Page 196 - Changing Living Spaces
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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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