User:3family6/Sō (Japanese settlement)

The sō (惣) was form of communal village government during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods of Japan. Throughout the period, numerous villages opposed higher forms of government authority and formed independent governments in which the participants pledged mutual aid and self-defense. They have been compared to medieval European communes. Sometimes individual sō combined with others to form sō that spanned a district or even an entire province. Below the sō were sōson (惣村), or "village communes".

History
While most communes emerged in the 14th century and later, along Lake Biwa in central Japan, sō and similar type organizations appeared a century earlier. The earliest documented sō was in Okitsushima dated to 1262. In dispute with the lord of the estate over fishing on the lake, the town council that governed the worship of kami at the local shrine formed a clandestine voluntary alliance against the lord's authority. They formed a league, ikki, to organize communal solidarity. According to the preserved document, anyone violating the compact would be expelled from the village. Almost a century later, another document from Okitsushima in 1342 mentions an assembly of the estate's inhabitants which afterwards formed a procession and shook the "sacred tree trunk" at the local shrine. They invoked the wrath of the spirits against the ruler of the estate, which compelled him to present himself to the procession, apologize for his errors, and make honorable amends. Sugaura, on the northern end of the lake, is another early example. Located on the end of a peninsula whose mountains rendered it inaccessible by land as late as the 1960s, Sugaura relied on fishing and the residents united to defend and extend their fishing rights.

In the 14th through 16th centuries, the period of the Ashikaga shogunate, sō flourished throughout Japan. During the 15th century, the power of the shogun declined, and the shogun's authority fragmented and decentralized. The resulting social instability led to increasing autonomy for many commoners, who formed egalitarian organizations for as long as was needed to achieve their goals. In the aftermath of the Ōnin War, regional communes sprang up, and by the early 16th century similar organizations had formed in Kyoto and in most merchant towns. As sōson formed, they became tax-collecting units, gained their own water rights as opposed to such rights being subject to the local military lord, managed cleared land and forests, and organized self-defense. Sometimes villages allied together to manage resources and water. They also formed leagues for mutual defense. This expansion beyond the traditional confines of the estate meant that the power of landlords evaporated. In other instances, violent conflict broke out when a sōson allied with a landlord or monastery to weaken a neighboring village.

In the Muromachi and Sengoku periods, peasants began abandoning the countryside for the safety of villages. The pattern at Kami Koma in southern Yamashiro, the epicenter of the great Yamashiro revolt in 1485, was typical. Around groups of houses, villagers constructed moats and ditches. Threatened by the danger of invasion from outside armies, villagers left the countryside to bandits and roaming armies, instead allying behind the safety of such defensive fortifications. Councils at the local shrine further strengthened solidarity.

A key to maintaining the cohesion of these village unions was solidarity between the jizamurai, an emergent class of individuals of peasant origin whose wealth and ties to local lords enabled them to claim samurai status, and the lower peasantry. Conflict between the jizamurai and peasants would collapse the union. Rules were discussed and enacted during village meetings and developed into legislation and administration. Of major importance was tax collection. In sō, taxes for maintained and benefitted the community, unlike those collected by estate landlords who kept the funds for themselves. In Sagaura, taxation was levied based on the wealth of a household. The largest households paid 173 mon (文), whereas the rest paid only 85文 and those with only a shack or cabin were exempt. The most important members of a sō paid the highest taxes as they had the most prestigious houses. In Okitsushima, a 1492 law stipulated that anyone who failed to pay tax would forfeit their house and fishing rights and any mountain fields or collective property loaned to them would be confiscated. Sō also took criminal justice into their own hands as well. Punishments typically were harsh, with the most severe crimes being theft, murder, and arson. As theft threatened the existence of the entire community, all but the smallest thefts were punished by death. Kujo Masamoto, a prominent noble who served as regent from 1476 to 1479, was appalled by two incidents on his estate in Hine-no-shō where the residents killed not just the thief but his entire family. Because the military government of Japan conversely viewed theft as a minor infraction, sō disallowed any judgement other than that by the commune. In Sugaura, a sign at the entrance declared that the village was an autonomously governed commune into which the military governor was forbidden to enter.