Abstract
The purposes of this paper are to investigate the role of medium-sized towns in the labour market of Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867), with respect to both supply and demand, and to consider the factors determining labour migration to towns from the farming villages surrounding them. Kōriyama was the political and economic centre of the County of Asaka in northeastern Japan, and thus it enjoyed a high volume of both traffic and regional trade during the Tokugawa era. The town played a significant role in absorbing surplus labour from the 41 outlying villages that together comprised Asaka. Labour migration to Kōriyama fell into two categories: meshimori onna (young women who served food and in many cases acted as sex workers); and men and women from the County of Asaka who worked in households or household businesses as hōkō labour for renewable periods of one year. Migration of hōkō labour to Kōriyama was determined by proximity to the town, and by the economic condition of the village of out migration. As time went by and Kōriyama’s economic importance grew, large-scale merchants came to prefer day labour to hōkō labour. This reduced short-term hōkō migration to Kōriyama and encouraged permanent relocation, becoming a major factor in the town’s increase in population.
This chapter is a translation of an article that originally appeared in Shakai Keizai Shigaku 65 (6) (March 2000), pp. 43–62.
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Notes
- 1.
For information about the historical background to these registers, see Hayami (1979).
- 2.
Before that, there were forms of hereditary servitude (fudai hōkō).
- 3.
In 1655 Nihonmatsu issued a provision against debt bondage-type hōkō migration outside the domain. This explains why there was hardly any out migration from Nihonmatsu (Kōriyamashi 1972).
- 4.
This section uses the Xavier Data for Kōriyama compiled by Professor Hayami, which has a starting date of 1729.
- 5.
Nihonmatsushi (1982).
- 6.
The period counted here refers to continuity of status within a household as recorded in the NAC. For example, if the status of someone who had been recorded as a maid was changed to “wife”, only the number of years spent as a maid was counted. When there were gaps in the actual records, the possibility of a temporary interruption in service was disregarded.
- 7.
The figure for the last period appears to be smaller because the period is shorter.
- 8.
The Kōriyama NAC show that a number of such officials did not come as hōkō labourers but were registered as having moved permanently or as tenants, and lived with their families. A number of the households formed in this way went on to employ hōkō labourers in Kōriyama.
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Acknowledgements
This study would not have been possible without the XAVIER database that was set up under the supervision of Professor Emeritus Akira Hayami, and converted into an IBM DB2 database by Professor Yoshihiko Ono. I would like to express my deep gratitude to them, and also to Ms Saeko Narimatsu who made the materials readily accessible to researchers by transferring the original NAC data into basic data sheets.
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Kamimachi, Kōriyama Ninbetsu Aratamechō (Census Registers of Kōriyama Kamimachi), Historical Archives of Kōriyama City History Museum.
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Kamimachi, Ōtsuki Ninbetsu Aratamechō (Census Registers of Ōtsuki Kamimachi), Private Historical Archive.
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Shimomoriya Ninbetsu Aratamechō (Census Registers of Shimomoriya village), Historical Archives of Kōriyama City History Museum.
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Takahashi, M. (2019). The Labour Market and Labour Migration in Small Post Towns in Early Modern Japan: The Relationship Between a Town and Its Outlying Villages in the Northeastern Domain of Nihonmatsu in the Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries. In: Okuda, N., Takai, T. (eds) Gender and Family in Japan. Monograph Series of the Socio-Economic History Society, Japan. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9909-1_1
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