Page 216 - Changing Living Spaces

Masanori Takashima

daimyō made an effort to develop local products. Of course, it cannot be
said that all daimyō were successful, but in the first half of the nineteenth
century it became possible to make profits by monopolising local spe-
cialties and selling them to other regions under the domain monopoly
system (Yoshinaga 1996).
In other words, agriculture aimed at making profits from the com-
mercial cultivation of crops on non-paddy fields changed the basis of the
self-sufficient agricultural economy based on the hydroponic cultivation of
rice, which had been dependent on the natural environment since ancient
period. The use of arable land itself changed during this period, and the
purpose of agricultural production changed with the large-scale intro-
duction of commercial cultivation on non-paddy fields.
From this perspective, it is clear that the expansion of arable land in
pre-modern Japan and its utilisation were greatly influenced by the tax-
ation system of the government and local rulers of the era. Since agri-
culture in ancient period was highly dependent on the natural environ-
ment, hydroponic cultivation for rice produced at the optimum value
was a pillar of agricultural production that was central to the tax sys-
tem. Although local specialties were recorded in the government records
of the period and were also supplied as tribute to the central government,
they were only sufficient to satisfy the tastes of the aristocrats living in
the central government. In this period, rice was the main tribute item
and maintained its absolute status as a tax. In addition to rice, local spe-
cialties were also paid as tribute.
However, with the development of civil engineering and agricultural
technologies, people were able to adapt the land to the natural environment,
which led to the development of new cultivated areas and the expansion
of production. Although there are no comprehensive quantitative data, it
can be confirmed from the literature description that the cultivation of
special commodities became popular in various places in the Japanese ar-
chipelago during the mediaeval period (Saito and Takashima 2017; Saito
2020). However, these commodities cannot be considered commercial
crops that contributed to the tax system, as in the early modern period.
In the early modern period, the possible plains for paddy cultivation
were almost developed, and the increase in land productivity led to an in-
crease in agricultural production. Rice produced in the paddy fields was
still collected as annual tribute, but feudal lords who could not enrich
their financial status with rice alone sought a way out by growing com-
mercial crops in non-paddy fields. In other words, pre-modern agriculture

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