Shōen

A shōen (荘園 or 庄園, shōen) was a field or manor in Japan. The Japanese term comes from the Tang dynasty Chinese term "莊園" (Mandarin: zhuāngyuán, Cantonese: zong1 jyun4).

Shōen, from about the 8th to the late 15th century, describes any of the private, tax-free, often autonomous estates or manors whose rise undermined the political and economic power of the emperor and contributed to the growth of powerful local clans. The estates developed from land tracts assigned to officially sanctioned Shintō shrines or Buddhist temples or granted by the emperor as gifts to the Imperial family, friends, or officials. As these estates grew, they became independent of the civil administrative system and contributed to the rise of a local military class. With the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate, or military dictatorship, in 1192, centrally appointed stewards weakened the power of these local landlords. The shōen system passed out of existence around the middle of the 15th century, when villages became self-governing units, owing loyalty to a feudal lord, or daimyo, who subdivided the area into fiefs and collected a fixed tax.

Shō En

Shō En (尚圓)(1415–1476, r. 1470–1476) was a king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, the founder of the Second Shō Dynasty. Prior to becoming king, he was known as Kanamaru (金丸).

Early life and rise to power

Kanamaru was born into a family of peasant farmers on Izena Island, a tiny island which lies off the northwestern coast of Okinawa Island. It is said that his parents died when he was around twenty and undertook to provide for his aunt and uncle, brother and sister, and his wife, whom he married at a very young age.

In one year in which the island had suffered from a particularly severe drought, the rice patties of Kanamaru's family were found to be full of water; accused of having stolen the water, Kanamaru was forced to flee his home, and ended up in Ginama, in the northern region (Kunigami) of Okinawa Island.

After several years living in Ginama, there too some type of dispute or disagreement between Kanamaru and his neighbors emerged. Leaving Ginama, he traveled to Shuri, the capital of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, in 1441, and became a servant or retainer to the prince, Shō Taikyū. After Shō Taikyū became king in 1454, Kanamaru was made royal treasurer, and was in 1459 granted the post of Omonogusuku osasu no soba (御物城御鎖側), a position involving responsibility for matters regarding foreign relations and trade. He was also granted territory, and made Lord of Uchima (内間御殿, Uchima-udun).