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Japanese Female Entrepreneurs: Women in Kyoto Businesses in Tokugawa Japan

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Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century

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Abstract

Using the population surveys of 30 neighbourhoods in Kyoto, Japan, between 1786 and 1869, together with other qualitative primary documents, this chapter argues that women in Kyoto were integral to the success and long-term continuity of a family business. Employed as skilled artisans and overseeing apprentices, women were expected to troubleshoot and fill in with any task needed to maintain a business. An important intergenerational role of women in business was to oversee the inheritance and succession process, and they played pivotal roles in connecting and developing business networks. The analysis includes women’s activities within a business and women as business owners or branch managers. The chapter also discusses property ownership and decisions regarding who was listed as head of household and business.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Yamatoya is the name of the workshop that belonged to Kane’s father. This and other names ending in -ya represent the house or business organisation the person using the name represented and are not surnames defining an individual or kinship network. Commoners in early modern Japan were generally not allowed to use surnames in public documents without special permission. Fukui, however, was a surname given to the founder of the line by Tokugawa Ieyasu when the carpenter and joiner Sakuzaemon from Fukui village agreed to serve as head of the Kyoto measures guild tasked with standardising the measures of western Japan. All workshops manufacturing measuring cups had to sell them to the guild for certification. For information on Fukui Sakuzaemon and the measures guild, see Kyoto Shi Bunka Kankō Kyoku (ed.), Fukui ke kyūzō Kyō masu za shiryō chōsa hōkoku sho [Report of investigation of data for the Kyoto measures guild from an old storehouse of Fukui house] (Kyoto City, 1988), pp. 114–115; and Mary Louise Nagata, ‘Mistress or Wife? Fukui Sakuzaemon vs Iwa, 1819–1833’, Continuity and Change 18, no. 2 (2003): pp. 1–23. For more about naming practices in traditional Kyoto, see Mary Louise Nagata, ‘Names and Name Changes in Early Modern Kyoto, Japan’, in Yangwen Zheng and Charles MacDonald (eds), Personal Names in Asia: History, Culture and Identity (Singapore: National University of Singapore 2009): pp. 247–264.

  2. 2.

    Plaintiff Yamatoya Matsunosuke mother Kane, Toshiyori Shinbei, Goningumi Kashichi [to Obugyō sama], ‘Osore nagara on sosho’, Civil suit, 23/4/1834, Masu Za Fukui Sakuzaemon Collection No. 248.

  3. 3.

    Tanahashi Mitsuhide, Taikei Nihon no rekishi 4: Ōchō no shakai, [Compendium of Japanese history vol 4: Imperial court society], (Tokyo: Shōgakkan 1988), pp. 129–30. Shigeta Shinichi, Shomin tachi no Heian kyō [Commoners of the Heian capital], (Tokyo: Kadokawa Sensho 2008), pp. 48–9, 235–6.

  4. 4.

    See also Chap. 8 by Nathan Kwan, this volume.

  5. 5.

    Ogura Eiichirō, Omi Shōnin no Keiei [Management practices of the Omi merchants]; (Kyoto: Sanburaito Shuppan 1988).

  6. 6.

    For detailed analysis and discussion of female heads of household in Tokugawa era Kyoto, see Mary Louise Nagata, ‘Female Headed Households in Early Modern Kyoto, Japan’, Revista de Historiografía, 26 (2016): pp. 145–155. https://doi.org/10.20318/revhisto/2016/3102

  7. 7.

    Makita Rieko, ‘Kinsei Kyoto ni okeru josei no kasan shoyū’ [Women’s ownership of family assets in early modern Kyoto], in Hayashi Reiko et al. (eds), Ronshū Kinsei Josei Shi [Collection of essays on the history of early modern women] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1986): pp. 217–255. Yasukuni Ryoichi, ‘Kinsei Kyoto no shomin josei’ [Common women in early modern Kyoto], in Kurachi Katsunao and Miyashita Michiko (eds), Nihon Josei Seikatsu Shi [Lifestyle history of Japanese women] (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press 1990), pp. 77–8.

  8. 8.

    At the end of each survey is a paragraph stating that every resident was listed and no member of the Christian or other prohibited sects were found. These population surveys, often called population registers in the research literature, are the best source for individual demographic microdata in Japan. Series of surveys from numerous villages, primarily in Northeastern Japan, have been analysed by many Japanese scholars.

  9. 9.

    Kyoto is the best large city to use because few Edo surveys survive, and ages were not recorded in Osaka until 1867.

  10. 10.

    Katakura Hisako, ‘Bakumatsu ishin ki no toshi kazoku to joshi rōdō’ [Urban families and female labour in the late Tokugawa and Meiji Restoration periods], in Owada Michiko and Nagano Hiroko (eds), Nihon Josei Shi Ronshū [Collection of essays on the history of Japanese women] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan 1998): pp. 85–108. See also Laurel Urlich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650–1750 (New York: Knopf, 1982).

  11. 11.

    Ogura, Omi Shōnin no Keiei.

  12. 12.

    Jihei et al., [In front of the Buddhist altar], ‘Mi age sho,’ Investigation report, 8/25/1809, Hakutsuru Komonjo Shiryō Shū [Hakutsuru collection of historical documents] (Kobe: Hakutsuru Shuzo Kabushiki Gaisha 1978), pp. 364–5; Mary Louise Nagata, Labor Contracts and Labor Relations in Early Modern Central Japan (London & New York: RoutledgeCurzon 2005), pp. 113–4.

  13. 13.

    Makita, ‘Kinsei Kyoto ni okeru josei no kasan shoyū’, pp. 217–255.

  14. 14.

    Yasukuni, ‘Kinsei Kyoto no shomin josei’, pp. 77–8.

  15. 15.

    Beatrice Moring, Widows in European Economy and Society, 1600–1920 (Boydell Press 2017).

  16. 16.

    Ibid., pp. 76–7.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., pp. 78–86.

  18. 18.

    Nagata, ‘Female Headed Households’, pp. 190–4.

  19. 19.

    Kyōto Ōmiya dōri Teranouchi Sujikaibashi chō ‘Shūmon Ninbetsu Aratame Chō’ [Individual faith surveys], 1843–1845, 1848–1851, 1856–1857, 1860, 1862.

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    Kyōto Abura no koji Ane no koji sagaru Sōrin chō ‘Shūmon Ninbetsu Aratame Chō’ [Individual faith surveys], 1868–1869.

  22. 22.

    Notice that Endō is the family surname and Hiranoya is the house/business name.

  23. 23.

    Endō Yasaburō family collection, Kyoto Library for Historical Documents, Kyoto: ten boxes.

  24. 24.

    ‘Shūmon okite’, Draft individual faith surveys, 1841–1860, Endō Yasaburō collection No. 624 and ‘Ninbetsu shūmon aratame chō’, Religious and population registers, 1861–1866, Endō Yasaburō collection No. 625, Kyoto Library for Historical Documents.

  25. 25.

    Endō, ‘Shūmon ninbetsu aratame chō kari okite’, Draft individual faith surveys, 1858–1867, Endō Yasaburō collection No. 470, Kyoto Library for Historical Documents.

  26. 26.

    Katakura, ‘Bakumatsu ishin ki no toshi kazoku to joshi rōdō’, 85–108.

  27. 27.

    Mary Louise Nagata, ‘Property ownership and the neighbourhood community in early modern Kyoto’, forthcoming in EHESS/CRH publications, 2019.

  28. 28.

    Yasuoka Shigeaki, ‘Kinsei Kyoto shōnin no kagyō to sōzoku’ [Family business and inheritance of early modern Kyoto merchants], Kyoto shakai shi kenkyū [Research on the social history of Kyoto] (Kyoto: Hōritsu Bunkasha, 1971).

  29. 29.

    I have written about this case elsewhere. See Mary Louise Nagata, ‘Mistress or Wife? Fukui Sakuzaemon vs. Iwa, 1819–1833’, Continuity and Change 18, no. 2 (2003): pp. 1–23.

  30. 30.

    I discuss this case in more detail elsewhere. See Mary Louise Nagata, ‘Headship and Succession in Early Modern Kyoto: the role of women’, Continuity and Change 19, no. 1 (2004): pp. 1–32.

  31. 31.

    Kyōto Koromodana tōri Sanjō sagaru Koromodana Minami chō ‘Shūmon Ninbetsu Aratame Chō’ [Individual faith surveys], 1786–1837, 1843, 1845–1867. Sanjō Koromodana Chō collection, Kyoto Prefectural Library for Historical Documents.

  32. 32.

    Bundaiya Kau (to Koromodana Minami alderman Sōbei and the neighbourhood representatives), ‘Yuzurijo no koto’, Transmission will, 1846.12.8, Sanjō Koromodana Chō collection No. 8517, Kyoto Prefectural Library for Historical Documents.

  33. 33.

    Bundaiya Minnosuke (to Koromodana Minami alderman Yasubei and the neighbourhood representatives), ‘Yuzurijo no koto’, Transmission will, 1848.2.14, Sanjō Koromodana Chō collection No. 8521, Kyoto Prefectural Library for Historical Documents.

  34. 34.

    Bundaiya Tome (to Koromodana Minami alderman Kihei and the neighbourhood representatives), ‘Yuzurijo no koto’, Transmission will, 1849.4.24, Sanjō Koromodana Chō collection No. 8522, Kyoto Prefectural Library for Historical Documents.

  35. 35.

    Bundaiya Minnosuke (to Koromodana Minami alderman Jusuke and the neighbourhood representatives), ‘Yuzurijo no koto’, Transmission will, 1852.5.14, Sanjō Koromodana Chō collection No. 8525, Kyoto Prefectural Library for Historical Documents.

  36. 36.

    Kyōto Akezu tōri Matsubara sagaru Yoshimizu chō ‘Shūmon Ninbetsu Aratame Chō’ [Individual faith surveys], 1854, 1856–1861.

  37. 37.

    Kijiya Teijiro, mother Uno, witness Obiya Fusajiro, witness Itamiya Jūbei [to Fukui Sakuzaemon], ‘Issatsu no koto,’ Letter and agreement, 12/1837, Masu Za Fukui Sakuzaemon Collection No. 417, Kyoto City Library for Historical Documents, Kyoto.

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  1. Francis Marion University, Florence, SC, USA

    Mary Louise Nagata

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  1. Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Jennifer Aston

  2. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Catherine Bishop

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Nagata, M.L. (2020). Japanese Female Entrepreneurs: Women in Kyoto Businesses in Tokugawa Japan. In: Aston, J., Bishop, C. (eds) Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33412-3_11

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