ABSTRACT
One of the most important land management institutions in pre-1600 Japan was the shoen. Shoen were provincial landed properties, homes to cultivators engaged in agricultural production and obligated to pay part of their produce to local managers and absentee proprietors. On most Heian period shoen, a resident estate manager (shokan, gesu, or azukari dokoro) supervised the estate's daily operation. The shoen system worked effectively to provide income for temples such as Toji and for aristocrats including the Fujiwara regents' family. One factor in the imperial family's success in gaining rights to shoen had to do with a new way of creating them: commendation. From the mid-fourteenth to the late sixteenth centuries, the shoen declined for several reasons. Reasons are Warriors became ever bolder in appropriating provincial income and ignoring the concerns of traditional proprietors; cultivators took advantage of the growing economy to assert their independence; proprietors began losing control of their estates.
