In Japan, where property was divided equally among the sons, why did the Kamakura period see a departure from the "ancestral tradition" and a change to the eldest son's inheritance?

Inheritance is a way of perpetuating a society's identity, rank, position, property, etc., and it can also be used to see how a society has changed in certain ways. As we all know, China in the 14th century was a feudal society and a period of patriarchal rule, and for such families blood relations were extremely important.

Therefore, the distribution of a family's property was to be done in an even-handed manner. Until the 21st century, the distribution of property has remained the same, based on blood ties. Unlike Japan, which had learned its systems, laws, and culture from China, Japan practiced the same system of equal distribution of family property among the sons as China did before the Shogunate era, but why did the inheritance of property in Japan evolve from the distribution of property among the sons to the inheritance of the eldest son in the late 14th century?

I. Poverty and bankruptcy under the traditional system of inheritance

The idea of equalization first sprang up in China's pre-Qin Dynasty, and ancient Japan was influenced by China, which had long practiced ? dualism? system of inheritance, in which succession and property inheritance coexisted, was the institutional basis for decentralized inheritance. It was also the first inheritance system practiced in Japan. Japan, after the Daika Reform, studied the various systems of the Tang Dynasty in China and how to establish a legal system. In terms of the inheritance system, they also learned from the equalization system of the sons of our country.

The Pension Order? Household Order" recorded? Anyone who should be divided, family members, slaves and maidservants, fields, houses and materials totaled for the law. The first mother, stepmother and first son of two points, one point, the wife's family income, not in the sub-limit, the death of a brother, the son of the father points, the brothers are dead, the son of all equal points? And the drawbacks of this system are becoming apparent as it persists over time.

During the Shogunate period, Japan produced a new system of master-slave relationships, similar to today's civil servants. This was a class of people, mainly samurai, who obeyed their lord and performed various duties, and were paid by the lord they served. In this case, many samurai families were divorced from their original means of production? land,so their main source of property was the wages paid to them by the lord.

If a family had several children, this property would have to be divided. It would result in poverty for everyone, and in severe cases, the survival of that warrior family. And for those peasant families who lived off the land, they also faced the possibility of poverty and bankruptcy if the land was divided.

Japan after the Daika Reform practiced a system of equal division among the sons; but as the family estates were divided smaller and smaller among the descendants, many families in Japan went into extinction, and by the late fourteenth century, with the advent of the Muromachi period, the family governor system of succession was beginning to be established.

The disintegration of the traditional system of inheritance and the establishment of the tutelary system of inheritance and the succession of various classes

The so-called tutelary system of inheritance is in fact the system of primogeniture practiced in Japan in the period of feudal society. The first son of the family is called the family governor. However, in Japanese society, this system is not the same as that of the "family governor", which means that the family governor is the eldest son of the family. The family governor is the eldest son of the family, and in Japanese society, the family governor is not just the eldest son. In Japanese society, the tutor is not only the eldest son, but also the head of the family and his rights. It is said that the economic base determines his political status and influence.

How to grasp the economic power, Japan's internal economic and political contradictions gave the answer. Unlike our country's division of property by the sons, the economic basis of Japan's division of property by the sons was the public ownership of land, which sowed the seeds of division at the very beginning. Throughout time, from the Banta Collection and Grant Law to the Dabo Ruling to the Kenda Eternal Private Property Law, Japan's public ownership of land was gradually privatized and a new model, the manor system, was formed.

1. The private ownership of land, represented by the manor system, was the economic foundation of the family governor inheritance system

Japan has been practicing the Bantian collection and granting law since 646 A.D. This is an imitation of the Tang Dynasty's tenancy modulation and equalization of fields. The rent modulation?

Japan has been practicing the Banten system since 646 A.D., which was modeled after the Tang Dynasty, where peasants were required to pay rent and taxes, serve as laborers, and contribute local specialties, and the government was required to enforce the Dabo Ritual.

The peasants under the Bantian system were overburdened, and the people under the Dabao Laws were already fleeing the country. Faced with this situation, the government changed its strategy, so? Bantian Collection and Authorization Law? was changed into the "Law of Collecting and Granting Bantian". The "Law of Collecting and Granting Bantian" was changed into the "Law of Eternal Private Wealth of Kendian". which recognized the right of private ownership of the cultivated land within a certain range, so that the people could be more active in production and labor, and even cultivate a larger amount of land.

This law broke the system of public ownership of land. In the 10th century AD, the Bantian law was no longer practiced due to the small size of the country and the annexation of land, and the formation and development of private ownership of land led to the manorial system. In the social relations of the manor system, the main form of expression was the master-slave relationship of the family. And this main form of expression is the land.

Toward the end of the Heian period, the emperor was weak and the nobles were in power. In order to strengthen the economic power of the Shogunate, Minamoto no Yoritomo and the Shogunate encouraged the people to cultivate the land and expand the area under cultivation. In order to ensure that the family could continue to live in peace and security, the inheritance of property was also changed from being divided equally among the sons to being inherited by the eldest son, which was a disguised way of determining the master-slave relationship of the family, with the eldest son as the leader and the commoner son as the subordinate. At the same time, it also laid the economic foundation for the eldest son to develop the family business. (from the "World Mirror Copy"), it is aware of the harm of the sons of the division of property, Japan abolished the system of the sons of the division of property, and the implementation of a strict system of inheritance of the family governor (eldest son). In other words, one son (usually the eldest son) inherited the family business and property rights, and also inherited all or most of the family property, avoiding the division of property.

2. The crisis of the family of chief lords advanced the footsteps of the family governor succession system

Bakufu politics took the master-slave relationship as the basic principle of the regime composition, and family-based rule as the basic form.? The family relationship was the social foundation on which the Shogunate existed? (The master-slave relationship of the Shogun? The imperial family? The non-mperial family's retainers? (the ronin party, the ronin follower),? Clanism was an important feature of Shogunate politics. （It was a family relationship between the head of the family, the head of the family, the head of the family, the head of the family, and the head of the family. The concubine (sub-family)? (follower).

The Kamakura Shogunate ruled the imperial family using the chief chief system, where the chief chief, representing the clan, was responsible to the Shogun for military duties and the management of estates and kokuga, etc. He assigned tasks to a commoner son, who would then aggregate his services to the Shogunate, who rewarded him with land and paid him a salary based on his contributions.

During the period of the Kamakura Shogunate, the manorial system of land was more common, but the system of inheritance of property remained unchanged. In the chieftaincy to the family, the chieftaincy was inherited by the eldest son, but the property was still divided equally among the sons.

This kind of distribution not only dispersed the power of the family, but also undermined the authority of the chief. Without an economic base, the rule over his family was reduced, and the other sons of the common people were disobedient or refused to fulfill their obligations.

With the establishment and consolidation of the Kamakura Shogunate,? Kanto, especially among the samurai of Sagami and Izu and Musashi, there were few ?who had not been given territories throughout the country. They took Saikoku and other places like ? Shinnen? to their sons, whose heirs then lived far away from the ? the main domains? and away from the "chiefdom". the chiefdom. The sons of the sons of a concubine became the equivalent of the clan. After a period of time, the sons of the commoners also became the equivalent of the Sokei in the status of the Gokujin.

The Shogunate also had to recognize this reality when it came to recognizing the status of the domain and the family, and it issued a certificate of recognition. Letters?

The Shogunate also had to recognize this reality when recognizing the status of the domain and the imperial family and issued a certificate of recognition. The Shogunate was also forced to recognize this reality when it recognized the status of territories and imperial families, and issued writs of mandamus and fudo. Around the time of the establishment of the Muromachi Shogunate, the commoner's son had already built up the strength to compete with the chief, and the chief and the commoner's son were evenly matched within the clan, so that the chief no longer had absolute authority, and the chief's system was collapsing.

The most direct and effective way to save the chieftaincy from the crisis was to strengthen the economic base of the chieftaincy. In this way, the system of inheritance had to be changed from decentralized succession of the sons to sole succession of the eldest son. Those who were not heirs either went out to earn a living or became dependent on the head of the family.

The economic base determines the future direction of a family, and the system of succession to the family governor was created to prevent the family's strength from being weakened, and to maintain the authority of the head of the family in order to maintain the stability of the family. The inheritance of property is the most direct manifestation of this.

3, the inheritance of property under the governor's system of succession

The property under the governor's system of succession needs to follow the principle of primogeniture, to avoid non-heirs to share, but in the actual implementation of the process, it will be found that different strata of the different ways of distribution, so that the primogeniture is still universal.

First of all, the tutelage system did not appear in the samurai class until the Edo period, and for the samurai family, the main economic source was the salary, which was also used to measure its political status. Problems in the distribution of property could very easily lead to the bankruptcy and demise of a clan, which was not a minor issue. Therefore, in general, samurai families would strictly enforce the system of primogeniture.

Secondly, for the vast majority of peasants who owned land, land was the means of production and livelihood, and the distribution of land also affected the fate of a family.

How to dispose of a small amount of wealth is the problem, the simple and easy way is to inherit from a single son, which can prevent the fate of bankruptcy, then the choice of non-heirs is only to rely on the parents or go out to earn a living. For peasant families, bankruptcy was not an option, so the choice of heir was not fixed, but the vast majority chose the eldest son.

Finally, the townsmen (merchants and craftsmen) differed from the samurai and peasant classes in that their property was not inherited by the eldest son alone. The townsmen were basically large families, and their property was distributed in such a way that the integrity and continuity of the family was not jeopardized, and that there was a relationship of mastery and subordination between the main family and the subfamilies. Although there is no single person who inherits property in a machinist's family, the eldest son has priority, and this is irrevocable.

The family succession system preserved the strength of the original family and maintained the stability of the family, while at the same time stimulating the potential of the non-heirs within the family to achieve another level of success.

Three, summary

Before the Shogunate era, Japan practiced the same system of equal division of family property among the sons as in China, but as the family property was divided into smaller and smaller shares by the descendants, many family estates went into extinction. Realizing the social harm of the division of property among the sons, the Shogunate abolished the system of division of property among the sons and implemented the system of inheritance by the eldest son. The first-born son inheritance system was introduced. which avoided the fate of dividing the family power, and this is also the reason why the inheritance in Japan in the late fourteenth century evolved from the division of property by sons to the primogeniture.