久留米藩における蔵米販売政策 : 文化年間、在町商人手津屋との関係を通して

抄録

As the transactions in rice by means of Kome-kitte (米切手) increased in volume, the year 1730 -the 15th year of Kyoho (享保)- saw the establishment of Dojima-Komekaisho (堂島米会所) in Osaka, which was a kome-kitte exchange. Rice transactions by kitte presupposing future delivery of spot rice inevitably led to issues of kamai-kitte (過米切手) which meant issuing of the kitte exceeding the amount of rice actually in being, and entered in books accounts of a great deal of otsunenmai (越年米) which meant the arrear of the delivery of spot rice till the next year. Otsunenmai was already seen to amount to a million hyo (俵) in the Kyoho era, and it rose to three million hyo by the Bunka (文化) era. The issues of Kamai-kitte were partly intended to solve financial difficulties of han (藩), fief governments, but the overissues of kome-kitte caused a vicious cycle of fall of the price of rice and a bottleneck of sales of kuramai (蔵米) which was rice sold by han at their own storehouses in Osaka, Edo, etc.. Finally there were cases of karamai-kitte (空米切手) where lawsuits were instituted for failure of delivery of spot rice. This article attemts to investigate the solution of the bottleneck of the sales of kuramai in Osaka rice market, taking Kurume-han as an example. More specifically, analysis is made of the relation between Tetsuya (手津屋), a countrytown merchant in Kurume-han, and the han government, and of business activities of Tetsuya. The government of Kurume-han, in 1809 -the sixth year of the Bunka era- carried out reorganization of the administrative structure, curtailing the scale of the staff and cutting down the number of officials, to find a way out of deficit finance by reduction of personnel expenses. In line with this policy, Tetsuya engaged in collecting land tax from the villages in the vicinity of Tanushimarumachi (田主丸町) where their head shop was located, while in Osaka they undertook to buy and resell kome-kitte issued by the government of Kurume-han for the purpose of supporting their market price. Also they laid in a stock of and resold tatemonomai (建物米), standard rice for fixing the price of rice. But this policy of Kurume-han which permitted continuation of excessive issues of Kome-kitte while making Tetsuya buy them to support the price and resell them, far from finding the way out of difficulties, drove the government into a tighter corner; for it did not fundamentally aim to check the overissues of kome-kitte through the activities of Tetsuya, but it only tried to prevent proceeds of sales of kome-kitte from falling by means of financial relationship between the han government and Tetsuya, with Tetsuya temporarily accepting the han government securities.