Page 150 - Changing Living Spaces

Miyuki Takahashi

Table 1 Number of Households, Population, Cattle, and Horses in Owari Province
Around Around Rate of
1661-73 1790-1820 change (%)
Number of households 47,822 79,254 +65.7
Population 265,522 331,678 +24.9
Number of cattle and horses 12,986 4,200 -67.7
Source: Adapted from Hayami (2003, 296).

However, Osamu Saito (2004) has already questioned Hayami’s rea-
soning. Saito doubts that the observations from Owari Province can be
generalised to the rest of Japan, explaining that the use of horses in ag-
riculture was originally for horse manure rather than tillage. However,
only regional studies were conducted on whether the number of livestock
increased or decreased in each region and what farmers used them for.
This paper examines whether or not the number of livestock actual-
ly decreased over time, and uses available historical documents to show
how they were used.

Setting, Data Sources
The regions mainly concerned in this paper are three agricultural vil-
lages (Shimomoriya, Komaya, and Hidenoyama) in Asaka County of
Nihonmatsu Domain and villages near Koganemaki, a horse ranch run
by the shogunate in Katsushika County in eastern Japan (figure 2).
In Asaka County, 41 villages were divided into three groups, name-
ly Kōriyama-gumi (13 villages), Katahira-gumi (11 villages), and Ōtsuki-
gumi (17 villages). Shimomoriya and Komaya belonged to the Ōtsuki-
gumi, and Hidenoyama to the Kōriyama-gumi.
Koganemaki was located in the suburbs of Edo (now Tokyo), where the
Shogun lived during the Edo period.
In early modern Japan, the Nihonmatsu Domain was known for its
horse production, and many households in agricultural villages raised
horses. To what extent did farmers benefit from this development? How
was the number of horses raised by each household determined? Based
on the Ninbetsu-aratame-cho (NAC), a basic source for historical demogra-
phy, trends in village population and the number of horses raised in each
village from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century are determined.
The observations on the distribution of cattle and horses in Japan are
based on the Kyōbuseihyō, compiled in 1880 at the beginning of the mod-
ern era (figure 3). This is a record of military statistics compiled by the

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