ABSTRACT
T HE Japanese court of the eleventh and twelfth centuries ruled a state that seemingly had no army. The elaborate provincial military organization established by the ritsuryo ~tfj) legal system at the beginning of the
eighth century had been discarded; peasant conscripts returned to their fields. This excision in part facilitated and was in part facilitated by the birth and rapid growth of a new class of professional fighting men in the countryside. From the ninth century onward, the court, without a soldiery of its own, increasingly depended on the members of this class to act as its 'teeth and claws' in the provinces. Provincial warriors were commissioned with new military titles that legitimized their use of private martial resources on behalf of the state.
