抄録
A re-examination of the origins of feudal power in Tokugawa Japan is urgently needed in order to understand the feudal system of this period. The seventeenth century, which is thought of as the first stage in the history of the han system, is divided into two periods. In the first half the feudal vassals were originally organized by kinship relationships for the purpose military power. In the second half, however, they were reorganized into a bureaucracy. Taking the Suwa clan, a small fudai han in Shinshu, as an example, this article examines this process of reorganization of the feudal retainers mainly through two economic and institutional changes: l) the unification of feudal dues into rent inkind; 2) and the change in the military system. Thus the author describes the transition from fief (jikata chigyo) to stipend (horoku) with the accompanying increase in the number of vassals dependent upon the lord for their income, the diversification and institutionalization of the bureaucracy, and enlargement of the ban financial base. Although such a transition was an inevitadle process in the history of the feudal system in the second half of the seventeenth century, it by no means meant a change in the basic character of the retainer system which had been established in the first half of the centuy.
