#111
111. SHIBUYA SHIGEKADO'S RECOGNITION OF A HOLDING, 1363

                            (Okamoto docs.; also KK, VII.)
To whom this letter by the sixth lord of Iriki was addressed is unknown; the former was a devisee
of Jo-Yen, the adopted father of the writer's father and the fourth lord of Iriki.
  To an astute student, this brief and modest document will illustrate several points of capital
interest in the history of Japanese feudal institutions: among others, the remarkable degree of free-
dom shown in the devise and the disposition of feudal holdings within the vassal's family,-which
freedom has already begun to be eclipsed by an advancing rule of primogeniture evolved out of
feudal necessity (cf. No. 97); the same freedom reflected in the ready re-investiture granted by the
lord, which amounted to a mere recognition, conveyed in a written statement, devoid of all for-
mality and symbolism such as characterized the European forms of investiture; and the decline, as
a consequence of the feudal anarchy of the age, of the Kamakura system of go ke-nin, or, a large
body of direct vassals of the shogunate, who now have begun to reorganize themselves in innumer-
able local hierarchies of warriors in small spheres. Within these spheres, clan and family furnish
one of the first principles of the reorganization: the minor members of a family, without renounc-
ing their tenuous allegiance to a suzerain, range themselves below the chief of the kinship-group,
who has come to assume the position of a species of their mesne lord.

    "[SHIGEKADO]  acknowledges1 that the two mura Naga-no and Seyo-mure, in
Naka-mura, Iriki in, Satsuma kuni, were devised to you by Jo-Yen. Accordingly, you
shall hold [them] without interference, unto your children's children. Therefore, for
the future, the statement is [made] thus.
  "Jo-wa 2 y. 5 m. 8 d. [19 June 1363].
                                   Saemon no zho Shigekado, (monogram)."




  1Uketamawaru.