Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:33:22.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Arable Land as Commons

Land Reallocation in Early Modern Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Philip C. Brown
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The origins and role of corporate landholding and land redistribution practices over arable land in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Japan have posed a quandary for scholars. The most common forms are widely seen as means to spread the impact of flooding among villagers in districts that are considered to be at great risk from flood hazards. Such conclusions are often based on individual village studies. In contrast, this study takes a regional approach and tests the validity of this relationship using geographic information systems technology experimentally. This experiment reveals a variety of anomalies that, taken together, suggest that any link between natural hazard risk and the presence or absence of redistribution practices is more subtle than typical explanations assert.

Type
Special Section: The Commons and Collective Property in Cross-National Perspective
Information
Social Science History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , Fall 2006 , pp. 431 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2006 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Shunsui, Aono (1982) Nihon kinsei warichi sei shi no kenkyū. Tokyo: Ozankaku Shuppan.Google Scholar
Naohiro, Asao, Shun’ichi, Uno, and Migaku, Tanaka (1997) Kadokawa shinpan Nihon shi jiten: Waido-ban. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten.Google Scholar
Berry, Mary Elizabeth (1986) “Public peace and private attachment: The goals and conduct of power in early modern Japan.” Journal of Japanese Studies 12: 237–71.Google Scholar
Bird, Isabella (1984 [1880]) Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (1987) “Land redistribution schemes in Tokugawa Japan: An introduction.” Occasional Papers of the Virginia Consortium for Asian Studies 4: 35–48.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (1988) “Practical constraints on early Tokugawa land taxation: Annual versus fixed assessments in Kaga domain.” Journal of Japanese Studies 14: 369–401.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (1993) Central Authority and Local Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern Japan: The Case of Kaga Domain. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (1994) “Kinsei no warichi seido.” Kyodo shimpojiumu II (Niigata-ken, Yoshikawa-machi Kyōiku Iinkai, November): 35–37.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (1996a) “Dividing the land: Corporate agricultural landholding as an expression of Japanese conceptions of parity and equity,” in Kyoto Conference on Japanese Studies, 1994, vol. 3. Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies / Japan Foundation: 74–81.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (1996b) “Warichi seido no atarshii shiten e.” Kyoto sangyō daigaku Nihon bunka kenkyū kiyō 2: 169–78. (English summary at 450–52.)Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (1997) “State, cultivator, land: Determination of land tenures in early modern Japan reconsidered.” Journal of Asian Studies 56: 421–44.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (1999) “Warichi seido: Soto kara mita omoshirosa, naka kara mita fukuzatusa.” (Kokuritsu bungaku kenkyū shirōkan) Shiryōkan kenkyū kiyō 30: 161–227.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (2001) “Warichi to wa nani ka? Nihon ni sonzai shite mō hitotsu no tochi seido no keifu.” Kan: Rekishi, kankyō, bunmei (Kan: History, Environment, Civilization) 6: 244–53.Google Scholar
Brown, Philip C. (2002) “Harvests of chance: Corporate control of arable land in early modern Japan,” in Richards, John (ed.) Land, Property, and the Environment. Oakland, CA: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press: 38–70.Google Scholar
Feeny, David, Hana, Susan, and McEvoy, Arthur F. (1996) “Questioning the assumptions of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ model of fisheries.” Land Economics 72: 187–205.Google Scholar
Toshio, Furushima (1939) “Warichi seido ni kansuru bunken.” Nōgyō keizai kenkyū 16: 134–62.Google Scholar
Hardin, Garrett (1968) “The tragedy of the commons.” Science, n.s., 162: 1243–48.Google Scholar
Hauser, William B. (1985) “Osaka Castle,” in Mass, Jeffrey P. and Hauser, William B. (eds.) The Bakufu in Japanese History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 153–72.Google Scholar
Jansen, Marius B. (2000) The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Madoka, Kanai, ed. (1985) Dokai kōshū ki. Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu ōraisha.Google Scholar
Toshio, Kikuchi (1977) Shinden kaihatsu. Tokyo: Kondo Shoin.Google Scholar
Chiriin, Kokudo (1990) The National Atlas of Japan. Tokyo: Japan Map Center, Geographical Survey Institute.Google Scholar
Lewis, Karen Wigen (1985) “Common losses: Transformation of commonland and peasant livelihood in Tokugawa Japan, 1603–1868.” MA thesis, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
McClain, James (2002) Japan: A Modern History. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
McKean, Margaret A. (1985 [1982]) “The Japanese experience with scarcity: Management of traditional common lands,” in Bailes, Kendall E. (ed.) Environmental History: Critical Issues in Comparative Perspective. Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 334–59. (Originally published in Environmental Review 6: 63–88.)Google Scholar
McKean, Margaret A. (1986) “Management of traditional common lands (iriaichi) in Japan,” in Panel on Common Property Resource Management, Board on Science and Technology for International Development, Office of International Affairs, National Research Council (eds.) Proceedings of the Conference on Common Property Resource Management, April 21-26, 1985. Washington, DC: National Academy Press: 533–89.Google Scholar
McKean, Margaret A. (1992a) “Management of traditional common lands (iriaichi) in Japan,” revised and updated in Bromley, Daniel, Feeny, David, McKean, Margaret A., Peters, Pauline, Gilles, Jere, Oakerson, Ronald, Ford Runge, C., and Thomson, James (eds.) Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy. San Francisco: Institute of Contemporary Studies: 63–98.Google Scholar
McKean, Margaret A. (1992b) “Success on the commons: A comparative examination of institutions for common property resource management.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 4: 247–81.Google Scholar
Kaoru, Nakada (1904) “Echigo kuni warichi seido.” Kokka gakkai zasshi 18, no. 205: 51–76; 18, no. 206 27–63.Google Scholar
Shi, Niigata Iinkai, Shi Hensan, ed. (1993) Niigata shi shi, Shiryō hen 4. Niigata: Niigata-shi.Google Scholar
Shi, Niigata Iinkai, Shi Hensan (1997) Niigata shi shi, Tsūshi hen 2. Niigata: Niigata-shi.Google Scholar
Tsunetaka, Oishi (1976) Jikata hanrei roku. 2 vols. Tokyo: Kondō Shuppan.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pallot, Judith (1999) Land Reform in Russia, 1906–1917: Peasant Responses to Stolypin’s Project of Rural Transformation. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Ravina, Mark (1999) Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, John, ed. (2002) Land, Property, and the Environment. Oakland, CA: ICS.Google Scholar
Roberts, Luke S. (1998) Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century Tosa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Thomas C. (1959) The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mitsutoshi, Takayanagi and Rizō, Takeuchi, eds. (1976) Nihon shi jiten. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten.Google Scholar
Reiji, Tochinai (1936) Kyū Kaga-han denchiwari seido. Tokyo: Mibu Shoin.Google Scholar
Totman, Conrad (1993) Early Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Troost, Kristina Kade (1990) “Common property and community formation: Self-governing villages in late medieval Japan.” PhD diss., Harvard University.Google Scholar
Troost, Kristina Kade (1997) “Peasants, elites, and villages in the fourteenth century,” in Mass, Jeffrey P. (ed.) The Origins of Japan’s Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 91–112.Google Scholar
Ginzo, Uchida (1921) Nihon keizai shi no kenkyū. Tokyo: Dōbunkan.Google Scholar
Yamamura, Kozo (1981) “Returns on unification: Economic growth in Japan, 1550–1650,” in Hall, John Whitney, Keiji, Nagahara, and Yamamura, Kozo (eds.) Japan before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500 to 1650. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 327–72.Google Scholar