Local Administlation of Bakufu Feudal Territories in Shinano Province : The Role of Ukeoinin

Abstract

The research done to date on the development of regional society during Japan's late premodern period has understood the process in terms of three stages ; 1)an initial stage in which political control was entrusted to local powers called dogo 土豪;2)the second stage marked by a system of autonomous village communities(kumiai-mura 組合村)and their representative headmen(sodai-shoya 惣代庄屋);and 3)a final stage in which powers from the outside strongly intervened in local politics through reforming the kumiai-mura and installing overseers. Here, focus has been placed on a slight hiatus between the first and second stages and emphasis put on the transformation of the sodai 惣代 administration system, while little attention has been given to the place of the establishment and development of ukeoinin 請負人(subcontractors)in the periodization scheme. In the present article, the author concentrates on this latter point in taking up the case of Bakufu territories in the province of Shinano 信濃. After the replacement of local powers who ruled the region as Bakufu-appointed functionaries by a more bureaucratic deputy system established during the seventeenth century, in the second stage, administrative headquarters called jinya 陣屋 were built throughout the region to facilitate supervision by officers(tedai 手代)dispatched by provincial functionaries. The author holds that the objective of the order abolishing shoya village headmen in 1713 was to eliminate special privileges held by locally based deputies since medieval times, in favor of ukeoinin who headed jinya-controlled villages. While these sub-contractors formed a continuum with locally-based deputies, they had no special privilege or power to prevent the loss of their positions through the removal and transfer of jinya to some other jurisdiction. During the middle of the eighteenth century, these ukeoinin were the ones who were made responsible for the work of local administration under the local daikan(goyo 御用)and administration of autonomous villages(gunchuyo 郡中用); however, as the so-called "democratization" of village administration extended to the local level, during the third stage, after administrative positions called sodai 惣代 were set up on the village and provincial district level, a system by which people in these positions could supervise ukeoinin came into being. Soon the duties of former gunchudai 郡中代 were assumed by the district sodai, and their appointment changed from inheritance to yearly appointments based on the revolving goyado 郷宿 system of lodging Bakufu officials. As a result of the research done in this article, it has become necessary to study the establishment and evolution of the gunchusodai system from the viewpoint of its relationship to ukeoinin.