Enemies of the Estate

A cursory survey of thirteenth-century estate documentation quickly shows a diverse picture of enemies to the proprietor and to the local communities, both exterior and interior.

These groups should not be seen as fixed categories, and individuals could move from one category to the next at different stages of a conflict, or between one dispute and the next. Less aggressive elements in the provinces also seem to have posed a threat to the social fabric of the estate commu­nities. Peasant groups on the run from oppressive proprietors or gluttonous warriors would sometimes be able to find shelter with relatives or associates in other estates for a while, but in cases where the network ties were not so strong they would be kept at a distance as a threat to the limited resources of the community.^[387] Outcast groups and other itinerant groups would also be a constant liability, and could disrupt order in the estates and local communities.^[388] However, they only figure sporadically in the sources, as when social unrest in Yamato province made the Todaiji clergy send a letter to managers and residents in their estates in which they warned against roaming and bellicose outcasts, furthermore ordering that begging sites should be abolished forever.^[389] Such cases show that itinerant elements in many instances were regarded with hostility by proprietors and residents alike and that the latter were prepared to defend their territories and resources through various displays of violence.

Professional warriors, and especially those sanctioned by the shogunate, were beyond doubt the most formidable foes of a peasant community, which would usually simply refrain from resisting an invading forces, often by absconding and hiding in the mountains until danger had passed. The relative strength of this type of threat to peasant communities also helps explain why warriors are so conspicuously present both in contemporary sources and consequently also in research today. Even rural communities with a notor­ious tendency to resist outside interference were usually without the means to stand up to a posse of official deputies. In a prolonged conflict in the Kuroda Estate, for example, central authorities repeatedly dispatched expedi­tionary forces in order to apprehend a number of named suspects of violent crimes, in the process burning down several homesteads. At one point, the residents in the estate were so worried over the prospects of yet another expedition by groups of law enforcement officers into the estate that they wrote a plea to the proprietor, the temple of Todaiji, in fear that the troops again would put their homesteads to the torch as well as destroy the early sprouts of wheat and the fodder for their horses.^[390] Although the residents on other occasions before and after this event had openly defied troops dis­patched by Todaiji as well as by external enemies, there is no indication that they tried to put up armed resistance against the deputies.^[391]

Officially recognised warriors were not alone in using violence against estate communities, however, and all sorts of predators and/or bandits posed a constant threat in the absence of an effective organisation of law enforcement in the provinces, as we also saw in the case of Tarumi's raid on the Obe Estate in the beginning of this chapter. In several cases, we find neighbouring communities at each other's throats for several years, leading to several violent encounters.

Bandits and Peasants in Medieval Japan would be more inclined to intervene in the conflict on behalf of the absentee estate owner.^[395]

That proprietors and residents often had very different priorities in such border conflicts is perhaps even more apparent in the case of the Hiranodono Estate in Yamato province. The province was at several levels controlled by KofUkuji, who controlled a large number of estates but furthermore had been appointed governor for the province. This double role as landlord and law enforcement agency led to several violations against estates belonging to other temples or individuals, as residents in Kofukuji estates took advantage of the situation and made forays into areas outside their control. In 1293, residents from two such estates, Anmyoji and Yoshida, attacked the Hiranodono Estate, which belonged to the temple Toji.

The question of legitimacy is central to our understanding of how the groups of alleged bandits worked and survived, although the notion of legitimacy should not be seen solely from the perspective of the law, since

both violence and land possession could be legitimated through many other channels. An illustrative example can be found in the border conflict between residents in the Nade Estate and the Mionoya Estate. The warrior's argument for raiding the contested area was that he had undertaken agricultural activities in the area prior to the conflict and that he therefore had the right to do it again, no matter if right of usage was protected by a deed or not.^[401] Not only were his actions aimed at acquiring more wealth and resources as a one- off occurrence, they were also orchestrated with enough visibility to pose a direct threat to the villagers, thereby sending a powerful signal of his actual power in the region.

When Mionoya residents had again harvested in a disputed area between the two estates, the Nade residents immediately did the same in order to emphasise their claim to the area.^[402] Contrary to the image of outlawry and predation subsequently painted by the Mionoya in their complaints to the court, the object of the raid was not to collect crops or other agricultural products, but to uphold a claim to the land itself. Although the Nade group was labelled as bandits for this and similar raids on Mionoya, it should be clear that their actions were not random onslaughts on other people's property but part of an ongoing territorial struggle. This naturally leads us to a discussion of how and by whom the defence of an estate against marauders was organised.