Images from the Tokugawa Period: Growth of Population and the
Development of the Merchant Class
Population growth in 1600s:
Early 1600s: roughly 18 million
Early 1700s: roughly 26 million
Rice production:
1600 = 19.7 million koku;
1700 = 30.6 million koku
1800 = 37.6 million koku (Duus, p. 45)
Question:
McClain writes in Chapter 2 about "the three great revolutions that swept across Japan durting the early modern era." (49-50) What were they?
I. Urban Revoilution
The growth in population and the limited gepgraphic landscape meant a substantial urban concentration:
Edo--over 1 million
Kyoto and Osaka each around 500,000
Nagoya, Nagasaki sigificant urban centers, too. Through Nagasaki, the Bakufu regulated foreign trade, too.
II. A Commercial Revolution
Alternate attendance system (Sankin-kotai)--promoted movement of people and
goods up and down Japan.
All this urban growth and population increase supported by:
Advances in Agricultural Technology by such means as:
Double cropping
Improved irrigation
Commercial fertilizers (various types)
Better seeds
Deeper plowing
Better tools
Some consequences:
Growth of interregional and national markets; certain regions had speciality products that they shipped to other parts of Japan and to urban centers.
Daimyo needed CASH for expenses of sankin-kotai and Edo residence so shipped their Rice to Osaka or Edo and then drew cash on its value = proto-banking system
Concentration of rural land in fewer hands and the appearance of new opportunities
in cities operates to swell urban populations. There were literally hundreds
of post stations along the overland routes, and harbor towns along shipping
routes; but the most marked growth was in the large cities such as Edo, Osaka,
Nagoya, Kyoto, etc.
III. Protoindistrialization
McClain uses the term "Protoindustrialization"(60ff) to describe changed patters of agricultural production and marketing in the countryside. "Country workshops were turning out an extensive list of commodities: from silk and cotton fabric to straw hats, paper, tatami mat facing, charcoal, nails and tools, and lacquerware and crockery, as well as such food products as salt, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and miso." (60)
Another historian, Peter Duus, refers to Protoindustrialization as "the
production of goods for distant markets by small groups of workers using traditional
technologies," and he says that it represents "the halting first step
toward mass production for a broad market. It corresponds to what other historians
call 'the stage of commercial capitalism.'" (The Rise of Modern Japan, 48-49)
We are talking about such things as:
--small mills, breweries to make soy sauce, bean paste, sake, vegetable
oil
--rural "putting out" systems for cotton textiles
--mulberry cultivation for cocoon to produce silk
--silk reeling operations
Some Images:
Customers at Echigoya Dry Goods Store
Courtesans in the Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarters
Nihonbashi Bridge in Edo
A very crowded Ryogoku Bridge--spectators gather to observe
fireworks
Images and some materials adapted from Noriko Aso's pages at: