Page 201 - Changing Living Spaces

Wet-Rice Agriculture and Economic Growth in Pre-Industrial Japan

Table 3 Area of Non-Paddy Fields, 730–1150 (in chō)
730 950 1150
Japan total 141,061 507,976 534,091
Source Takashima (2017).

Sanze isshin hō of 723 (a law that allowed peasants who created new ara-
ble lands to own it for a period of three generations) also had a positive
effect on strengthening the Ritsuryō regime. This policy aimed to expand
the arable land and increase rice tax revenues. The implementation of this
policy involved granting land ownership to peasants and keeping records
of such land allocations (Haneda 1961). There are examples of these land
development efforts continuing into the ninth century. This agricultural
policy had a positive effect on the expansion of arable land.
Despite these policies, there has been a decline in the growth rate of
rice paddies from 950–1150. The annual growth rate of 0.03 percent in the
latter two centuries was lower than the annual growth rate of 0.13 per-
cent in the former two centuries. Thus, the growth rate of paddy fields in
the ancient period was only 0.08 percent. This statistic is compared with
the statistics after the transition to non-paddy fields in the archipelago
in the same period.
Table 3 shows the estimated areas of non-paddy fields in the an-
cient period. Similar to paddy fields, the number of non-paddy fields in-
creased during the ancient period. However, there was a difference be-
tween the growth rates of these two types of fields. In other words, the
annual growth rate of the paddy fields was 0.08 percent, while the growth
rate of the non-paddy fields was much higher at 0.32 percent. The area of
non-paddy fields almost quadrupled in 400 years, while the area of paddy
fields grew only 1.4 times. Although the acreage statistics are estimates,
the growth of acreage in ancient Japan is attributed mainly to the de-
velopment of non-paddy fields. This is consistent with a study reporting
that the Japanese government actively promoted cultivation on non-pad-
dy fields, or dryland, during this period (Haneda 1961; Miyamoto 1998).
In the eighth century, land development laws and regulations provid-
ed incentives for private ownership of cultivated land. These laws ensured
that development efforts shifted from large-scale development by the
state or corresponding powerful temples, shrines, and nobles to small-
scale development by individual farmers. However, due to limited civil en-
gineering infrastructure, the development efforts of peasants during this
period were limited to the reclamation of disturbed landforms, which re-

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