In standard accounts of medieval Japanese society,enormous stress is put on the conflicts betweenlocal landholders (zaichi ryōshu)and absentee proprietors. Fuelled by the debate onfeudalism that divided scholars up until the early1990s, these conflicts have widely been recognisedas proof of the diminishing powers of the centralelite in, or near, Kyoto and of the increasingabsorption of power by warriors in both thecountryside and in the administration of themilitary government, the bakufu.The conflicts were, in other words, seen in thestructural context of a system of huge landedestates (shōen) owned by courtnobles or large religious institutions, which weregradually replaced by much smaller proprietary unitscontrolled personally by individual warriorfamilies.