Page 196 - Changing Living Spaces

Masanori Takashima

Table 1 Available Sources of Quantitative Information on Cultivated Area
and Agricultural Output
Period Source Type Contents
Ancient Eighth century (Documents of Official Individual land
period Shōsōin) document document.
Tenth century Wamyōshō Ancient Area of paddy field
encyclopaedia by kuni (province).
Twelfth century Shūgaishō Ancient Area of paddy field
encyclopaedia by kuni (province).
–– Shōchūreki Ancient (Alternative version of
encyclopaedia Wamyōshō and Shūgaishō).
–– Irohajiruishō Ancient (Alternative version of
encyclopaedia Wamyōshō and Shūgaishō.)
–– Kaitōshokokuki Korean (Alternative version of
diplomatic Wamyōshō and Shūgaishō.)
report
Medieval Eighth-sixteenth Individual land Land Individual land
period century document management document.
document
Early Seventeenth- (Documents Official Cultivated area (paddy and
modern nineteenth century of Tokugawa document non-paddy) and
period shogunate) agricultural output.
Source Takashima (2017).

and regions. Section 4 examines how historical and regional agricultur-
al conditions relate to the natural environment and how they affect eco-
nomic growth. Section 5 concludes the chapter.

Information on Agricultural Production in Pre-Industrial Japan:
Materials and Data

Among the historical materials on pre-industrial Japan, some materials
can be analysed at the regional level, but most can only be analysed from
the perspective of the entire Japanese archipelago. This analysis is appro-
priate given the limited data on the cultivated land area of paddy fields or
rice production. Quantitative data on non-paddy fields are available in a
single year for a limited number of small areas and villages, and it would
be difficult to use these data to analyse regional characteristics within
the Japanese archipelago (figure 1). This imbalance in data availability be-
tween paddy and non-paddy fields is the reverse consequence of the over-
emphasis on rice production as a tax by political rulers. The term staple
grain reflects the bias towards rice, and therefore information is limited
to paddy field agricultural production. However, an analysis of the gap in
regional rice production can show the difference between the production

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