Village Hanzei, War and Tokusei-Ikki : Solidarity and Military Mobilization of Villages in the Suburbs of Kyoto During the Sengoku Period

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Other Title
  • 村の「半済」と戦乱・徳政一揆 : 戦国期京都近郊村落の連帯と武力動員
  • ムラ ノ ハンゼイ ト センラン トクセイ イッキ センゴクキ キョウト キ

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Description

The hanzei system as a land policy of the Muromachi bakufu is well-known and has been repeatedly investigated. However, it is less known that the original meaning of hanzei is literally "half-payment" of the tax. This meaning precedes the hanzei law promulgated by the Muromachi bakufu, and it had already appeared in the Kamakura period. During the Sengoku period, villagers in a suburb of Kyoto declared a hanzei and demanded their taxes be reduced by half. In this paper, the author investigates this type of hanzei by each of these villages and tries to regard it as one development of the yearly rice tax (nengu) reduction protests, which had been carried out by shoen-level leagues (shoke-no-ikki). The grounds for village hanzei lay in military mobilization by the bakufu. The bakufu, noticing the military forces built up by the villages (goshu), mobilized them in the suburbs of Kyoto and allowed them tax exemptions in the form of hanzei. For the villagers, who paid nengu, the hanzei exemption meant half-payment of that tax. However, even in those cases where hanzei was not permitted by the bakufu, the villagers proclaimed it anyway. For them, hanzei fell under the category of a nengu reduction. In this sense, the hanzei movement is a variation of the nengu reduction protests. Hanzei was proclaimed not only by isolated villages, but also by groups of villages over a wide area, which formed leagues called sogo or kumi. The ordinal nengu reduction protests were also regionally widespread. The hanzei movement was closely related with war mobilization and leagues calling for social justice by the government (tokusei-ikki). Hanzei was proclaimed as a part of tokusei, which was expected to be carried out with the outbreak of a war, and nengu reduction, even when not in the form of hanzei, was essentially an important part of tokusei proclamations.

Journal

  • SHIGAKU ZASSHI

    SHIGAKU ZASSHI 102 (6), 1099-1134,1266-, 1993

    The Historical Society of Japan

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