興福寺大乗院領大和国横田庄の均等名

抄録

The fictious, artificial nature of hyakusho-myo (peasant, direct producer-type myo) as a mere unit of taxation directly unrelated to the realities of peasant land ownership and management characterizes the standard understanding of the significance of myo in the Japanese mediaeval land system. The Yokota-no-sho documents collection is one of the very few comprehensive enough to observe basic peasant land ownership and management (hidden behind this myo facade) over the whole of one estate. Moreover in the scholarly literature on myo there is a tendency on the one hand to discuss peasant ownership and management at this same artificial myo level. Such ambivalence should be corrected as quickly as possible. In this short essay the author introduces the results of a survey taken in 1306 at Yokota-no-sho as one concrete case for observing the inner structure of the myo system. He investigates four documents : 1)a register of name and landholding according to area (tori-cho). 2)a listing of holdings in map form (do-cho) 3)an inventory-type listing of landholders and holdings (mokuroku). 4)a register of myo (myo-yose-cho) 1) and 2) are believed to be actual, on the spot survey documents. 3) and 4) are operational items based on the survey documents By a comparative analysis of these operational and survey documents, the author makes the following observations : 1)The ten Kinto-myo of Yokota-no-sho were equally parcelled units of taxation -each containing various forms and scales of peasant land ownership and management. 2)In contrast to these relatively unimportant cadastral characteristics, the chief purpose of the organisation of Kinto-myo on Yokota-no-sho lay in the smooth recruitment and utilization of corvee labor used mainly for drayage between Kyoto and Nara. These results, therefore, cast doubt on the previously held notion that the Kinto-myo system provided a means for taxation of both land and labor on shoen landholdings.