著者
山中 恭子
出版者
公益財団法人 史学会
雑誌
史学雑誌 (ISSN:00182478)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.90, no.10, pp.1481-1519,1618, 1981-10-20 (Released:2017-10-05)

Officially sealed orders (印判状) issued by the sengoku daimyo Go-Hojo can be divided into two distinct forms : those issued directly by the daimyo himself (直状式) ; and those which expressed the daimyo's wishes and were issued by his underlings (奉書式). In this essay, the author, as a result of an investigation into the particular characteristics of these two forms of sealed documents, is led to the following conclusions. First, the sealed orders issued by the daimyo's underlings, in principle, were issued on an individual basis to endow special rights and privileges. The attainment process for this type of order involved initial application to an underling who would in turn petition the daimyo himself. Therefore, this kind of order could only describe exceptional cases and not the general conditions of the time. Indeed, this form of document can be thought of as reflecting the reverse side of general conditions. In the case of sealed orders issued by the daimyo himself, issuance was not made through the petition of underlings, but rather at the initiative of the daimyo. This kind of order can be found distributed in multiplicate over a very wide area. Therefore, it can be considered as a form of document reflecting directly wide-spread, general historical realities. In this way, the positions of these two forms viv-a-vis historical reality can said to be in a state of 180° opposition. In other words, in the case of the sealed orders issued by the Go-Hojo during the Sengoku period, by simply ascertaining the form of a particular document, one can know whether it expresses general social conditions or exceptional cases. This presents an extremely fortunate set of circumstances for the historical researcher.