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The Japanese Village in the Seventeenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Thomas C. Smith
Thomas C. Smith
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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As in the Middle Ages in the West, so in Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868) men were fond of explaining the hierarchical society in which they lived by comparing it to an organism. Social classes, Confucian scholars said, were like parts of the body: each had a vital function to perform, but their functions were essentially different and unequal in value. In this scheme the peasants were second in importance only to the ruling military class. Just as the samurai officials were the brains that guided other organs, so the peasants were the feet that held the social body erect. They were the “basis of the country,” the valued producers whose labor sustained all else. But, as a class, they tended innately to backsliding and extravagance. Left alone they would consume more than their share of the social income, ape the manners and tastes of their betters, and even encroach upon the functions of other classes to the perilous neglect of their own. Only the lash of necessity and the sharp eye of the official could hold them to their disagreeable role. They had to be bound to the land; social distinctions had to be thrown up around them like so many physical barriers; and, to remove all temptation to indolence and luxury, they had to be left only enough of what they produced to let them continue producing.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Winter 1952 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1952

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References

1 Norman, E. Herbert, Japan's Emergence as a Modern State; Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period (New York, 1940), pp. 49–70Google Scholar, argues that this support came primarily from the big-city merchants such as Mitsui. He cites as evidence particularly the loans made to the Meiji government in the critical years 1868 and 1869. However, these were forced loans of the kind merchants had long been accustomed to make at the order of any government powerful enough to require appeasing; they do not necessarily imply approval and support of the restoration government Indeed, as late as 1866 the merchants made very large loans to the shogunate itself. Meiji ishin keizaishi kenkyū, ed. Eijirō, Honjō (Tokyo, 1930), p. 359 ff.Google Scholar, and Nihon keizaishi jiten. (Tokyo, 1942), I, 596–97Google Scholar. Moreover, in the years immediately after 1868, the Meiji government did not show the degree of solicitude for the special interests of the great merchant houses that one would expect if merchant backing had been voluntary at the time of the restoration. (1) It promptly abolished the elaborate Tokugawa system of trading privileges of which these houses had been the chief beneficiaries; (2) it repudiated about 80 per cent of the enormous debts owed to them by its predecessors, the shogunate and the han; and (3) it adopted financial policies that were directly responsible for the bankruptcy, within seven years of the restoration, of Ono and Shimada, two of the three greatest merchant houses of the time, both of which had contributed heavily to the loans of 1868 and 1869. Kamekichi, Takahashi, Nihon shihon shugi hattatsu shi (Tokyo, 1929), p. 89 ff.Google Scholar; and Nihon keizaishi jiten, I, 181, 742; II, 1351.

2 Throughout the Tokugawa period the term hyakushō was used in two senses: broadly, to designate the peasantry in general; technically, to mean a peasant who was enrolled in the land register. It is in the latter sense, as a synonym for landholder, that the term is used in this paper.

3 Nihon keizaishi jiten, I, 947–48.

4 The fullest discussion of the evidence bearing on this subject is Toshio, Furushima, Kinsei nihon nōgyō no kōzō (Tokyo, 1948), I, 1–55Google Scholar; for the author's conclusions, see pp. 50–55.

5 Ibid., p. 465 ff.

6 There was no uniformity in Japanese land measure until the first part of the seventeenth century when the chō was generally stabilized at the present 2.45 acres. Even so, some local differences persisted, and complete uniformity was not achieved until the reform of the land tax in 1874. Nihon Keizaishi jiten, II, 1067.

7 Gorō, Fujita, Nihon kindai sangyō no seisei (Tokyo, 1948), p. 218Google Scholar. It should be added that the minimum figure would be smaller for central and southern Japan where cultivation was more intensive and agriculture more commercialized.

8 In the Tokugawa period the land tax was a percentage of the taka, or value-yield of the holding as expressed in koku of hulled rice.

9 Shōgen, Kitajima, “Echigo sankan chitai ni okeru junsui hōken no kōzō,” Shigaku zasshi, LIX, No. 6 (June, 1950), 19–20.Google Scholar

10 Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, II, 522. [For notes 11 through 24, see Table I.]

11 Toshiyuki, Toya, Kinsei nōgyō keiei shiron (Tokyo, 1949), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

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13 Kitajima, p. 26.

14 Furushima, , “Edo jidai ni okeru Kinai nōgyō to kisei jinushi,” Rekishi gaku kenkyū. No. 144 (March, 1950), p. 3.Google Scholar

15 Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, II, 594.

16 Shōnosuke, Nakamura, Nihon kosaku seido ron (Tokyo, 1936), p. 147.Google Scholar

17 Kitajima, p. 9.

18 Hisashi, Suzuki, “Kinsei nōson no ichi keitai,” Rekishi gaku kenkyū, No. 149 (January, 1951), p. 37.Google Scholar

19 Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, II, 594.

20 Fujita, Nōminzō, pp. 190–91.

21 Furushima, “Kinai nōgyō to kisei jinushi,” pp. 8–9.

22 Furushima, , Hōken jidai kōki no nōmin no seikatsu (Tokyo, 1948), p. 240.Google Scholar

23 Ibid.

24 Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, II, 593.

25 Kyūgū, Tanaka, “Minkan shōyō,” Nihon keizai sōsho, ed. Seiichi, Takigawa (Tokyo, 1914–17), I, 280–81.Google Scholar

26 For evidence on the living standards of various groups in the village, see Toyokichi, Koseki, “Hansei jidai ni okeru nōson ni kansuru seisaku to nōmin no seikatsu,” Tosa shidan, No. 44 (September, 1933), pp. 92–128Google Scholar; Hisao, Sekijima, “Tokugawa matsugo no nōson jinushi no shōhi seikatsu,” Shakai keizai shigakti, XII, No. 9 (December, 1942), 69 ff.Google Scholar; and Tarō, Kakayama, “Nōmin no kaikyū to minzoku—Edo jidai wo chūshin to shite,” Minzoku gaku, IV, Nos. 10 and 11 (October and November, 1932).Google Scholar

27 For examples of such comment, see Yoshimasa, Kobayashi, Nihon shihon shugi no seisei to sono kiban (Tokyo, 1949), p. 18Google Scholar; and Fujita, , Kinsei ni okeru nōminzō kaikyū bunka (Tokyo, 1949). p. 91.Google Scholar

28 Not infrequently the existence of distinct economic classes in the village was explicitly acknowledged. Eiichi, Hone, Hōken shakai no okeru shihon no sonzai keitai (Tokyo, 1949), p. 87Google Scholar; and Hideichirō, Nakamura and Kōki, Asada, Nihon shihon shugi shakai keizai shi (Tokyo, 1949), pp. 86–87.Google Scholar

29 On the recent warrior status of many wealthy peasants in the early Tokugawa period, see Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, I, 125–26, and Kazoku keitai to nōgyō no hattatsu (Tokyo, 1949), pp. 101–02Google Scholar; Kitajima, p. 4; Fujita, Kindai sangyō, p. 200; and Toranosuke, Nishioka, “Kinsei shōya no genryū,” Shigaku zasshi, XLIX, No. 2 (February, 1938), 3–4.Google Scholar

30 Kichiji, Nakamura, Kinsei shoki nōsei shi kenfyū (Tokyo, 1938), p. 255.Google Scholar

31 “Ichiryō gusoku” or “ichiryō ippiki,” literally, “one holding and armour” and “one holding, one horse.”

32 I do not refer to gōshi, or warriors, who, while remaining on the land, retained samurai rank; but to former warriors who were incorporated in the peasant class. The best discussion of the separation of the warrior and peasant classes is Ono, , Nihon heinō shiron (Tokyo, 1943), pp. 131–54Google Scholar. A detailed and important study of the application of this measure in Kai Province is Tasaburō, Itō, “Iwayuru heinō bunri no jisshō-teki kenkyū,” Shakai keizai shigaku, XIII, No. 8, 1–50Google Scholar; on warriors being dropped into the peasant class, pp. 31–32, 39, 45–48.

33 Nishioka, p. 14.

34 Furushima, , Nihon hōken nōgyō shi (Tokyo, 1941), pp. 125–27Google Scholar; and Fujita, Kindai sangyō, pp. 240, 247

35 The Nihon shoki or “Chronicles of Japan” was compiled in 720 and was written in the Chinese language. While it purports to be an authentic record of early Japanese history, it is in fact a skillful blending of myth and history in such a way as to enhance the prestige of the imperial family. This amalgam was later used by the restoration leaders as historical justification for their revolutionary activities; thus, interest in this text is as much a comment on political outlook as on literacy.

36 This information is taken from the diary of a headman from a village near Niigata. The diary is dated 1867, considerably after our period, but appreciation for a book like the Nihon shoki was not likely to have come from less than several generations of literacy. Parts of this extremely interesting diary are published in Tatsuji, Fuse, “Tokugawa matsugo nengu shūnō no kunan wo egaita Edo kikō,” Shakai keizai shigaku, VII, No. 4 (July, 1937), 106–17 (esp. 111–12).Google Scholar

37 Nishioka, p. 14.

38 Kizaemon, Aruga, Nihon kazoku seido to kosaku seido (Tokyo, 1943), pp. 223–24.Google Scholar

39 Nishioka, No. 3, pp. 76–77.

40 Even if there were not an imposing array of cases to support this view (and none, to my knowledge, contradict it), we would be assured of its accuracy by a Bakufu law of 1673 stipulating that a holding could not be divided among heirs unless it were valued at more than 10 koku in the case of an ordinary peasant and at more than twice that figure in the case of a headman. Furushima, Hōken nōgyō, p. 109.

41 Ibid., p. 127.

42 In the light of other evidence bearing on the social origins of the village headmen, it is significant that the most common title they bore in the Tokugawa period, nanushi, was written with the same two Chinese characters as myōshu, and that shōya, the only other title that had wide currency, in the Kamakura period referred to an officer of the shō. (On the significance of the shō, see n. 43.)

43 The shō was an institution that emerged after the eighth century with the gradual decline of the imperial government. It first appears after land had been nationalized in the seventh century, simply as a piece (or pieces) of privately owned land that had been separated by one means or another from the public domain. Later, as the power of the government failed, the shō became tax free and immune from the police power of the government. And new shō were continually being formed, until by the Kamakura period (1185–1333) scarcely anything remained of the public domain. The titular possessor of the shō at this time was usually a court noble or a Buddhist temple through whose influence the shō had won and continued to maintain its immunities and who drew revenues from its lands. The real possessors, however, were the local officials who managed the shō and held land within its confines. These landholders, or myōshu, had already armed themselves and had developed among themselves an intricate system of military relationships. Thus, at the height of its development, the shō was being transformed into a fief, a transformation that was completed during the protracted civil war that began in the fourteenth century.

44 Mitsuo, Shimizu, Nihon chusei no sonraku (Tokyo, 1942), p. 29 ff.Google Scholar

45 Nishioka, No. 2, pp. 3–4.

46 The Documents of Iriki: Illustrative of the Development of the Feudal Institutions of Japan, ed. Asakawa, K. (New Haven, 1929), pp. 336–37Google Scholar; and Shōnosuke, Nakamura, Nihon kosaku seido ron (Tokyo, 1936), I, 196 ff.Google Scholar

47 Rintarō, Imai, “Kinsei shotō no okeru kenchi no ikkō-satsu,” Shakai keizai shigaku, IX, No. 11 (March, 1940), pp. 116–21.Google Scholar

48 The evidence bearing on the population outside the land registers is summarized in Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, I, 3–25.

49 Nakamura, Nihon Kosaku, pp. 147–48.

50 Kaheiei, Mori, “Kinsei nōmin kaihō no shakai keizai shiteki igi,” Nōmin kaihō no shiteki kōsatsu, ed. shigakkai, Shakai keizai (Tokyo, 1948), p. 70.Google Scholar

51 Arbitrary dispossession was not possible in the case of tenants called buntsuke hikan. For historical reasons that are not wholly clear, such tenants had exceptionally strong claims to the land they worked, and the landlord could only liquidate their claims by purchase. But this type of tenant has been found only in a few places, and even there in relatively small numbers. Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, II, 497.

52 Ibid., p. 594.

53 Furushima, , “Edo jidai ni okeru nōgyō to kisei jinushi,” Rekishi gaku kenkyū, No. 144 (March, 1950), pp. 13, 15.Google Scholar

54 Fertilizer was intensively used throughout the Tokugawa period. Surviving budgets show that in some cases as high as 34 per cent of the total outlay of peasant households went to buy fertilizer. Horie, pp. 58–59. However, the peasant provided most of his fertilizer himself, the chief sources being compost in the form of grass and leaves gathered from the common and manure from animals grazed on the common. Dried fish and night soil were also important. Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, I, 133–38, 183.

55 Ibid., pp. 183–94.

56 The house laws and shop rules of most merchant families contained sections on the proper relationship between employer and employee; for examples, see Mataji, Miyamoto, Kinsei shōnin tshiki no kenkyū (Tokyo, 1942), pp. 125–26, 139–41, 146–47, 166–68.Google Scholar

57 Nihon keizaishi jiten, I, 183.

58 Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, II, 480.

59 Zōri: a particularly elegant type of straw sandal; haori: a type of coat, again very elegant; wakizashi: a dagger worn at the side.

60 Shōji: sliding doors usually made of a fine, translucent paper mounted on a light wooden frame and used as partitions between rooms.

61 Mori, pp. 65–68.

62 See particularly an undated document from the Tokugawa period in Nakamura and Asada, p. 107.

63 A convenient short discussion of this subject may be found in Hone, pp. 37–67.

64 There was a spectacular growth of urban population at the end of the seventeenth century: Edo grew from 353,000 in 1692 to 553,000 in 1731; Osaka from 345,000 in 1692 to 382,000 in 1721; and there was a proportionate increase in the population of port cities, castle towns, and stations along the main routes of overland travel. Furushima, Hōken nōgyō, p. 304, and Nōgyō no kōzō, II, 611. There is convincing evidence that this growth was owing primarily to the influx of population from rural areas. A census of Edo in 1721 showed a ratio of 100 men to 53 women, suggesting a heavy immigrant population in the city (ibid.). There were constant complaints from local officials at this time of a serious shortage of agricultural labor which they attributed to the movement of people from the villages to cities and towns. Yoshinobu, Oda, Kaga han nōsei shikō (Tokyo, 1929), p. 578.Google Scholar

65 For evidence on rising costs, see Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, II, 603–16. Regarding the causes of this rise: (1) the rapid expansion of commerce and industry created constant new demands for labor and materials; (2) more and more food was required to support the expanding urban population; and (3) hardpressed feudal lords were continually resorting to various forms of currency inflation to meet their financial difficulties.

66 So it would seem, at least, for it was not until after the Genroku era (1688–1703) that the writers of Jikata no shu, a kind of textbook on agricultural management and administration, took much notice of the newer type of tenantry; by the late eighteenth century, however, such books were concerned with little else. Furushima, Nōgyō no kōzō, II, pp. 602–03, 605.

67 The scanty direct evidence we have on the economy of the tenant under this type of management shows him existing on an incredibly small agricultural income, sometimes not more than one koku annually. The evidence on this point is summarized by Toya, pp. 352–57.

68 When, after the restoration (1868), tenants were given full legal equality, many of them submitted pledges to their landlords swearing not to abuse their new rights, “never to forget the way of master and follower,” and binding their “children and children's children” to observe this pledge. For the text of such pledges, see Mori, p. 67. That these pledges were often observed, in some cases down to very recent times, was revealed by a series of field studies of landlord-tenant relations in the 1930's, the findings of which are summarized in Yoshinaga, Irimajiri, Nihon nōmin keizaishi kenkyū (Tokyo, 1949), pp. 401–48Google Scholar. To cite but one case in point: in Ekari village, Iwate Prefecture, the tenants of M., in addition to paying rent on their holdings and houses, owed him an average of eighty workdays a year, and each tenant family was under the obligation to send two sons for one year each and two daughters for two years each to work as servants in M.'s household (p. 407).

69 Since this type of tenant is clearly the product of the intrusion of money economy in the village, it is found most commonly in the more economically advanced regions—the area along the Inland Sea and in the vicinity of cities and towns.

70 Nihon keizaishi jiten, I, pp. 470–71.

71 Among others: zusa, fudai, shojū, hikan, zōnin.

72 Fujita, Nōminzō, pp. 190–91.

73 See the figures for twelve villages in Shinano Province in Oichirō, Ichikawa, “Edo jidai no noka no jinteki kōsei no henka,” Rekishi gaku kenkyū, No. 147 (September, 1950), pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

74 For figures showing this decline in various villages, see: Furushima, “Kinai nōgyō to kisei jinushi,” p. 10; Ichikawa, p. 34; and Suzuki, pp. 40–41.

75 For this view, Masajirō, Takigawa, Nihon shakai shi (Tokyo, 1946), pp. 214–15Google Scholar. Takigawa's study of family registers of the Nara period suggests that somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent of the population at that time were slaves. Ono, , Nihon shōen-sei shiron (Tokyo, 1943), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

76 Takigawa, p. 219.

77 Aruga, p. 354 ff.

78 Nobutaka Ike has emphasized the role of the wealthy peasants in the restoration, particularly those who had interests in rural industry. The Beginnings of Political Democracy in Japan (Baltimore, 1950), pp. 11–21.Google Scholar

79 The evidence on this point has never been treated systematically, to my knowledge. There is, however, a good deal of very important scattered evidence; see particularly, Shigeki, Tōyama, “Sonno jōi shisō to nashanarizumu,” Sonjō shisō to zettai shugi, ed. kenkyūjo, Tōyō bunka, (Tokyo, 1948), pp. 28–30Google Scholar; and Sōgorō, Tanaka, Meiji ishin undō jimbutsu kō (Tokyo, 1941), pp. 111–31.Google Scholar