Shugo-uke (守護請) refers to a type of Muromachi period contractual agreement between a shugo (a provincial military governor) and the proprietor of a shōen or parcel of public land located within that shugo's province. Under the agreement, the shugo assumed responsibility for collecting and delivering tax payments from the proprietor's lands. The proprietor would be paid an agreed amount, with the rest serving as compensation for the shugo.[1] Shugo-uke severed direct contact between a proprietor and their shōen while also allowing a shugo's vassals to take over management of the shōen.[2] It thus served as a means through with the shugo of the period could strengthen their control over private and public lands within the provinces they administrated.
A similar practice was the hanzei (半済, "half-payment") system under which a shugo was granted the right to allocate half the tax income from a shōen to a given vassal, nominally to provide for their military activities.[3] By portioning managment of a shōen's land between the proprietor and the hanzei recipient, the proprietor's ties to the shōen were reduced and the shugo was provided with a powerful tool for rewarding local supporters.[4] Alongside shugo-uke, this accelerated shugo control over territory in their provinces.
Development edit
Intrusions by members of the warrior class onto private and public lands began in the Kamakura period and became more frequent as time passed. It became common for provincial proprietors (chigyōkokushu 知行国主) to leave actual control of their lands to jitō (land stewards) in exchange for an annual payment of a portion of the land's production. This arrangement was known as jitō-uke and lands covered under such an arrangement were referred to as ukesho (請所). While the proprietors entered into these arrangements in an attempt to secure steady income from these lands in the face of warrior predation, jitō almost always failed to pay the full amount owed under these agreements and warrior infringements on the rights of proprietors was not checked.
The shugo of the Kakamura period had only been granted the authority to police rebellion and murder and to supervise ōbanyaku (guard service in Kyoto). During the Muromachi period, however, the shogunate granted shugo additional powers that significantly extended their economic and administrative authority over the lands within their provinces. These included the right to punish those who illegally harvested crops from disputed lands (karita rōzeki 刈田狼藉), to enforce judicial decisions of the shogunate over land disputes (shisetsu jungyō 使節遵行), to enter into hanzei agreements, to seize lands confiscated by the shogunate (kessho 闕所), and to collect certain provincial taxes. The shugo then used this increased authority to demand taxes, supplies, and labor from land proprietors. Having essentially absorbed the functions of the provincial office, the shugo also moved the public lands it had overseen under their control.
Shōen proprietors took steps to check the increased power of the shugo such as by having the shogunate grant them the right of shugoshi funyū (守護使不入), which forbade the shugo or their subordinates from entering their lands. The majority of such proprietors resided in Kyoto, however, making it difficult for them to effectively exert control over their shōen (which could be distributed all over the country). Local jitō, kokujin, and shōen officials often became vassals of the shugo, further weakening the rights of the proprietor. Finally, shugo-uke entered into practice, succeeded the earlier jitō-uke. While these contracts were sometimes the result of shugo proactively approaching the shogunate to be granted such rights, in other cases the shōen proprietors, exhausted by conflicts and disputes with the shugo, entered into these arrangements on their own in the hope of receiving at least some of what they were owed. These contracts were sometimes entered into by the shugo's representatives (the shugo-dai).
Practice edit
In 1402 the Yamana clan, the shugo of Bingo, successfully lobbied the shogunate to recognize their control of Ōta Shōen, which was owned by Kōyasan. The shōen became subject to shugo-uke under the condition that the Yamana pay 1,000 koku a year to Kōyasan (a reduction from the 1,800 koku which the monastery had been collecting in annual taxes). The Yamana frequently did not pay Koyasan, and by 1439 the total amount of unpaid tax had reached 20,600 koku.[5]
This was not an exceptional case; non-payment was a common occurence in almost all cases of shugo-uke, with problems such as drought or flooding being given as the reason. Lands subject to shugo-uke thus de facto became part of the shugo's territory. In other words, shugo-uke was a means of expanding the shugo's territory and was a factor in the formation of the shugo provincial control structure (shugo ryōgoku-sei, 守護領国制).
Not all lands became subject to shugo-uke arrangements; there were many shoen who withstood the aggressions of the shugo and other warriors and survived. There's no question that the practice of shugo-uke reduced the amount of shoen and public lands, however, and the shoen-koryo system, the socio-economic structure throughout the medieval period, rapidly fell apart.