ABSTRACT
Japanese villages, appeared for the most part, during the latter half of the middle ages. Historians have therefore pictured the evolution of rural life during the middle ages as following a fairly simple pattern, progressing from a domain-based society with scattered settlements to a village-based society with concentrated settlements. It is the beginning of the twentieth century that historians have begun to show any interest in a social history of medieval Japan that increasingly included villages and rural life. With the beginning of the medieval period, Japanese society entered a phase of economic expansion and increasing trade. With the introduction of a cash economy in the Kinai region, the small amounts of capital accumulated by peasants were forwarded to the great religious institutions, which controlled a large number of moneylenders and sake brewers. These wealthy institutions began to reinvest the capital they had amassed through usury, by buying up the land of peasants and low ranking warriors around Kyoto.
