Late medieval Japan witnessed a growth in the power of the commoner, as seen in the spread of corporate villages (so) marked by collective ownership and administration and other self-governing features. This study of a community of so 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 so 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 so 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 so's political authority. Despite these efforts, as a powerful organization experienced in promoting communal order, the so 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 so 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.

One of the world's leading social theorists provides a monumental synthesis of Japanese history, religion, culture, and social organization. Equipped with a thorough command of the subject, S. N. Eisenstadt focuses on the non-ideological character of Japanese civilization as well as its infinite capacity to recreate community through an ongoing past.

This pioneering collection of 15 essays argues that Japan's medieval age began in the 14th century rather than the 12th, and marks the beginning of a fundamentally new debate about how Japan's lengthy classical period finally ended.

Lords of the Sea revises our understanding of the epic political, economic, and cultural transformations of Japan’s late medieval period (ca. 1300–1600) by shifting the conventional land-based analytical framework to one centered on the perspectives of seafarers who, though usually dismissed as "pirates," thought of themselves as sea lords. Over the course of these centuries, Japan’s sea lords became maritime magnates who wielded increasing amounts of political and economic authority by developing autonomous maritime domains that operated outside the auspices of state authority. They played key roles in the operation of networks linking Japan to the rest of the world, and their protection businesses, shipping organizations, and sea tenure practices spread their influence across the waves to the continent, shaping commercial and diplomatic relations with Korea and China. Japan's land-based authorities during this time not only came to accept the autonomy of "pirates" but also competed to sponsor sea-lord bands who could administer littoral estates, fight sea battles, protect shipping, and carry trade. In turn, prominent sea-lord families expanded their dominion by shifting their locus of service among several patrons and by appropriating land-based rhetorics of lordship, which forced authorities to recognize them as legitimate lords over sea-based domains. By the end of the late medieval period, the ambitions, tactics, and technologies of sea-lord mercenary bands proved integral to the naval dimensions of Japan’s sixteenth-century military revolution. Sea lords translated their late medieval autonomy into positions of influence in early modern Japan and helped make control of the seas part of the ideological foundations of the state.

This volume of twelve essays with useful bibliographies, in the fields of history, art, religion, literature, anthropology, political science, and law, documents the history of United States scholarship on Japan since 1945.

This volume of twelve essays with useful bibliographies, in the fields of history, art, religion, literature, anthropology, political science, and law, documents the history of United States scholarship on Japan since 1945.