Janet R. Goodwin: Learning from Shōen: The Ōbe Estate Project — USC Project for Premodern Japan Studies

USC Meiji University Exchange

The Records of the Meiji University-USC Exchange

Since 2008, scholars and graduate students from Meiji University and throughout Southern California have met annually to share research on Premodern Japanese History at the University of Southern California . This is an archive of abstracts, papers, and materials presented at the exchanges.

Learning from Shōen: The Ōbe Estate Project

by Janet R. Goodwin
Talk given at the Dec. 8-9, 2010 Conference

Using documents dated from the mid-twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, a group of scholars based at USC in the Project for Premodern Japan Studies is examining the socioeconomic and political history of Ōbe Estate (Ōbe no shō), an agricultural estate established in Harima Province in the late Heian Period as a holding of the great Nara monastery, Tōdaiji. This talk presents an overview of findings to date concerning some of those documents and from archaeological investigations, focusing on how a case study of an individual estate can contribute to a greater understanding of broader historical currents during the Heian and Kamakura periods.