The kanbe神戸(households allowed to shrines) were a part of the system of kami worship in ancient Japan. In this article, I reexamine recent interpretations of the distinction between kanbe and fuko 封戸(registered households allotted to officials and institutions) as a prerequisite for evaluating the kanbe within the system of kami worship in ancient Japan, and I elucidate the basic facts of the kanbe system that have yet to be understood. As a result of an examination of the changes in standard amount of the fumotsu 封物(tax revenue from registered households) that was established by the new regulations of Tenpyō 19 (748) until the time of the Engishiki (927), it can be seen that the kanbe were placed and actually functioned within the household registry system which was administered under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Popular Affairs (民部省Minbushō or Tamitsukasa), which was charged with overseeing the populace and tax collection. Moreover, it is important that the limited number of households surrounding a shrine, the original kanbe, also functioned as fuko households. The reason the kanbe system operated under the new regulations of Tenpyō 19 was in order to set upper limits of the amount of fumotsu and the number of male residents responsible for paying taxes. Next, I examine previous scholarship based on these findings. It has been pointed out that in regard to the rate of the tax payment and the form of its management, kanbe differed from other types of fuko. However, these differences are not sufficient to deny that kanbe were in fact fuko. Furthermore, the fuko are thought to refer to ordinary households that were allotted to institutions other than those of the state regardless of these circumstances. Therefore, kanbe should be considered one type of fuko under the governmentʼs administration of the populace. If that is the case, then kanbe fell under the section on regulations covering exceptional cases (令条 之外条ryōjōnogejō) which allowed the allotment of household revenues to be applied to various institutions on the basis of imperial edicts, over and beyond the general rokuryō 禄令(regulations that determined the amount and institutions to which rewards were to be applied). Thus, it is clear that the kanbe could be allotted on the basis of the emperorʼs will. In addition, elucidating the historical background and the process of the systemization of the kanbe is a necessary prerequisite in considering the significance of the kanbe system. Thus, I next considered the kanbe system prior to the Taihō Codes. As a result of an examination of the origins of the kanbe for Ise Jingū, Munakata-sha, and Sumiyoshi Taisha shrines, I discovered that the organization that allotted the people to the gods was conducted per the will of the sovereign Ōkimi prior to the Taika Reforms, and this was the same as the establishment of production units known as bemin 部民. Then, after the system of be was abolished with the Taika Reforms, it is thought that kanbe were allotted to the kami in their place, just as sustenance households were awarded to officials above the rank of Daibu. This kanbe were organized as one type of fuko in the latter half of the 7th century with an eye to the Tang system and was linked to the establishment of the kanbe system under the legal codes. Considered in this manner, it is natural to interpret the kanbe of the legal codes as being operated as fuko under the new regulations of Tenpyō 19. I believe, as demonstrated above, that beginning with the heretofore unrecognized common nature of the kanbe and the fuko, it is possible to clarity the fundamental reality of the kanbe system to a significant degree.