Hyoro-ryosho (grant areas for the support of troops in the field) (兵粮料所)
Hyoro-ryosho were areas of land set aside during the medieval period and devoted to producing rations and provisions (specifically, rice) for soldiers.
During the military campaigns, launched under and during the Ritsuryo system (a system of centralized government based on the ritsuryo code), to subjugate the Ezo (or Ebisu) barbarian peoples of northeastern Japan, the various eastern provinces were permitted to pay their taxes (of rice) in the form of supplying the expeditionary troops with provisions. During the Genpei War (the twelfth-century war between the Minamoto and Taira clans), the Kawachi Genji (the Minamoto clan) and the Taira family each asked various provinces to shoulder the burden of supplying their armies with provisions. In 1185 (the first year of the Bunji era), MINAMOTO no Yoritomo, seeking to establish a system of Shugo (provincial constable) and jito (manager and lord of manor), was granted the Bunji Imperial Sanction to do so, simultaneously obtaining the authority to collect five sho (measures) of rice, for the purpose of supplying troops, from each tan (section) of each rice paddy on shoen (manor in medieval Japan) and Kokugaryo (territories governed by provincial government office) alike. Resistance among provincial governors and the lords of shoen was fierce, however, so the following year this authority was revoked. After the Jokyu War, the authority of the Kamakura bakufu (Japanese feudal government headed by a shogun) to collect provisions for the troops from both Bizen and Bicchu provinces was recognized.
Upon entering the period of the Northern and Southern Courts, the Muromachi bakufu, which championed the Northern Court, issued Hanzeirei (order allowing military governors, or Shugo, to collect half of the taxes from manors and demesnes as military fund) on the pretense of keeping the army provisioned; the law recognized the authority of Shugo (provincial constable) to levy a half-tax (50% of all rice) annually on all private estates and public territories. The territory to which this Hanzeirei applied, or in other words the territory called hyoro-ryosho, was initially limited to the eight provinces involved in the fiercest fighting, but the Southen Court, to counter this move, introduced their own system of separating out a portion of rice for use by the court and its adherents, so that Hanzeirei gradually spread until it eventually covered the entire country, until the hyoro-ryosho were in actuality absorbed into the territories of each shugo.