SOCIO-ECONOMIC HISTORY
Online ISSN : 2423-9283
Print ISSN : 0038-0113
ISSN-L : 0038-0113
Volume 43, Issue 4
Displaying 1-8 of 8 articles from this issue
  • YASUSHI KUSANO
    Article type: Article
    1977 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 331-352,450
    Published: December 30, 1977
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Ya tsu is a manner of contract which combined mortage and lease of lands and houses, and it means renting of a house or a piece of land by means of trustint money or silver in advance for the tent. This article deals only with ya tsu of farms. As population growth of tenant farmers brought about relative shortage of land, there arose a keen competition among them for tenements. Some of them, in hope of being given a preference, began to pay in advance certain amount of rent for the year either in copper coins or in silver. As the competition intensified more and more, the amount of money offered in advance gradually increased, till there appeared ` chung ting ch'ing tsu '重頂軽租, which meant to pay a large amount of copper or silver in advance at the beginning of the term of a contract with paying an insignificant amount of rent annually. And the landlords used the money they received from their tenant farmers for money-lending business at high interest. The rise in the amount of money thus deposited led to expulsion of the poorer class of tenant farmers from competition, leaving only substantial, stable farmers. It sometimes happened that because a landlord had not ready money to pay back the deposit to a tenant farmer when he threw up his lease, the farmer transferred his lease to another farmer who gave him that amount of money for it; while there appeared a group of big farmers who leased a large area of land from one or more landlords to sublet the land to poor farmers of the lower class at higher rent than they themselves paid to the landlords. The relationship between a landlord and a tenant farmer when the land was leased by ya tsu resembled that when the land was leased by t'ien mien 田面. Many recently published reports of the investigation into old rural practices have described the right of a tenant farmer who deposited a large amount of money by ya tsu as ` t'ien mien ', but there was a great difference between them, and it can be said that the more the practice of ya tsu developed the more declined the practice of t'ien mien.
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  • KATSUTOSHI CHINOH
    Article type: Article
    1977 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 353-374,449-44
    Published: December 30, 1977
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    The basic official policy of the Sung dynasty with regard to repairing embankments of yu t'ien 〓田 was characterized by consistent noninterference, leaving it to cooperative works of those who owned yu t'ien inside yu. Direct state interference and control were unnecessary because a system of labour service for embankment called chao t'ien chu tzu 照田出資 had been established as a traditional practice in the villages in this region. On occasions the authorities availed themselves of this system when they found necessity of embankment works. According to this system every owner of yu t'ien in a yu contributed to common funds his money assigned to him correspondingly to the size of his land, .and members of his household provided labour necessary for the embankment works. The system was the fairest and the most reasonable method in order to repair common banks with the least trouble because it could minimize conflicts of classes of people that arose from the difference of wealth. It is to be noted that there were two ways in which t'ien hu 佃戸, tenant farmers participated in embakment works. In one way they took intiative in undertaking repair works without any compulsion of their landlords, and carried out the works offering free service of their family labour. They did this because maintenance of embankments in good condition was directly connected with their crop and was their vital concern not to be neglected. But there was another more important reason for it, namely economic circumstances of the owners of yu t'ien; that is to say, the landowners could not afford to carry out chao t'ien ch'u tzu which required contribution of large amount of money. In the other way, when the works were carried out on the basis of the practice of ahao t'ien ch'u tzu, t'ien hu were employed and given money out of the common funds contributed by the owners of yu t'ien. The conditions of their employment were the same as those on which members of yu t'ien-owners' households of various classes and many other labourers outside the yu were employed" It was not that their social status as t'ien hu meant that they were compelled to labour at the embankment works by their landlords, but that they were willingly engaged in the works for the purpose of supplementing their family budgets. Although their wages in general were low since, the nature of the work was simple and required neither skill nor intellect, the rate of the wages were determined in keeping with supply-demand relation, different social customs of villages, or the wages paid by the authorities to the labour at such public works as building or repairing pei t'ang 〓 dams.
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  • JUROH HASHIMOTO
    Article type: Article
    1977 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 375-400,448
    Published: December 30, 1977
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    In this article the writer intends to investigate the market of ammonium sulphate during the nineteen-twenties. It has been said up to now that there wad d monopoly during 1920; and that foreign companies and soh-goh shoh-sha made a monopoly of it. But it seems more adequate to be regarded from d different point of view. As there was considerable excess capacity in existence in the world, competition for the market increased in its intensity. The Japanese government, however, did not protect the indigenous makers from the competition in the home market. The competition among foreign companies in Japan-I.G. Farbenindustrie AG, Imperial Chemical Industry, and United States Steel-restricted development of indigenous makers and caused a rapid fall in Price.
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  • MASATOSHI AMANO
    Article type: Article
    1977 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 401-427,448-44
    Published: December 30, 1977
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    In the course of Tokugawa regime, especially from the second half of the 18th century onward, it seems to be certain that commodity production in agriculture was widespread all over the country, and that specialization of agriculture and rural industries developed steadily. In spite of such development of agriculture, the landlord system began to spread, and even-tually since the 1890's the social institution had taken root in Japan's rural villages. Though we have some excellent works on the commercial capital and the landlord system of this period; it is not clear what part the merchants played during the transition period when the agricultural development resulted in the establishment of the landlord system as a social institution. Firstly, this paper intends to find a clue to the solution of this problem by throwing light on the role of commercial capital from the late Edo period to the early Meiji era. The writer takes as an example the case of the Miki family, who lived at Itano county in Tokushima prefecture. The Miki family was one of the biggest wholesale merchants who dealt in the Awa indigo (Awa-ai). The manufacturing and trading in Awa indigo by the Mikis made a start in the latter half of the 18th century. The business activities of the Miki family in the middle of the 19th century were chiefly composed of purchase of raw material of Awa indigo (that is dried leaves of indigo plant) and production and sale of Awa indigo. The important point to be examined is the way in which the Mikis gathered raw material of Awa indigo from rural villages which were situated north of the Yoshino River. The raw material of Awa indigo was obtained through Verlagssystem-in this transaction, the purchase of its raw material was tightly combined with money or fertilizer lending ill advance. But, without the detachment of the former from the latter; the Miki family's business would not have shown any expansion from the Koka period to the Kaei. The separation between the purchase of its raw material and money or fertilizer lending began to display itself and spread steadily. Along with the structural change of the Awa indigo industry toward the end of Tokugawa Shogunate, the Mikis tended to withdraw from the manufacturing of Awa indigo and to confine their business activities only to selling Awa indigo made by the middle or lower class of producers. Secondarily, this paper intends to Show the change of the market structure in the Kanto district where the Awa indigo the Mikis dealt in was mainly exported. Lastly, on the basis of these analyses, the writer tries to consider the historical significance or reason why the Miki family rapidly extended landholdint from the Meiji Restoration onward.
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  • Eiichi Hizen
    Article type: Article
    1977 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 428-437
    Published: December 30, 1977
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Hiroshi Oh-hashi
    Article type: Article
    1977 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 438-441
    Published: December 30, 1977
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Hirokichi Taya
    Article type: Article
    1977 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 441-444
    Published: December 30, 1977
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Article type: Bibliography
    1977 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 447-450
    Published: December 30, 1977
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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