development of
the manor system, and thus the State revenues suffered dual
reduction.

During the last quarter of the tenth century peremptory edicts were
issued to check this state of affairs, but the power of the Court to
exact obedience had then dwindled almost to cipher. History records
that during the Ho-en era (1135-1140), the regent Fujiwara
Tadamichi's manor of Shimazu comprised one-fourth of the province of
Osumi. On these great manors, alike of nobles and of temples, armed
forces soon began to be maintained for purposes nominally of police
protection but ultimately of military aggression. This was especially
the case on the shoen of the puissant families of Taira and Minamoto.
Thus, Minamoto Yoshitomo came to own fifteen of the eastern
provinces, and in the tumult of the Heiji era (1159-1160), he lost
all these to Taira no Kiyomori, who, supplementing them with his own
already large manors and with the shoen of many other nobles and
temples, became owner of five hundred districts comprising about
one-half of the empire. Subsequently, when the Minamoto crushed the
Taira (1185), the whole of the latter's estates were distributed by
the former among the nobles who had fought under the Minamoto
standard.

In that age the holders of manors were variously called ryoshu,
ryoke, shoya, or honjo, and the intendants were termed shocho, shoji,
kengyo, betto, or yoryudo, a diversity of nomenclature that is often
very perplexing. In many cases reclaimed lands went by the name of
the person who had reclaimed them. Such manors were spoken of as
myoden (name-land), and those owning large tracts were designated
daimyo (great name), while smaller holders were termed shomyo. Yet
another term for the intendants of these lands was nanushi-shoku.

It will be readily seen that in the presence of such a system the
lands paying taxes to the Central Government became steadily less and
less. Thus, in the reign of the Emperor Toba (1108-1123), the State
domains administered by the provincial governors are recorded to have
been only one per cent, of the area of the provinces. In these
circumstances, the governors deemed it unnecessary to proceed
themselves to their posts; they remained in Kyoto and despatched
deputies to the provinces, a course which conspired to reduce the
authority of the Crown.

For the sake of intelligent sequence of ideas, the above synopsis
makes some departure from the chronological order of these pages.
Re