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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
This article expresses some dissatisfaction with the state of interpretation of economic and social trends in Japan during the Tokugawa period from 1603 to 1867. At one time there was a universal view that the Tokugawa economy was stagnant and characterized by extreme oppression of the peasantry. This view has been demolished by the writings of, for example, T. C. Smith, E. S. Crawcour, S. Hanley, Kozo Yamamura and C. D. Sheldon. Yet, it is argued here, much confusion remains after a close examination of these and other works. Crawcour and Yamamura have shown that the financial crisis at the end of the period is closely associated with a sharp deceleration of the spread of commercial transactions, but it is at least arguable that the picture of ‘a happy and prosperous peasantry’ (which is, apparently, derived from T. C. Smith's description of a dynamic, expanding economy in the eighteenth century, with steady growth in agricultural productivity and increased urbanization) has been overdrawn.
1 Crawcour, E. Sydney and Yamamura, Kozo, ‘The Tokugawa Monetary System:1787–1868’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 18, No. 4, Pt I (07 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Nish, Ian, The Story of Japan (London, 1968), p. 68.Google Scholar
3 Smith, Thomas C., The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan, (Stanford, 1959).Google Scholar
4 Bindoff, S. T., Tudor England(London, 1950), p. 8.Google Scholar
5 SirSansom, George, A History of Japan, Vol. III: 1615–1867 (London, 1964), p. 9.Google Scholar
6 Sansom, , A History of Japan, Vol. II: 1334–1615 (London, 1961), App. III, pp. 414–16.Google Scholar
7 Sansom, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 4.
8 Cf. Sheldon, Charles David, The Rise of the Merchant Class in Tokugawa Japan 1600–1868 (New York, 1958), p. 15.Google Scholar
9 Cf. Smith, , ‘The Land Tax in the Tokugawa Period’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (11 1958), p. 5.Google Scholar
10 Sansom, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 38–9.
11 Reischauer, Edwin O., ‘Japanese Feudalism’, in Rushton, Coulborn (ed.), Feudalism in History, (Hamden, Conn., 1965), p. 44:Google Scholar ‘The feudal lords of the coastal fringes of western Japan came to depend on the profits of foreign trade for a major part of their income.’
12 Reischauer, op. cit., p. 27.
13 Smith, Origins.
14 Ibid., p. 210.
15 Ibid., p. 209.
16 Ibid., p. 212.
17 Ibid., pp. 206–10.
18 Ibid., p. 211.
19 Ibid., p. 212.
20 Ibid., p. 150.
21 Even here, Smith shifts from 1700 to 1600 rather arbitrarily: contrast pp. 201 and 211.
22 Professor Toshio Furushima's estimate of 22 per cent, quoted in Smith, Origins, p. 68.
23 See, for example, Crawcour, , ‘The Tokugawa Heritage’, in Lockwood, William W., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1965), p. 25.Google Scholar
24 Smith implies it was much higher than a fifth in the early nineteenth century: Origins, p. 68.
25 E.g. Crawcour, ‘The Tokugawa Heritage’, p. 41.
26 Cf. Taeuber, Irene B., The Population of Japan (Princeton, 1958), pp. 19, 20, 22.Google Scholar Population figures are for commoners only. Samurai and other classes excluded from the Tokugawa enumerations may have numbered anything up to 3 million or so in the 1720s.
27 Cf. ibid., p. 22, and Sansom, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 186–7.
28 Smith, , Origins, pp. 129–30Google Scholar.
29 Crawcour, ‘The Tokugawa Heritage’, pp. 25, 31. The percentage of national income absorbed by taxes is sometimes said to be somewhat higher. See, for example, Hirschmeier, Johannes, The Origins of Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p. 67, where the range is put at 25–30 per cent.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30 The reader is reminded that the area under cultivation is believed to have increased little, if at all, during the eighteenth century. Any increase in agricultural production would, therefore, have depended upon improved yields.
31 Kazushi Ohkawa and Henry Rosovsky, ‘A Century of Japanese Economic Growth’, in Lockwood, op. cit., p. 54 (my italics). Henry Rosovsky reiterated this view in virtually identical words in his paper ‘Japan's Transition to Modern Economic Growth, 1868–1885’, in Rosovsky, H. (ed.), Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron (New York, 1966), pp. 95–6.Google Scholar
32 Although Naotaro Sekiyama's estimate of urban population in the latter half of the Tokugawa period was only 12 per cent or 3·7–3·8 million of a total population of 30 million: Kinsei Nihon no jinkō kōzō (Tokyo, 1958), p. 239,Google Scholar quoted in Hayami, Akira, ‘The Population at the Beginning of the Tokugawa Period’, Keio Economic Studies, Vol. 4 (1966–1967), p. 22.Google Scholar I am grateful to Professor R. P. Dore for drawing my attention to this reference.
33 Ibid., pp. 22–3. Population in 1870 is estimated at 35 million by Hayami.
34 Cf. Dore, R. P., Education in Tokugawa Japan (London, 1965), p. 193.Google Scholar
35 According to Sir George Sansom there were over 1,600 peasant uprisings in the Tokugawa period, ‘mostly occurring after 1730’. Sansom, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 186 n. 2.
36 Cf. Crawcour, , ‘The Development of a Credit System in Seventeenth-century Japan’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXI, No. 3 (09 1961).Google Scholar
37 Cf. Sheldon, op. cit., p. 119. The merchants offered 700,000 ryō which may have been approximately the sum raised.
38 According to Sansom, , op. cit., Vol. III, p. 166Google Scholar, the land tax revenue from the Tokugawa domains reached a peak of 1·8 million koku (about 9 million bushels) in 1744, and declined to about 1·2 million koku in 1770. A koku is regarded as equivalent to one gold ryō at this time.
39 There were cases of total confiscation of a merchant's wealth, e.g. that of Yodoya of Osaka in 1705. See the account in Sheldon, op. cit., pp. 102–4.
40 Dore, op. cit., p. 2.
41 Cf. Hanley, Susan B., ‘Population Trends and Economic Development in Tokugawa Japan: The Case of Bizen Province in Okayama’, Daedalus, Vol. 97, No. 2 (1968), pp. 622–35, esp. p. 631.Google Scholar
42 See table 4 on p. 23 of Taeuber, op. cit.
43 Beasley, W. G., ‘Feudal Revenue at the Time of the Meiji Restoration’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XIX, No. 3 (05 1960).Google Scholar
44 Sheldon, , ‘“Pre-Modern” Merchants and Modernization in Japan’, Modern Asian Studies, 5, 3 (1971), p. 203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
45 Ibid., pp. 199–200.
46 Ibid., p. 200.
47 See Nakamura, James I., Agricultural Production and the Economic Development of Japan 1873–1922, (Princeton, 1966),Google Scholar for a strongly argued case against the view that the Meiji period witnessed a speeding-up of agricultural development. But see also criticisms of the Nakamura thesis in Rosovsky, , ‘Rumbles in the Ricefields’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (02 1968);Google Scholar and Broadbridge, Seymour, ‘The Economic Development of Japan 1870–1920’, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (01 1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
