute, the shōen confiscated the fields. In other cases, a peasant could not repay the rent for cultivation rights of shōen land, and the shōen owner who was the cultivator's creditor foreclosed on the cultivator's land rights as substitution of the credit, in which case the peasant became bound to the shōen as a shōmin, rather than a tenant cultivator. This kind of shōen is sometimes called konden-shūseki-shōen (墾田集積荘園, lit, "estates of accumulated fields").
There were several kinds of chūsei-shōen, and each kind of shōen had particular process of achieving exemption from tax:
Kanshōfu-shō (官省符荘):
Kanshōfu-sho is shōen where exemption from so (租, a kind of tax, three percent of total harvest of rice) was allowed in official procedures. In the ritsuryō
Ritsuryo
is the historical law system based on the philosophies of Confucianism and Chinese Legalism in Japan. The political system in accord to Ritsuryō is called "Ritsuryō-sei"...
system, powerful Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples had the right to receive rice as support from the central government. Each shrines or temples were allotted particular fields to, and the rice was levied as so from peasants cultivating the allotted fields. In the eighth century in some shōen, semi-permanent land ownership of the fields and exemption from so in the fields was permitted by Daijō-kan, which administered exemption of tax, and minbushō notified the owner of the fields about the permission using the document called minbushōfu or shōfu. Later the permission by Daijō-kan not for temples or shrines but for powerful noble was gradually increased.
Kokumen-shō (国免荘):
Kokumen-shō is shōen allowed exemption from so or other tribute in bempo or binho (便補) system. At that time kuni had an obligation to pay to shōen owner the benefits the amount of which was determined as to his dignity by the central government. Bempo system is a means usually used when kuni could not prepare the benefits since the taxation from peasants cultivating public fields did not function well; kuni transferred shōen owner its right of taxation from fields the dimensions of which was corresponding to the amount of the benefits. This field was usually selected, according to shōen owner's request, from fields which shōen owner had received from peasants as kishinchi, and this means practical exemption from tax. This system was not admitted by the central government and a contract of bempo became invalid when the term of tenure of the kokushi who contracted was over. However, in most case the new kokushi could not refuse shōen owner's request of continuation of a contract because they felt sorry for accumulated debt of the delinquent benefits, which had not paid while bempo was performed as substitution of payment. Consequently these fields were established as an area exempt from so or other tribute imposed by the central government.
In the tenth and eleventh century kokumen-shō was rapidly increased, and in 1040 the central government was not able to continue ignoring kokumen-shō and finally explicitly prohibited kuni 's new permission of exemption of tax. This ordinance is now called chōkyū-shōen-seiri-rei ("The Order for Disposal of Shōen in Chōkyū Era" in Japanese).
Rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen (臨時雑役免除荘園):
Rinjizōyaku is a general term of variant labor imposed to peasants as tax by the government from the middle to the end of the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
, and rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen is shōen allowed exemption of rinjizōyaku. There were two main processes of formation of rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen. One was the process of shōen owner's negotiation with kokushi; shōen owner abandoned the right of using a part of labor force of rinjizōyaku and instead achieved exemption from rinjizōyaku of peasants living in particular area. The other is the process of bempo system. However, repeated exemption of rinjizōyaku resulted in the shortage of kishinchi of some shōen owners which was remained not exempt from rinjizōyaku. While practicing bempo, if all the kishinchi of the shōen owner was exempt from rinjizōyaku, shōen owner was provided with the right of using labor force of particular public fields. This resulted in absorption of public fields into shōen territory, and in the eleventh century new exemption from rinjizōyaku of fields which had neither exemption of so nor that of other tributes was prohibited.
Shōen in the Muromachi period
In the aftermath of the Ōnin WarOnin War
The ' was a civil war that lasted 10 years during the Muromachi period in Japan. A dispute between Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sōzen escalated into a nationwide war involving the Ashikaga shogunate and a number of daimyo in many regions of Japan....
, the power of the shōen disappeared as new daimyo came in control of the court. These daimyo dissolved or destroyed the shōen, preferring to keep the peasants under their direct control, and effectively making them serfs
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
in return for their protection.