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How Did Samurai Actually Gain Control of the Japanese Countryside? - Jitō, Shugo, and the Transformation of the Medieval Japanese Estate | Sleepy Facts About History
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In 1180, the Japanese countryside was a crowded mosaic of overlapping claims. Aristocrats in Kyoto, temple officials, imperial governors, and local cultivators all held documented rights to the same patches of earth. When Minamoto no Yoritomo established the Kamakura shogunate after the Genpei War, he did not simply sweep this complex system away to create a conventional feudal state. Instead, the new warrior government inserted military stewards and provincial governors into the existing…
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