THE STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

THE SYSTEM OF land holding is basic to any social structure. The ancient system of publicly held land was eroded by the development of the manor (shōen) system and the manor/principality system was created. Meanwhile the Taira political system evolved from one of regents and advisors to court politics until at the end of the twelfth century the Kamakura Bakufu government was created. However, Bakufu rule was mainly confined to the territory occupied by the low-ranking samurai centred around Kamakura. To the east of Japan around Kyoto the imperial court maintained its influence so that, excluding Hokkaido and the Ryūkyū regions, Japan was effectively divided into two realms (Amino 1997a). Moreover, particularly in the west of Japan, major temple compounds such as Kōfukuji and Enryakuji exercised independent authority as rulers of manor estates. They even possessed military power in the form of soldier monks. Japanese society in the early middle ages was quite complex.

The Kamakura court which had held political power in the east was extinguished in 1333 and there followed a period of sixty years of internal conflict: warfare and rivalry between courts in the north and south as the Godaigo emperor created new political authority. Amid that conflict Japanese society underwent great change so we will next consider social changes in the early middle ages, that is the Muromachi era and Warring States (Sengoku) period of the later fourteenth century which followed the end of this period of internal warfare.

FEATURES OF THE STATUS SYSTEM OF THE MIDDLE AGES

The first main feature of the status system of the middle ages is that it was not defined legally on a national scale in the way it had been under the ancient ritsuryō system. Apart from the emperor, the imperial family, the court nobles, powerful samurai families and heads of temples and shrines it was a very fluid system. The phenomenon of the ‘retainer supplanting his lord’ (gekokujō) is typical of the later middle ages. Secondly, reflecting the complex social structure of the middle ages, the status system was not unified across the country and there were various types of system.