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Horses in Early Modern Japan: Livestock
6
Usage in Asaka and Katsushika Counties
Miyuki Takahashi
Rissho University, Japan
© 2024 Miyuki Takahashi
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-399-9.147-164
Background
Akira Hayami (2016) pointed out that in early modern Japanese agricul-
ture, the relationship between factors of production shifted from the use
of livestock (capital) to human labour (figure 1, table 1). He based this on
his observation that the number of cattle and horses in Owari Province
decreased in contrast to the increase in the local population. This is often
referred to as ‘Hayami’s Industrious Revolution’.1 This means that people
chose to practice intensive farming to increase productivity on small ar-
eas of arable land using their own labour instead of relying on livestock.
Product
Capital
Figure 1
Labour
*Land is constant Production Function
1 See de Vries (2008). In de Vries’, the meaning of industrious revolution is differ-
ent from Hayami’s.
Murayama, S., Ž. Lazarević, and A. Panjek, eds. 2024. Changing Living
Spaces: Subsistence and Sustenance in Eurasian Economies from Early Modern
Times to the Present. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
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