Late medieval Japan witnessed a growth in the power of the commoner, as
seen in the spread of corporate villages (sō) marked by collective
ownership and administration and other self-governing features. This
study of a community of sō villages in central Japan from the fourteenth
through the seventeenth centuries reconstructs the life of these
villages by analyzing the rich and abundant communal records largely
written by the villagers themselves and carefully preserved in the local
shrine.
The author show how these villagers founded and operated a
shrine-centered organization that brought coherence, order, and prestige
to the community at the same time it formalized the differences among
the residents along gender and class lines. The Tokuchin-ho sō was a
governmental, social, and religious institution that facilitated the
movement toward localism, but, the author argues, its growing collective
power and organization also benefited its local proprietor, the great
monastic complex of Enryakuji. Political and economic resources flowed
vertically between the client-village and the patron-proprietor as they
collaborated to secure internal peace and wide-reaching commercial
interests.
The book traces the transformation of the sō as late medieval
decentralization gave way to politically unified early modern society,
with its enforced transfer of merchants from villages to towns,
confiscation of shrine land, and the relinquishment of the sō's
political authority. Despite these efforts, as a powerful organization
experienced in promoting communal order, the sō was able to maintain its
medieval legacy of self-determination, substantially preempting
bureaucratic intervention in local governance.
The local records allow the author to study the sō from the villagers'
perspective, and she presents new information on the position of women
in rural communities, the local mode of economic surplus accumulation,
the detailed social and economic functions of a shrine, and the reaction
to nationwide cadastral surveys. The book is illustrated with 21
halftones.
