In standard accounts of medieval Japanese society,
enormous stress is put on the conflicts between
local landholders (zaichi ryōshu)
and absentee proprietors. Fuelled by the debate on
feudalism that divided scholars up until the early
1990s, these conflicts have widely been recognised
as proof of the diminishing powers of the central
elite in, or near, Kyoto and of the increasing
absorption of power by warriors in both the
countryside and in the administration of the
military government, the bakufu.
The conflicts were, in other words, seen in the
structural context of a system of huge landed
estates (shōen) owned by court
nobles or large religious institutions, which were
gradually replaced by much smaller proprietary units
controlled personally by individual warrior
families.