William Wayne Farris - Daily Life and Demographics in Ancient Japan

Daily Life and Demographics in Ancient Japan

Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies

Number 63

Center for Japanese Studies

The University of Michigan

Daily Life and Demographics in Ancient Japan

William Wayne Farris

Center for Japanese Studies

The University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, 2009

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program

Copyright 2009 by The Regents of the University of Michigan

All rights reserved.

Published by the Center for Japanese Studies,

The University of Michigan

1007 E. Huron St.

Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1690

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Farris, William Wayne.

Daily life and demographics in ancient Japan / William Wayne Farris.

p. cm.(Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies; no. 63)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-929280-49-0 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-929280-50-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. JapanPopulationHistory. 2. JapanSocial conditionsTo 1600. I. Title. II. Series.

HB3651.F368 2009

95Z.01dc22

2008044108

This book was set in Palatino Macron.

Kanji set in Hiragino Mincho Pro W3.

This publication meets the ANSI/NISO Standards for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives (Z39.481992).

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-929280-49-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-929280-50-6 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-12800-6 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-472-90196-8 (open access)

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

To Chong-mi

CONTENTS

Wamy sh and Shgai sh

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This work came about as a necessary preliminary task to writing a book about Japanese medieval population. After completing the first installment of my research almost twenty years ago in Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645900, I continued to collect data and interpretations bolstering my previous contentions. Since plunging into the writing of what eventually became Japan's Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age, the pace and scope of work on ancient demography both in Japan and the United States has picked up speed.

I would like to thank the JapanU.S. Educational/Fulbright Commission and the Social Science Research Council for funding a year-long stay at Tokyo University in 1999. Special gratitude goes to professors Murai Shsuke and Sato Makoto and the Scholars for a New Ancient History based in Tokyo. Thanks also go to Professor Tomobe Ken'ichi for sponsoring my visiting professorships at Kei University in 2000 and 2003 and to Professor Hong Kazuto for supporting my application to use the world-class facilities of Tokyo University's Historiographical Institute in 2001. The Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies and the University of Tennessee provided financial support in that year. I especially appreciated the chance to talk to numerous scholars, including Kuroda Hideo, Amino Yoshihiko, Ishii Susumu, Tamura Noriyoshi, Kit Hiroshi, and Sait Osamu. I feel the deepest gratitude to Han Chong-mi, a Ph.D. candidate at Tokyo University's Division of Comparative Literature, who assisted this project in ways so diverse I cannot list them all.

Any mistakes, of course, are the responsibility of the author.

Scholars have devoted considerable time and attention to the study of population in the ancient era (here defined as terminating in 1150 CE). Meiji scholar Yokoyama Yoshikiyo (182679) was probably the first, but he was eventually followed by the doyen of ancient demographic and quantitative history, Sawada Goichi (18611931), whose remarkable Quantitative Research on Economics and Administration During the Nara Period still defines research three-quarters of a century later.

The energy applied to such a seemingly remote and difficult topic has not been wasted since even those who have not investigated ancient population have admitted its importance. For many, such as George Sansom and John Hall, it was the driving force behind the need for more food and the widespread land clearance that reputedly unleashed elite greed and undermined the Chinese-style state. For William McNeill, it was epidemic disease that caused population to stabilize or even decrease, thereby creating conditions in which a centralized, bureaucratic state could not long survive.

This book attempts to synthesize previous work and analyze ancient population from several perspectives. To this end, it presents an historiographical overview of different figures, showing how they were computed as well as their strengths and weaknesses; makes estimates for the early eighth, mid-tenth, and mid-twelfth centuries; and then tries to evaluate those numbers in light of the relevant social and economic background. Critical variables include mortality parameters such as disease, famine, and war; factors indirectly indicating demographic trends and/or affecting fertility and longevity such as farming and agricultural technology; the labor market and industry; trade and the degree of urbanization; kinship, marriage, and the family; and commoner physical well-being as defined by everyday items (clothing, diet, sanitation, and housing).

The central argument will be that the population of ancient Japan (excluding Hokkaido and the Ryukyu chain) essentially remained static between 700 and 1150, with a decrease occurring around 950. Famine and occasionally war exacerbated this shift. The drift toward lower population in the tenth and early eleventh centuries is readily visible in several areas: agriculture, where large tracts of land reverted to wilderness and peasants adapted technology to a lower worker-to-arable ratio; the labor market, where wages climbed and construction projects remained unfinished; industry, where labor-saving devices became common; and the demonetization of commerce and deurbanization of society. Only after 1050 did the population begin to recover to the level it had achieved in 700, as suggested indirectly by evidence from agriculture, trade, and cities. Hopefully, this essay will lead to new directions in research, even as it reinforces a well-known contention.

HlSTORIOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW

As is readily apparent from , there is no dearth of numbers purporting to represent Japan's total population at various times throughout the ancient era. It is equally obvious that most "estimates" derive from the Buddhist traditions of Shtoku Taishi or the monk Gyki and give modern scholars no idea about their method of calculationif, indeed, they were computed at all. Leaving these aside, as well as the untenable numbers attributed to In Hidenori and the prewar Home Ministry (Naimushchirikyoku), I shall concentrate on the figures proposed by prewar scholars Yokoyama Yoshikiyo, Kimura Masakoto (18271913), and Sawada Goichi, and then proceed to examine postwar contributions. In evaluating the various estimates, I shall deal with three issues: the nature and validity of the sources, scholarly assumptions, and historical reasoning.

The first attempt to calculate Japan's ancient population occurred in 1879, when Yokoyama Yoshikiyo, a legal and literary scholar, computed three numbers for ninth- and tenth-century Japan. According to Yokoyama, Japan contained 3,694,331 persons in 823, a total he derived as follows. Utilizing an 823 regulation