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farmer 農民 noomin, hyakushoo 百姓
Edo no noogyoo 江戸の農業 farming business in Edo
At the end of the Edo period, there were about
6-7% samurai,
80-85% farmers,
5-6% merchants and craftsmen,
1.5% priests for Shinto and Buddhism - - - and
1.6% Eta and Hinin.
shinookooshoo 士農工商 Shinokosho
the four social classes of
warriors, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants
. mibun seido 身分制度 status system .
under construction
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Farming villages were communities with strong ties and special rules (
mura no okite 村の掟）to make sure there were enough hands during the peak seasons of rice planting and harvesting. This could not be done by just one family.
The system of "five are a group", goningumi 五人組 had a leader for each group.
The headman of a village was also called this way, or 長(おさ)百姓.
The villge headman had special duties and was payed by the village and by the government.
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asobi-bi 遊び日 official holiday
There were official holidays for farmers, about 50 at the end of the Edo period, where they could relax, come together to eat and drink and make merry. They could smoke pipes and dance along.
- source : kousyou.cc/archives
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mura no okite 村の掟 village regulations
まず、江戸時代に作られた種々の法や掟を紹介します。領主法の例として幕府から出された高札と五人組帳前書、そして前橋藩から出された「白砂弁振」を展示しました。また民衆法の例として、村掟、領主からの命令に反対した掟、古着仲間の掟、若者の掟を挙げました。連名連印（人々が掟を守ることを誓約した署名捺印）の形式の違いにも注目してみてください。
source :www.archives.pref.gunma.jp
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noogu 農具 tools of the famrmers
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Differences in simple farming tools, for example the hoe, which was simply flat in Tohoku and tree-pronged in Okayama, from where it soon spread all over the country.
Bitchu guwa 備中ぐわ hoe from Bitchu ( now Okayama)
More go come !
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shinden kaihatsu 新田開発 developing new farming land
The development of new farming land was pushed by the government (to get more taxes) but also by the farmers themselves, to get more space for extra cash crops to sell for money. Some regions soon developed crops that fit their land and climate, like daikon radishes, millet or cotton.
The taxing system (nengu 年貢) for farmers was hard, but they usually got half of the rice harvest for themselves to feed the large family.
kemihoo 検見法 / 毛見法 kemiho law about taxes from farmers
midori hoo 見取 (みとり) 法 - taxes were usually fixed for each village.
joomenhoo 定免法 jomenho, 年貢徴収法 during years with bad harvest the taxes were lowered.
Shogun Yoshimune introduced this.
. Tokugawa Yoshimune 徳川吉宗将軍 (1684 - 1751) .
kemi refers to the ears of the rice plant
also called
tachige たちげ【立ち毛 / 立毛】.
検見坪刈
For the
kemi inspection, a group of officials came to each village in mid-autumn to check the rice fields and make estimates on the harvest. This was popular in the early Edo period.
But a lot of bribes also made their way in the pockets of the inspectors too.
Later, with the
joomen inspections, the taxes were fixed for five years.
New assesments could be made in years with adverse weather conditions and a bad harvest.
. Taxes and their kigo .
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tsubure 潰れ declaring bancruptcy
A farmer in need could declare bancruptcy, hand his land to the village chief and head for Edo to find a better life.
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warichi 割り地 / 割地 land distributing system
Land was regularly rotated to make sure places in sunny good positions or places in dangerous near a river on slopes, or shady parts were used by a different farmer every year.
- quote
Warichi or wari-chi, literally "dividing the land",
is the process of land redistribution practices of arable land and communal management that become common during the early modern era (seventeenth to nineteenth-century) in Japan. It was often used as means of spread the impact of flooding in villages that suffered from flood hazards. The practice continued into at least the 1980s by tenant unions. It is an expression of and an important influence upon the make up of Japanese society.
Villages which practiced warichi periodically reassigned lands to local farmers. The process used unbiased and random techniques, including lottery groups (kuji kumi), to ensure that all families would receive a similar proportion of good and marginal lands. Families were then allowed to dispose of their rights as they saw fit, e.g. buy, sell, rent, bequeath or inherit. The cultivation rights were equivalent to stock shares in a village agricultural corporation. Preparatory surveys for this redistribution could take months.
Some land was excluded from the process, and might be given to village or district officials, or allowed to lie fallow. In the Tokugawa period, other land of minimal use, such as a mountain or an island, was saved for individuals facing unforeseeable circumstances and in this way, the system worked as an insurance policy for villagers.
Landed was not distributed on a per capita basis but had alternative social functions such as, e.g. controlling risk, providing incentives to encourage participating in other village projects, reducing social conflict, maximizing tax payment. The system was seen to have worked most effectively where they were locally implemented rather than when local government administrators attempted to force them.
The system declined due to new laws in Modern Japan encouraging the privatization of arable land.
© More in the WIKIPEDIA !
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. Ishikawa Eisuke Ishikawa 石川英輔 .
大江戸えころじー事情 - 石川英輔
Sustainability in EDO (1603-1867)
Japan in the Edo Period - An Ecologically-Conscious Society,
("O-edo ecology jijo" )
quote
Japanese rice farming was inseparable from the surrounding nature.
In other words, it was a combined output of neighboring forests, rich soil produced by the forests, and abundant water that contains natural fertilizing elements and micronutrients gradually discharged from the soil.
Farmers knew that Japanese rice fields could yield crops of about 70 percent of its full capacity even if the fields had not been manured. The secret of this harvest was the inflow of natural fertilizers from the mountains and forests. Rice is a more efficient crop than wheat, potatoes, and others as it needs less manure. The reason why Japan could maintain a large population of 30 million in a mountainous small country was that the staple diet of the Japanese was rice.
Wet rice cultivation could be continued for a thousand years in the same place, because irrigated paddies constantly took in organic fertilizing elements and micronutrients, while the water flow washed away toxic substances.
In cities where all excrements were used as manure, the inflow of wastewater to rivers was very limited, so that river water running through large cities across Japan was relatively clean. It is said that until around 1872, the water of the Sumida River (*1) was clean enough to be used for making tea on pleasure boats.
source : Chapter 5
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quote
Edo - Increasing self sufficiency
A balanced integration with the wider ecosystem was crucial for long-term survival. Centuries of small-scale farming and forestry around Japanese villages resulted in a kind of hybrid natural-artificial landscape known as satoyama.4 A word that today evokes an idyllic, rural lifestyle, satoyama are usually defined as coppice woodlands maintained in a sustainable equilibrium with adjacent paddy fields and human communities. Forests were regularly, judiciously thinned and the wood used for charcoal and construction. The inedible straw left over from the rice harvest was turned into coats, hats, footwear, bags, embedded into clay walls as reinforcement, woven into tatami mats for floors and used as fuel for fires.
Ultimately, everything was returned to the earth, whether directly or as ash after being burned. The main source of fertilizer was ‘night soil’ (human excrement), often collected directly from residences by farmers who paid for it in cash or crops. It was valuable stuff: dealers set up warehouses, landlords argued with their tenants over ownership and farmers became connoisseurs— different neighborhoods commanded different prices and the best excrement was used for cultivating the highest grades of green tea. One side effect was cities that were extraordinarily clean by medieval standards (no one would pour potential wealth out the window, European-style). Equally important was the daily reminder that humanity was intimately, necessarily connected with the cycles of nature.
Unsurprisingly, a society of reuse and recycling is not good for business. Without constant disposal and demand for new products, the economy stagnates
source : www.japaninc.com/mgz85 - Thomas Daniell
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- - - - - H A I K U and S E N R Y U - - - - -
- Farmers Work in all seasons - kigo
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Farmers work in Spring
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Farmers work in Summer
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Farmers work in Autumn
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Farmers work in Winter
gyogyoo 漁業 fishing business
. Fishing Methods .
. matagi マタギ bear hunters .
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. Japanese Architecture - cultural keywords used in haiku .
. - Doing Business in Edo - 商売 - Introduction .
. senryu, senryū 川柳 Senryu poems in Edo .
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