Japanese village in the Edo period

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During the Edo period , Japanese villages ( Japanese 村 , mura ) were separate administrative units that were administered by a village mayor ( 庄 屋 , shōya ). There were two types of villages: farming villages, which mainly grew rice, and fishing villages. The villages were taxed collectively. Taxes were collected from the daimyo in kind, about 40% to 50% of the rice harvest. The fishing villages began to levy money taxes because the fish could not be stored.

Before the beginning of the Edo period, the villages were owned by feudal lords, the samurai . During the warring states , a long period of civil wars, the peasants were also armed in order to serve their masters in the wars and to defend themselves against the wandering looters. The unions from Oda Nobunaga tried to disarm the farmers and outlaw gangs and to pacify the country. Therefore, several sword hunts were organized by him and his successors . His successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi , who reorganized the feudal system with the Han , and finally Tokugawa Ieyasu , who abolished the lowest level of the feudal pyramid and finally disarmed the country: All land was now in the hands of the daimyo , with the exception of the Hatamoto and less land samurai . The samurai were brought to the castle towns and made paid employees. The village leaders took over the village administration.

Villages were not only viewed as a single entity for tax purposes, it also happened that the entire village community was punished for a crime committed by one of its members.

Cooperation was essential in the village. In contrast to cereal cultivation, wet rice cultivation requires extensive work on the irrigation systems, which a village can only regulate together. This became proverbial in the two out of ten: Anyone who was isolated in the village community was only helped with the two largest of the ten disasters: fire and the death of a relative. These are also the two cases in which the village community would endanger itself if they did not rush to help: a fire would quickly spread to the whole village, just as in the thought world of that time a restless ghost of a deceased would spread the whole village puts in danger.

economy

The villages also formed a unit economically: In western Japan in particular, a publishing system was developed during the Edo period to keep the farmers busy in winter and to provide an additional income to compensate for the high tax burden. For example, in a village that made lacquer bowls, it might look like one family carved the bowls, another polished, a third made the lacquer, and other families applied different coats of the lacquer. The villages mainly produced everyday objects, while the craftsmen in the castle towns specialized in handicrafts, which were particularly popular with the nobility.

The economic situation of the peasants varied during the Edo period. In Tohoku (Northern Japan) the conditions for the farmers were difficult: the colder climate was less suitable for growing rice, and more resistant rice varieties had to be bred. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the so-called Little Ice Age caused annual temperatures that were one to two degrees below today's. There were only a few cities, so that the farmers had no sales markets and pure subsistence farming was practiced. In addition, there was a higher tax burden compared to western Japan. It is estimated that the population in northern Japan declined slightly due to famine and even targeted infanticide during the Edo period.

The supply situation was better in western Japan. The climate not only allowed high-yield rice cultivation, some farmers also specialized in fruits or vegetables, which resulted in a division of labor in agriculture. The land distribution was effectively regulated by the Honbyakusho system. Numerous cities emerged along the Seto Inland Sea , which became prosperous trading centers. Educated samurai stewards gathered and developed new cultivation methods that were propagated through the agriculture scriptures . The above-mentioned publishing system spread to western Japan. The daimyates in Kyushu earned money from foreign trade, which was severely restricted by the Tokugawa shogunate , but was not completely prevented, which would have been impossible.