2023 Volume 59 Pages 41-60
This study was conducted using the Shumon Aratamecho（Religious Registration Books） made from 1776 to 1841 of a village, Imaura situated on the coast of the Japan Sea in the San’in Region, west-north of Japan. Its population was 354 in 1776 and 617 in 1836.
Regarding the four famines（Tenmei, Tenpô, and two others estimated to have occurred in the 1750’s and 1770’s）, we discovered（１） low nuptiality and fertility during the famines, （２） high nuptiality and fertility immediately after the famines, and（３） approximately 30 years after the two phenomena, the decrease or the increase of the proportion of female population aged 26-30 years old（“marriageable age”） that is the cohort born at the time of the two phenomena, respectively（except Tenpô famine）
We discovered that the increase or the decrease of the proportion of the female population aged 26-30 years old caused an increase or decrease of marriages and births for the second time. However, the realization of the changes in the crude birth and marriage rates was often found to be modified by the occurrence or the influence of the new famine, resulting in the acceleration or the counterbalance of the changes.
We claim that the increase or decrease of the marriageable population did not only increase or decrease the number of marriages but also that it increased or decreased the age-specific marriage rates. This phenomenon of inducing the change of the age-specific rates of marriage has not yet been reported nor explained theoretically in historical demography in Japan. However, in our study, it can be thought to be observable in the late Edo period, when there was not a strong long-range trend of late or early marriages that is peculiar in societies such as recent Japan.
The decrease in marriages and fertility in the second half of the 1810’s was found to be caused by the decline of the birth rate in Tenmei famine which occurred 30 years earlier. There are no reports of such severe events as to be the causes in that period according to the regional history books.
The oscillations in the numbers of marriages and births deriving from the frequent famines might be observable in many villages where the growth rate of the population was positive in the non-famine period in the Edo period in Japan.
