With the backing and authority of the Kamakura bakufu, jito could (and many did) treat shoen very harshly; given their total contractual power over shoen to collect the predetermined amount for the annual tax regardless of whether it had been a good or a poor harvest, and their power forcibly to divide the land in a shoen into the jito's private section and the (absentee) owner's section, many jito were oppressive and little more than tyrants, in a sense.