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The Land Tax in the Tokugawa Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Thomas C. Smith
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Extract

Few notions are so widely held among students of Japanese economic history as the view that the land tax during the Tokugawa period was cruelly oppressive. It is thought to have left the peasantry no significant surplus after production costs, and moreover to have become heavier as time passed. I propose in this paper to examine certain evidence bearing on this view, which strongly influences the interpretation of modern Japanese history.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , November 1958 , pp. 3 - 19
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1958

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References

1 Representative statements of these views may be found in Toya Toshiyuki, Kinsei nōgyō keiei shiron (Tokyo, 1949), pp. 13–73; and Kajinishi Mitsuhaya et al, Nihon ni okeru shihonshttgi no hattatsu (Tokyo, 1951), I, 13–23.

For help in collecting material for this article, I wish to express my gratitude to Professors Andō Seiichi, Egashira Tsuneharu, Harada Toshimaru, Harafuji Hiroshi, Tokoro Mitsuo, and Yasuzawa Shunichi. I am also indebted to the Rockefeller Foundation and the Social Science Research Council for support in gathering these and other materials. Finally, I wish to thank Professor William Capron for advice on statistical problems, and Professor Herman Chernoff for arranging for the computations.

2 Chiefly by the development of new plant varieties and more intensive fertilization. Furushima Toshio, Nihon nōgyō gijutsushi (Tokyo, 1950, 2nd ed.), Vol. I.

3 It is exceedingly difficult to estimate the increase in the proportion of urban population, but some notion of its size is suggested by the fact that total population was nearly stationary from 1711 to 1748 but the population of towns and cities continued to grow. Edo grew from 353,000 in 1693 to 864,000 in 1801, and Osaka from 345,000 in 1692 to something over 400,000 near the end of the eighteenth century. See Sekiyama Naotarō, Kinsei nihon jinkō no kenbyū (Tokyo, 1948), pp. 231—232; also Furushima Toshio, Kinsei nihon nōgyō no kōzō (Tokyo, 1943), p. 611.

4 This is not implausibly high, as the following quotation shows: “To illustrate, a project just now getting under way in India indicates that, for a set of 6 representative case-study farms in 2 districts in Uttar Pradesh … an addition of Rs. 321 cash expenditures per farm, mostly spent on fertilizer and seeds, would add Rs. 1,219 or 77 per cent to the gross value of output per farm.” John D. Black, review in the American Economic Review, XLVII, No. 6, (Dec., 1957), 1033–34.

For increments in productivity during the Tokugawa period, see Goto's figures on rice yields between 1787 and 1856 in Aid Province; Gotō Yōichi, “Jūku seiki Sanyo nōson ni okeru tōnō keiei no seikaku,” Shigaku zasshi, LXIII, No. 7 (July 1954), 12. Also Imai's estimates for a holding in Settsu Province. Imai Rintarō, Hōken shakai no nōgyō kōzō (Tokyo, 1955), p. 47.

5 This is obvious since in this, as in most menjō, old fields (honden) and new fields (shinden) listed separately.

6 The land tax is thought to have been generally more oppressive in such fiefs than in the small, fragmented fiefs in the Kinai. The reason is that the warrior class in the former had virtually no other important source of revenue and was in a stronger political and military position against the peasantry.

7 By “surplus” is not meant, of course, what was left after all necessary expenses—that is, savings; but the difference between what was left after taxes now and earlier, whether used for savings or not.

8 The only exception was the relatively few warriors known as gōshi, who lived on the land instead of in casde-towns; gōshi typically held land which they worked in part with the labor of neighboring peasants and were a survival from an earlier period. They were to be found chiefly in Satsuma, Tosa, and Chōshū.

9 Villages too far away to provide labor and animals were taxed in money or kind for the support of posting stations; such taxes were included in kornono-nari.

10 Yanagida Kunio, Nihon nōminshi (Tokyo, 1931), p. 21.

11 Tanaka Kyūgū (1662–1729) expressed the standard reaction to official corruption when he described it as stealing from one's lord, going on to say: “If an official accepts a bribe of 1,000 gold pieces, it will infallibly cost the treasury 10,000.” “Minkan seiyo,” Nihon keizai sōsho, I, 394.

12 Items of komono-nari expressed in money have been dropped since no index exists for converting them to units of rice; but in all cases the money payments dropped were infinitesimal and remained so during the entire period covered by the data.

13 That is, the documents announcing the land tax did not stipulate that any part of it was to be paid in money. This omission seems the more significant since in comparable documents from at least one other village payments in money were stipulated. See documents on Nagatake Village, Meiji University.

14 This does not mean of course that the “surplus” would actually have been used for that purpose, especially if unevenly distributed.

15 Typical is a village document from what is now Tottori Prefecture. “Since opportunity for by-employments is abundant in the countryside,” it tells us, “labor is scarce and there are many villages which suffer year after year because, owing to want of labor, they are late finishing the planting.” Mihashi Tokio, “Edo jidai ni okeru nōgyō keiei no henkan,” in Miyamoto Mataji (ed.), Nōson kōzō no shiteki bunsek (Tokyo, 1955), p. 16. Also, Furushima Toshio, Shōhin seisan to kisci jinushi-sei (Tokyo, 1954), p. 88; Nomura Kanetarō (ed.) Mura meisaichō (Tokyo, 1949), pp. 26, 736; Oda Kichinojō (ed.) Kaga han nōsei shikō (Tokyo, 1929), p. 578; Minkan seiyo, pp. 260–261.

16 Kan Kikutarō, “Matsuyama han ni okeru jomen-sei no kenkyū,” Shakai keizai shigakii, XI, No. 8 (Nov. 1941), 54.

17 Tomizawa* family documents.

18 Postface of the waritsuke-chū for 1693.

19 For instance, in 1754, all holders paid a tax of 1920 koku of rice per tan on top-grade upland, 1610 on middle grade, 1320 on low grade, and 500 on residential land.

20 But one cannot be absolutely sure; it is possible that both a purchase (or sale) and a reassessment of land took place in such a way as to obscure the latter. For example, it is conceivable that in 1761 the 0197 of lower upland referred to earlier was not sold but regraded, let us say, as middl e upland, and that this does not show in our data because in the same year exactly the same amount of middle upland was sold. This of course is highly unlikely when one figure only has changed during the year, but it is less improbable when several have changed.