Abstract
This article examined the argument of Ishikawa Rikinosuke about the KAGYO（management of IE business and subsistence）. This work clarifies vision of the farmer’s IE management that he held.
The previous studies have considered that the RONO（a farmers and peasants leader from late the Edo era to the Meiji era）held a particular thought about management: They collected the high ground rent and loaned the rice and money, on the one hand, they carried on the excessive diligence and saving as their management of KAGYO. They also have been remarked that they were the thinkers who were antagonistic to commerce and the commodity economy. Ishikawa has been considered as a typical RONO as such.
However, there was an important point which had been understudied. My close examination of Ishikawa’s thought and practice found that he denied the loan of rice and money for means of management. Instead, he managed KAGYO, agriculture in particular, with a fund and work force. In addition, he firmly thought that IE should make the efficient utilization of a variety of businesses that each family performed for managing the IE（farmhouse）, rather than solely concentrate on agriculture（rice crop in particular）. He thus appreciated knowledge, technique and experiences about occupations that were stocked in IE. In fact, he engaged in forestry in managing his KAGYO. He was not negative about commercial activities at all. Rather, he admitted the social significance in commerce. With this thought, Ishikawa treated particularly agriculture as “productive occupation”. In the modernization, he was going to reorganize a rural community based on such a IE.
