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46-638: The founder of the clan, Mōri Suemitsu , was the fourth son of Ōe no Hiromoto . He founded the clan when he took the name from his shōen named "Mōri" in Aikō District , Sagami Province . After the Jōkyū War , Suemitsu was appointed to the jitō office of a shōen in Aki Province . He was defeated by Hōjō Tokiyori in 1247 and committed suicide ( seppuku ) at Minamoto no Yoritomo 's shrine ( hokkedō ) along with his Miura clan allies. The lineage of

92-858: A huge amount of work and a renewed interest in the past. He was awarded the Cultural Order of Merit in 1960 (the highest award for a man of letters in Japan), the Order of the Sacred Treasure and the Mainichi Art Award just before his death from cancer in 1962. He is cited as one of the best historical novelists in Japan. He was born Hidetsugu Yoshikawa ( 吉川英次 , Yoshikawa Hidetsugu ) in Kanagawa Prefecture , in what

138-700: A local jizamurai . During the war with the Oda clan and the Ikkō-ikki , the Mōri helped the Ikkō-ikki clans by establishing a naval trade route between each other's provincial docks and harbours, the Oda eventually nullified this by laying siege to the trade ships between the two clans and went to further disrupt trade by attempting to destroy the Mōri fleet, failing on their first attempt in 1571. The second battle took place in 1579 with

184-658: A novel-writing contest sponsored by the publisher Kodansha . He joined the newspaper Maiyu Shimbun in 1921, and in the following year he began publishing serializations, starting with Life of Shinran . He married Yasu Akazawa in 1923, the year of the Great Kantō earthquake . His experiences in the earthquake strengthened his resolve to make writing his career. In the following years he published stories in various periodicals published by Kodansha, who recognized him as their number one author. He used 19 pen names before settling on Eiji Yoshikawa. He first used this pen name with

230-577: Is a general term of variant labor imposed to peasants as tax by the government from the middle to the end of the Heian period , and rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen ( 臨時雑役免除荘園 ) is shōen allowed exemption of rinjizōyaku. There were two main processes of formation of rinjizōyaku-menjo-shōen. One was the process of shōen owner's negotiation with kokushi; shōen owner abandoned the right of using a part of labor force of rinjizōyaku and instead achieved exemption from rinjizōyaku of peasants living in particular area. The other

276-530: Is now a part of Yokohama . Because of his father's failed business, he had to drop out of primary school to work. When he was 18, after a near-fatal accident working at the Yokohama docks, he moved to Tokyo and became an apprentice in a gold lacquer workshop. Around this time, he became interested in comic haiku . He joined a poetry society and started writing comic haiku under the pseudonym "Kijiro". In 1914, with The Tale of Enoshima , he won first prize in

322-412: Is shōen where exemption from so (租, a kind of tax, three percent of total harvest of rice) was allowed in official procedures. In the ritsuryō system, powerful Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples had the right to receive rice as support from the central government. Each shrines or temples were allotted particular fields to, and the rice was levied as so from peasants cultivating the allotted fields. In

368-438: Is the process of bempo system. However, repeated exemption of rinjizōyaku resulted in the shortage of kishinchi of some shōen owners which was remained not exempt from rinjizōyaku. While practicing bempo, if all the kishinchi of the shōen owner was exempt from rinjizōyaku, shōen owner was provided with the right of using labor force of particular public fields. This resulted in absorption of public fields into shōen territory, and in

414-406: Is why he began to use the name. It is reasonable to say he is the first head of the Mōri clan but in the Mōri family tradition he is the 39th head of the family as he is the 39th linear descendant of Amenohohi-no-mikoto (天穂日命), an ancient god of Japan . After the third head of the clan, Mōri Tokichika , his son Mōri Sadachika (毛利貞親) was supposed to succeed him but he and his son were both killed by

460-579: The Asahi Shimbun , his writing settled firmly into the genre of historical adventure fiction. Upon the outbreak of war with China in 1937 the Asahi Shimbun sent him into the field as a special correspondent. At this time he divorced Yasu Akazawa and married Fumiko Ikedo. In 1938, Yoshikawa joined the Pen butai (lit. "Pen corps"), a government organisation which consisted of authors who travelled

506-418: The Heian period there were two types of tax. One type of tax was corvee labor under the supervision of kuni , and the other was a tax on farm products (about three percent of rice or other farm products). To evade these taxes, peasants wanted to be ruled and protected by the shōen owners, which was usually a politically influential Buddhist temple, Shinto shrine or court noble. To achieve this protection by

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552-558: The Hōjō clan and the great-grandson of Tsunemitsu became the next head of the clan. At the end of the Kamakura shogunate, they became distant from the shogunate and showed a favorable attitude to Ashikaga Takauji . In the Sengoku period , Mōri Motonari expanded their power to the whole of Aki province and then to other neighboring provinces. In his generation, Mōri became the daimyō from

598-523: The Tang dynasty Chinese term "莊園" (Mandarin: zhuāngyuán , Cantonese: zong1 jyun4 ). Shōen, from about the 8th to the late 15th century, describes any of the private, taxed 3 percent, often autonomous estates or manors whose rise undermined the political and economic power of the emperor and contributed to the growth of powerful local clans. The estates developed from land tracts assigned to officially sanctioned Shintō shrines or Buddhist temples or granted by

644-689: The new nobility . They became a ducal family. The clan's war with Hideyoshi appears in Eiji Yoshikawa 's novel Taiko: An Epic Novel of War and Glory in Feudal Japan . The Mōri are a playable faction in Shogun: Total War and Total War: Shogun 2 . This article incorporates text from OpenHistory. Sh%C5%8Den A shōen ( 荘園 or 庄園 , shōen ) was a field or manor in Japan . The Japanese term comes from

690-627: The shōen ' s boundaries. By the end of the Heian period virtually all Japanese land had become shōen and continued to be through the Ōnin War until the Sengoku period . Shōen appeared in the 8th century and disappeared in the 16th century. They can be distinguished by historical period, and a shōen of each period had specific features in its formation and relationships with the cultivators of its fields. There are two primary periods of shōen development, although in fact smaller and more detailed categorizations exist. The first type, which developed in

736-554: The 11th century new exemption from rinjizōyaku of fields which had neither exemption of so nor that of other tributes was prohibited. In the aftermath of the Ōnin War , the power of the shōen disappeared as new daimyō came in control of the court. These daimyo dissolved or destroyed the shōen , preferring to keep the peasants under their direct control, and effectively making them serfs in return for their protection. Eiji Yoshikawa Eiji Yoshikawa ( 吉川 英治 , Yoshikawa Eiji , August 11, 1892 – September 7, 1962)

782-467: The 8th century in some shōen, semi-permanent land ownership of the fields and exemption from so in the fields was permitted by Daijō-kan , which administered exemption of tax, and the Ministry of Popular Affairs ( 民部省 , Minbushō ) notified the owner of the fields about the permission using the document called the minbushō-fu ( 民部省符 , "Popular Affairs certificate" ) or "charter". Later

828-524: The Chinese-style "equal fields" system , whereby land was redistributed after certain periods of time. In the Kamakura period a hierarchy of nameholder, manor stewards ( jitō ), shugo (military provincial governor), and the shōgun in Kamakura had evolved. These shōen were completely free from interference from the government, which therefore had no say or control of what occurred within

874-633: The Mori clan is well verified because it matches up from several different sources such as the Mōri Family Tree (毛利系図), Sonpi Bunmyaku and Ōe Family Tree (大江氏系図). According to the Sonpi Bunmyaku (尊卑分脈) from the late 14th century: During the Kamakura shogunate the Mōri were a gokenin family due to the fame of their ancestor Ōe no Hiromoto . Mōri Suemitsu , the fourth son of Ōe no Hiromoto inherited Mōri- shōen from his father and that

920-479: The Nara period, initially designed to encourage reclamation, played an important role in the development of shōen . The land policy of the ritsuryō was called handen-shūju-sei (班田収受制), and was similar to Chinese equal-field land system (均田制), but there was a difference in the treatment of reclaimed fields. If someone reclaimed wasteland in Japan at that time, the field would be dispossessed and he could not cultivate

966-597: The Oda sending eight Atakebune (heavily armoured ships with iron-clad plating) warships to finally destroy the Mōri naval threat. After a struggle between Toyotomi Hideyoshi , who led his army as a general of Oda Nobunaga , the two sides made peace and Mōri remained as a daimyō who kept six provinces in Chūgoku . In 1600, Mōri Terumoto nominally led the Western Army in the Battle of Sekigahara . The Western Army lost

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1012-483: The battle and the Mōri clan lost four eastern provinces and moved their capital from Hiroshima to present-day Hagi, Yamaguchi . The newer fief, Mōri han , consisted of two provinces: Nagato Province and Suō Province . Derived from the former, Mōri han was referred to often as Chōshū han . After the Meiji Restoration with the abolition of the han system and daimyō , the Mōri clan became part of

1058-431: The benefits since the taxation from peasants cultivating public fields did not function well; kuni transferred shōen owner its right of taxation from fields the dimensions of which was corresponding to the amount of the benefits. This field was usually selected, according to shōen owner's request, from fields which shōen owner had received from peasants as kishinchi , and this means practical exemption from tax. This system

1104-507: The central government. In the 10th and 11th century kokumen-shō was rapidly increased, and in 1040 the central government was not able to continue ignoring kokumen-shō and finally explicitly prohibited kuni ' s new permission of exemption of tax. This ordinance is now called chōkyū-shōen-seiri-rei ("The Order for Disposal of Shōen in Chōkyū Era" in Japanese). Rinjizōyaku ( 臨時雑役 )

1150-469: The emperor as gifts to the Imperial family, friends, or officials. As these estates grew, they became independent of the civil administrative system and contributed to the rise of a local military class. With the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate , or military dictatorship, in 1192, centrally appointed stewards weakened the power of these local landlords. The shōen system passed out of existence around

1196-484: The field; while if someone reclaimed a field in China, he could cultivate the land providing that the field was smaller than legally prescribed dimensions. Therefore, there was no incentive to reclaim land and develop new fields, and little land was reclaimed although the population was steadily increasing. The shortage of fields thus became a social and economic problem. To solve this, in 723 the central government promulgated

1242-413: The fields of shoki-shōen did not have regular cultivators, so cultivation rights were rented out on a contract of a year to peasants who inhabited the neighborhood around the shōen. Therefore, it was indispensable to recruit help of peasants, who did nearly all the work of cultivation, in order to ensure stable labor force for cultivation and reclamation of new fields. An owner of a shoki-shōen often utilized

1288-685: The front during the Second Sino-Japanese War to write favourably of Japan's war efforts in China. During the war he continued writing novels, and became more influenced by Chinese culture. Among the works of this period are Taiko and his re-telling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms . At the end of the war he stopped writing for a while and settled down to enjoy a quiet retirement in Yoshino (present-day Oumeshi ) on

1334-399: The law of sanze-isshin-hō (三世一身法), which promoted reclamation. This law allowed one to cultivate any field one reclaimed, and if certain conditions were satisfied, the fields reclaimed by one's parents or grandparents. Twenty years later, in 743 the central government promulgated a further law promoting reclamation, called konden-einen-shizai-hō (墾田永年私財法) which provided for the succession of

1380-496: The local government system of Daijō-kan , kuni and kōri to meet this need; an owner of shoki-shōen who usually had been assigned by the central government as a kokushi (国司, a head or officer of kuni ) appointed a local chief of the peasants to be a gunji (郡司, a head or officer of kōri ) to recruit and administer labor for the shōen. Medieval or chūsei-shōen are different from shoki-shōen mainly in existence of shōmin (荘民, peasants permanently residing on shōen land) and in

1426-482: The middle of the Nara period , are now called shoki-shōen (初期庄園, lit. "early Shōen"). Shōen of the second type, which continued from the middle of Heian period to the Sengoku period , are called chūsei-shōen (中世荘園, lit. "medieval Shōen"). Note that these names and the distinction between the two are modern concepts, and were not used historically and cannot be found in the historical record. The earliest antecedent of

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1472-444: The middle of the 15th century, when villages became self-governing units, owing loyalty to a feudal lord ( daimyō ) who subdivided the area into fiefs and collected a fixed tax. After the decay of the ritsuryō system, a feudal system of manors developed. Landowners or nameholders commended shares of the revenue produced (called shiki ) to more powerful leaders often at the court, in order to be exempted from taxes and to subvert

1518-993: The outskirts of Tokyo, but by 1947 he had started writing again. His post-war works include New Tale of the Heike , published in the Asahi Weekly (1950), and A Private Record of the Pacific War (1958). On September 7, 1962, he died from cancer-related complications. Four of his books have been translated into English. They are: Translated by Charles S. Terry Translated by William Scott Wilson Translated by Fuki Wooyenaka Uramatsu Translated by Edwin McClellan The Japanese publisher Kodansha currently publishes an 80-volume series: Yoshikawa Eiji Rekishi Jidai Bunko (吉川英治歴史時代文庫), or Eiji Yoshikawa's Historical Fiction in Paperback . Kodansha numbers

1564-435: The permission by Daijō-kan not for temples or shrines but for powerful noble was gradually increased. Kokumen-shō ( 国免荘 ) is shōen allowed exemption from so or other tribute in bempo or binho (便補) system. At that time kuni had an obligation to pay to shōen owner the benefits the amount of which was determined as to his dignity by the central government. Bempo system is a means usually used when kuni could not prepare

1610-511: The power the owner of the shōen had over the shōmin. While shoki-shōen did not have any shōmin and the owner's rule of cultivators was weaker than that of the government, chūsei-shōen had shōmin and most of the cultivators were shōmin, and the shōen owner's rule became more powerful than that of the government. The owner of a shōen could expel peasants who were not obedient to him from the shōen, and could promulgate his own penal codes for criminal offenses or treason in order to ensure this control over

1656-427: The process of receiving donated lands from peasants as kishinchi. In this sense, chūsei-shōen is sometimes called kishinchi-kei-shōen (寄進地系荘園, lit. "estates of donated fields"). Meanwhile, there also appeared shōen which gathered territory by depriving peasants of land ownership. In some cases, shōen owners would demand tribute from peasants cultivating neighboring fields and if the peasants could not pay that tribute,

1702-472: The right to cultivate reclaimed fields in perpetuity. This law resulted in massive reclamation by wealthy people, and this reclamation in turn had a significant impact on the development of shōen . One feature that distinguishes early or shoki-shōen from medieval shōen is their manner of formation. Most shoki-shōen were established by a Buddhist temple or a central noble by obtaining ownership of either of two kinds of paddy fields: those that had existed prior to

1748-496: The serialization of Sword Trouble, Woman Trouble . His name became a household word after Secret Record of Naruto was serialized in the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun ; from then on his writing became much more popular. In the early 1930s, his writing became introspective, reflecting growing troubles in his personal life. But in 1935, with the serialization of Musashi , about famed swordsman Miyamoto Musashi , in

1794-445: The shōen are tatokoro or naritokoro (田庄); which is thought to be one of the etymologies of the term shōen . Before the ritsuryō system or Taika Reform (645), land was divided up between powerful families historically called gōzoku (豪族) or influential Buddhist temples, and they placed facilities called yake (宅) in those lands in order to preside over agricultural management, armament, traffic, and trades. In early documents,

1840-610: The shōen confiscated the fields. In other cases, a peasant could not repay the rent for cultivation rights of shōen land, and the shōen owner who was the cultivator's creditor foreclosed on the cultivator's land rights as substitution of the credit, in which case the peasant became bound to the shōen as a shōmin, rather than a tenant cultivator. This kind of shōen is sometimes called konden-shūseki-shōen (墾田集積荘園, lit, "estates of accumulated fields"). There were several kinds of chūsei-shōen, and each kind of shōen had particular process of achieving exemption from tax: Kanshōfu-sho ( 官省符荘 )

1886-485: The shōen owners, peasants donated the nominal land ownership of the fields they cultivated to shōen owners. These fields, nominally donated to the ownership of a shōen were historically called kishinchi ( 寄進地 , "donated lands" ) . Then the shōen owners who received "donated lands" from the shōmin peasant populace negotiated with the kokushi or directly with the central government and achieved tax exempt status. Most chūsei-shōen gathered vast amounts fields through

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1932-402: The shōmin. That is to say shōen owners, who originally cultivated influence with the government in the capital during the Nara period , came to discard the connection with the central government and to cultivate their power over local peasants. Another distinguishing feature of chūsei-shōen are their exemptions from some kinds of tax imposed by the central government. In the middle or the end of

1978-451: The temple's or noble's ownership; and those that were reclaimed under the order of the temple or the noble which ruled a shōen. Shōen composed primarily of newly reclaimed land characterized shoki shōen, and accordingly shoki-shōen are sometimes called kondenchi-kei-shōen (墾田地系荘園, lit. 'estates of reclaimed fields.'). Another feature of shoki-shōen is annual rental system of paddy fields. There were no permanent inhabitants of shoki-shōen and

2024-417: The terms yake and tatokoro were used almost interchangeably to refer to those administrative facilities, and so tatokoro are thought to have had functions similar to yake . Before long, however, the meaning of tatokoro was extended to represent not only the originally indicated administrative facilities but also the cultivated land which they administrated. New policies of the central government during

2070-548: Was a Japanese historical novelist. Among his best-known novels are revisions of older classics. He was mainly influenced by classics such as The Tale of the Heike , Tale of Genji , Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms , many of which he retold in his own style. As an example, Yoshikawa took up Taiko 's original manuscript in 15 volumes to retell it in a more accessible tone and reduce it to only two volumes. His other books also serve similar purposes and, although most of his novels are not original works, he created

2116-498: Was not admitted by the central government and a contract of bempo became invalid when the term of tenure of the kokushi who contracted was over. However, in most case the new kokushi could not refuse shōen owner's request of continuation of a contract because they felt sorry for accumulated debt of the delinquent benefits, which had not paid while bempo was performed as substitution of payment. Consequently, these fields were established as an area exempt from so or other tribute imposed by

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