Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan

Charlotte Verschuer, Wendy Cobcroft

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317504498
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Japanese History
• Index: History

The majority of studies on the agricultural history of Japan have focused on the public administration of land and production, and rice, the principal source of revenue, has received the most attention. However, while this cereal has clearly played a decisive role in the public economy of the Japanese State, it has not had a predominant place in agricultural production. Far from confining its scope to a study of rice growing for tax purposes, this volume looks at the subsistence economy in the plant kingdom as a whole.

This book examines the history of agriculture in premodern Japan from the 8th to the 17th century, dealing with the history of agricultural techniques and food supply of rice, wheat, millet and other grains. Drawing extensively on material from history, literature, archaeology, ethnography and botany, it analyses each of the farming operations from sowing to harvesting, and the customs pertaining to consumption. It also challenges the widespread theory that rice cultivation has been the basis of "Japaneseness" for two millennia and the foundation of Japanese civilization by focusing on the biodiversity and polycultural traditions of Japan. Further, it will play a role in the current dialogue on the future of sustainable agricultural production from the viewpoints of ecology, biodiversity, dietary culture and food security throughout the world as traditional techniques such as crop rotation are explored in connection with the safeguarding of the minerals in the soil.

Surveying agricultural techniques across the centuries and highlighting the dietary diversity of Japan, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese history, the history of science and technology, medieval history, cultural anthropology and agriculture.

1 Irrigated rice and dry crops

In early medieval Japan (8th–12th centuries), agricultural produce came, we think, from two types of cultivated areas: permanent fields and temporary (shifting) fields. The permanent areas consisted of irrigated rice fields, non-irrigated cereal fields (what we will call dry fields) and gardens with vegetables and fruit trees. Farming tasks followed one after the other throughout the year, at the times suited to each operation, and in parallel in the different areas. For example, the sowing of wheat took place at the same time as the irrigated rice harvest, in the 8th month (September) of the early medieval calendar. According to the calendar in use in premodern Japan, spring went from the 1st to 3rd month (February–April), summer from the 4th to 6th month (May–July), autumn from the 7th to 9th month (August–October) and winter from the 10th to 12th month (November–January). Farming tasks were divided equally from spring until autumn, at least in the central region (Kinai) around the two capitals of Nara and Heian (Kyōto), the area best documented by the archival texts.¹

The public administration was tasked with overseeing the collection of taxes and, in order to achieve this, it encouraged farming activity. But contrary to Chinese practices, the Japanese government did not provide technical advice and did not distribute agricultural calendars or agronomy manuals before the 17th century. To stimulate agriculture, it repeatedly issued decrees to remind the local officials of all the provinces of their supervisory duty. Government encouragement consisted of rewarding zealous officials and having them undertake tours of inspection and write reports. The only technical recommendations that we know of, issued between the 8th and 12th centuries, deal with two points: the water-wheel and the rack for drying rice sheaves.²

The governmental decrees also urged the peasants “not to let the propitious time go by” for farming operations, without, however, making reference to an established calendar. In its admonitions, the administration seldom spelled out what tasks needed to be done, but once or twice it mentioned the sowing of wheat and buckwheat. Other than that, the almanacs distributed each year by the imperial court to all the provinces recorded the auspicious days for certain operations, such as tillage, the cutting of vegetation on waste ground and the repair of the irrigation channels in the rice fields.³

It may seem strange that the Japanese did not consult the Chinese agronomy manuals for technical questions. There was an abundant Chinese literature on the subject. It produced seventy-eight agricultural treatises and calendars up to the late 10th century, some having been ordered by the Chinese court and distributed on its orders to all parts of the empire.⁴ Japan imported from China many technical works in various fields, and the most detailed agricultural treatise Qiming yaoshu (6th century) was in its libraries in the 11th century. Even today there remains a copy made in 1166 in the Kudaradera temple. The Japanese administrative and legal texts dealing with agriculture do not mention the Chinese technical manuals and refer only to the early medieval encyclopedias and classical Chinese literature, as well as the chapters on public economy in the Chinese histories.⁵

Can this be seen as ignorance or a lack of interest on the part of the Japanese authorities in the matter of farming techniques? The absence of any reference to the Chinese treatises is all the more surprising as the Japanese learned from China in other scientific fields such as medicine, botany and calendrical science. In these fields, they edited their own compilations from the 9th century, whereas they began to write agricultural treatises only in the 17th century. Some scholars explain this phenomenon by the geographical and climatic differences between the two countries. Up to the 7th century, China was mainly concerned with non-irrigated cereal crops in the north of the country, whereas the Japanese court focused on irrigated rice cultivation. Moreover, northern China experiences long winters and less well-defined seasons than Japan. It follows that Chinese technical directives could not be adapted to fit the Japanese environment. In this country, the seasonal changes of the flora and fauna would serve as the guide that called farmers to their task.⁶ In Japan, the phenological calendar was in fact quite distinct, as can be seen in the early poetry. This evokes, for instance, the sowing of the seedbeds in spring, when the wild geese return to the Nordic regions, the transplanting of the rice in summer beneath the cuckoo’s song and the harvesting of the rice in autumn when the lespedeza comes into bloom. Work in the fields ended, according to the poets, when the wild geese returned to pass the winter in Japan. Thus, in what follows, our informants will be the Japanese poets, as well as the administrators and officials in charge of rural affairs, since we have no agricultural texts as such.

However, more than the geographical differences between China and Japan, the Japanese way of seeing the world seems to us to be the main reason for the court’s lack of interest in technical questions. In our view, the Japanese mentality put zeal before technical ability. According to the authorities of the early medieval period, the farmer did not have to reason, but to work. A rational approach coupled with an economy of human energy and the notion of productivity was only to appear, in agriculture, in the 17th century.

The ideal of the zealous farmer

The Shinsarugakuki, written in the mid-11th century, conveys to us the image of the zealous farmer, as idealized by the Japanese authorities of the time. Here, by way of introduction, is the portrait of this “ideal farmer”. At the same time, the text surveys the agricultural vocabulary:

Tanaka no Tomoyasu, supernumerary assistant in the government of the province of Dewa (present-day prefectures of Yamagata and Akita), who is the husband of the third daughter of the officer of the palace gate guard, residing in the right section of the capital of Heian, devotes himself solely to agriculture, with no other occupation. He finds himself at the head of a household that owns several chō (1.3 ha) and is a manager tato of some repute. Year after year, in times of drought and in times of rain, he prepares the spades suki and hoes kuwa, inspects the soil quality and repairs the harrowing-combs (harrows) maguwa and ploughs karasuki. He skilfully shows the farmers how to maintain the dams, dykes, canals and ditches, and, in the fifth month, he employs men and women to transplant hashoku the rice, after sowing tanemaki in the seedbeds nawashiro and tillage kōsaku. He cultivates early rice wase, late rice okute, non-glutinous rice urushine and glutinous rice mochi. For the grain harvest karikai, he outdoes everyone else and the quantities of pounded rice increase each year. Moreover, the wheat or barley mugi, soybeans mame, cowpeas sasage, red beans azuki, foxtail millet awa, common millet kimi, barnyard millet hie, buckwheat sobamugi, perilla e and sesame goma that he has planted ripen in abundance in the gardens sono and dry fields hatake. Each seed he sows chirasu in the soil in spring multiplies by the thousands in autumn, and is then stored in the granaries kura. He does not make the slightest mistake from tillage tsukuri in spring until the harvest osame in autumn. He delights in seeing the five grains gokoku ripen and in reaping an abun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Irrigated rice and dry crops
• 2. A mountainous environment: shifting cultivation
• 3. Biodiversity: harvesting of wild plants
• 4. Food security: how much rice did they eat?
• 5. Polyculture in premodern Japanese traditions
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index