ABSTRACT
Under the system that emerged during Japan's late classical era, authority remained thoroughly centralized, and administrative rights over lands and peoples in the provinces were grounded in centrally sanctioned titles, known as shiki. Warriors, whether defined as landowners, specialists in military arts, or as loci of patronage relationships connecting capital to countryside, remain a central focus of studies of local autonomy. To emphasize the importance of its warrior retainers, and to ensure access to manpower and provisions, Kamakura designated those warrior families who elected to follow the regime's founder, Minamoto Yoritomo, as gokenin. Akutō have become prominent in the historiography of Kamakura-era territorial disputes and the growth of local lordship in medieval Japan. Village studies have long been prominent in scholarship on late medieval autonomy. Narratives of medieval Japanese local autonomy bestow verdicts on the relationships between centers, peripheries, and narratives of national history.
