The Engi Manor Regulation Decree and Piracy

     The social background of the missing links between Fujiwara Sumitomo (?-941) and the Murakami Pirates dates back, as a matter of course, to Sumitomo’s days.  What started from the time was to issue manor regulation decrees.

     On March 13, 902, or in the second year of Engi, about 4 decades before Sumitomo rebelled as the first pirate king in Japan, the first manor regulation decree was issued by Emperor Daigo (885-930).  In 901, Sugawara Michizane (845-903) had been shunted to Dazai-fu, Kyushu, by Fujiwara Tokihira (871-909).  The power games among central powerful clans were getting fierce.

 

     In the decree, local people were forbidden to donate their lands to central powerful noble clans, or to central powerful temples or shrines.  In other words, some local powerful families had become wealthy enough to employ, or powerful enough to enslave, hobos and tramps.  And they developed new manors.

 

     The decree also required manor owners to hold and succeed official written permits for the ownership.  It prohibited central powerful noble clans, temples, and shrines illegally occupy the wilderness and develop manors.  Thus, the central government tried to regulate illegal manors, requisition them, and increase, or at least secure, state-owned rice paddy fields and the taxes from them.

 

     The contradiction was that the central government itself was run by royal families and central powerful noble clans, who also produced provincial governors and provincial high-ranking officials, and practice levy work was often carried out by local powerful families who were local lower-ranking officials.  The both sides were fighting for their share of rice taxes.  Some types of local power struggles against the central was considered to be piracy.