[Feature: Infectious Diseases in History] Japan as a Country of Flow: A Brief History — Markets, Population, and Infectious Diseases

2020/11/05

The direct impetus for this article was an excellent report titled Proposal of BCG / Tuberculin reaction as a precautionary measure against second wave of Covid-19:from analysis of statistics, Japan Policy and Kawasaki Disease, which epidemiologically confirmed the relationship between tuberculosis and the new coronavirus. The author, Mr. Makoto Hayashibara (Keio University alumni), graduated from my seminar at the Faculty of Economics in 2000, obtained an MSc in Finance from Imperial College London in 2014, and currently runs a think tank based in Hong Kong. Looking at the relationship between tuberculosis and the Japanese people, even in the modern era alone, Japan had the rare experience among OECD countries of tuberculosis mortality rates rising again in the late 1930s due to "returning home with illness" (Mr. Masato Hanashima, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, Keio University alumni), from which many literary works were born with the motif of urban factories and rural labor.

However, at the same time, the memory and impression overlapped: "Wait. Isn't this the same as the death pattern of women returning from urban service in Akira Hayami's Saijo Village (Gifu)?" Mr. Akira Hayami unfortunately passed away last winter, but his research achievements as a pioneer of Asian historical demography remain vital. Thus, it seems possible to trace the link between tuberculosis and labor migration back at least to the Edo period. If we include other representative Japanese infectious diseases such as smallpox and syphilis, the relationship between markets and infectious diseases seems to head toward even older eras. This became the motivation for this article. Furthermore, the following discussion overlaps with the content of the "Introduction to Economic History" lecture for first-year undergraduates at the Faculty of Economics, Hitotsubashi University. I would be pleased if those who read this current university lecture, especially older readers, are reminded of those days. Now, let us begin from ancient times.

First, I start the beginning of the lecture with the phrase: "Let's set aside for a moment the stereotype that capitalism began in the modern era, and finally labor (another name for humans) and land (part of nature) became objects of market transactions." This is not because it is wrong, but because the relationship of mutual cooperation between markets/market economies and humans, built amidst the flow of all things, cannot be captured by clichéd causal discourse. Markets are as old as human existence, serving as mechanisms to move people, goods, and information for supply-demand adjustment (price formation) and order formation. Generally, the initiation of movement is handled by power or institutions, and the market begins to function along with the movement of people and various goods. And along with these movements, viruses, bacteria, and parasites are also carried in. This must be one of the few empirical rules that economics should teach. Power and the state have incorporated these market principles, shaping eras while sometimes keeping a distance from them. This has been clear since the Kofun period. The "Gishiwajinden" (Records of the Wa in the History of Wei) states, "In the country of Wa, there are markets in various lands, where they trade what they have for what they lack, and the Great Wa (Daiwa) is made to supervise this" (reading Daiwa as Yamai, it can also be interpreted as the country of Yamaichi). Correspondingly, the interpretation by Asian historian Hidehiro Okada is attractive: "Markets were created while surrounding (trading places) with fences and walls, Dosojin (traveler's guardian deities) were enshrined at the boundaries of inside and outside to block evil spirits, entrance fees = so (the origin of taxes) were collected, and eventually they developed into ancient city-states."

The giant structures following the Kofun burial mounds were ancient temples and shrines. Many of the temple compounds and precincts built at provincial capitals (Kokufu) during the Nara period were vast. They were likely sites for markets (government-sanctioned) and eventually became places for mourning the many victims of infectious diseases (recorded from the "Nihon Shoki" onwards). Furthermore, the influence of temples already extended across the entire market economy. The influence on the control of weights and measures (market infrastructure) through the "Tera-masu" (temple measuring box), originating from Kofuku-ji and Todai-ji temples which were closely related to the Fujiwara clan, lasted until the Edo period (Kazuo Mizutorigawa). Turning our eyes to labor migration, the labor market of the 8th-century workshops for the construction of Todai-ji was booming, but it also brought about labor disasters such as mercury poisoning. During the same period, the negative legacy of the market, such as the increase in starving people at the markets, was also growing. Although the era cannot be determined, according to the "Iro Setsuden" of Ryukyu, a labor market akin to human trafficking developed around the markets, and the labor evaluation there eventually became the standard for wages (legitimacy) in the labor market. In the "Nihon Ryoiki," the issue of whether hiring wage labor or employing family labor was more rational emerged in 9th-century households. This is precisely the trace of people's struggles involving the introduction, manipulation, and consequences of the market.

Sugawara no Michizane, a central official who could be called the culmination of this ancient Japanese market landscape, finally appeared in the 9th century. In the "Kanke Bunso" (published in 900), the "Ten Poems on Early Cold" clearly underpins Michizane's recognition of the market as an official. "Drought keeps prices low" (Kan-ten hei-ka zen) shows a straightforward understanding of market principles: if salt production (supply) increases, the (standard) price of salt will drop. This was the bureaucratic literacy required of central officials and the governance technique for when problems occurred in the provinces. In this way, in places where market principles unfolded (markets and capital cities) in both the center and the provinces, the movement of people and goods was frequent. The world of fishermen was no exception. According to the "Shoku Nihongi," a fishing boat that went out to the Genkai Sea during the Tenpyo era contracted smallpox and spread the epidemic nationwide upon returning to port (as told by Akihito Suzuki). The sea may also be a primal landscape where market principles (where navigation becomes free by that cause) apply.

As time progressed, the core of the economic structure of medieval Japan was the Shoen (manors). And the primary entities of the donated-land type Shoen became temples and shrines. When it comes to markets, the sea, and Shoen, Yoshihiko Amino enters the scene. Differing from Amino's interpretation, here we simply view that because market principles exist, people walk freely, and along with that, goods and information move, and infectious diseases spread. The impression of the Shoen might seem to be the opposite, but its mechanism was such that it only had a Sho-dokoro (management office for agricultural tools, etc.), uncultivated land, and cultivated land within it, with no exclusive farmers; cultivation was left to the wage-rent (tenancy) of surrounding farmers (Mitsuo Tanahashi). Eventually, contract management to farm households and large-scale agricultural management, where Shoen lords dispatched agents and directly hired surrounding farmers for wages, coexisted. It is said the ratio was roughly half and half. Both the farmers of the contracted households and the wage-labor farmers were originally Ritsuryo farmers who held Kubunden (allotted land) (Rizo Takeuchi).

In other words, small-scale farm households that received Kubunden faced an imbalance with the constantly fluctuating labor of production factors, could not pay taxes (So-Yo-Cho), and sought refuge in large-scale farm households. Eventually, public land decreased and private land increased, which significantly affected the ratio of Kokuga (provincial government land) and Shoen nationwide (Keiji Nagahara). Looking closely, the Shoen system was a system that marketized the Kubunden, which had been fixed under the Ritsuryo land system, as one production factor, and integrated this with labor, another production factor, as a variable factor. In other words, it was a rational mechanism for developing land and labor as production factor markets. Conversely, it tells of how many farmers fled from their Kubunden to the extent that such a mechanism became necessary. The mobile groups that Amino categorized as wandering people must have included not only artisans but also many absconding farmers. While medieval population records are precious, looking at the "Household Register of Kuga Village, Kuga District, Suo Province, 8th Year of Engi (908)" (Ishiyama-dera back-side documents), although there are unnatural points such as households with no change, the records of adult males and youth were indeed very few (Akihiro Watanabe).

As the Shoen system progressed, as a consequence of that mechanism, the settlement of wandering people into rural areas began, either by being incorporated into the Shoen system through local powerful families known as "Myoshu" or by being absorbed into direct private land management. The Nanboku-cho period was likely the watershed where the old forces of Shoen lords and the new forces of local "Myoshu" management competed. As estimated by W. W. Farris, author of the fine work on medieval Japanese population history, Japan’s Medieval Population (2006), Japan's total population likely increased at roughly the same rate (about 0.2% annually) from the late 13th century to perhaps the early 17th century. The main drivers were likely the population increase of wandering people who were captured by power and transitioned to settled farmers, and the rise in fertility due to household formation by settled farmers. The former trend continued, albeit in small numbers, even across the Meiji Restoration. Although not an accurate statistic, according to the "Gamo Territory Survey" (1593), said to be a comprehensive survey of the area north of the Shirakawa Barrier in Fukushima (where movement was mainly from south to north), the population ratio identified as "persons of uncertain status" was at most 10% or less (though expected to be higher in Central Japan where population movement occurred bi-directionally); furthermore, in the "Kai Province Current Population Survey" (1879) conducted about 280 years later, that ratio had dropped to around 0.5%. Numerically, this shows a relatively gentle settlement process over about 600 years. While it is difficult to prove the specific process of wandering people becoming servants (Genin), it is known that at the Tokikuni family in Oku-Noto during the early modern period, it took about 30 years for a wandering person to go from entering as a beggar to becoming a "hired hand" or "subordinate" and finally a hereditary servant (Hiroomi Sekiguchi).

In addition to this settlement process on land, one must not forget the settlement from the sea. Matakichi Habara, author of "The Sea-Drifting People" (Hyo-kai-min) who was closely associated with the Faculty of Economics, spent much of his massive work "Economic History of Japanese Fisheries" (4 volumes) pointing out the existence of Hyakusho (fishermen) as carriers of the Ebune (houseboat) culture. The source of the Kuroshio Current reaches the Jiangnan region of China, the Philippines, and Indonesia. It is an undeniable fact that Ebune in the Seto Inland Sea were active even into the 1980s. To assume that their fierce history connected to that did not affect the total population of Japan in each era could be called a dereliction of duty by historians. The emergence and prosperity of infectious diseases represented by temperate malaria (vivax malaria) should also be considered evidence of this. In Japan, climate warming and sea-level rise progressed, and as Kunio Yanagita introduced in the folklore case of Yaminomori Hachiman Shrine (Nagoya City), it is highly possible that "ponds and marshes" were formed in the dim forests of downstream river areas, leading to the breeding of malaria-carrying mosquitoes (Anopheles). The epidemic that became the object of incantations and prayers in the 11th-century "Mido Kanpakuki" and "The Tale of Genji" was likely Okori (malaria), and it has even been pointed out that in the Kyoto of that era, malaria, which was originally an acute infectious disease, may have settled as an endemic disease (Jun Maki et al.).

Now, it was none other than the three unifiers—Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu—who linked this convergence process of medieval Japan to the development of the market economy. Nobunaga's work boiled down to the development of market infrastructure. Above all, he did not alter the standards of weights and measures since the Fujiwara clan (the standard measuring box originating from Kofuku-ji had spread widely). There is still no clear answer as to why the transition from the Kandaka system to the Kokudaka system occurred, but without the nationwide spread of the standard measuring box as a volume (weights and measures) standard (using specific gravity indicators, it could easily handle taxation and transactions based on the weight of rice or commodities), such a decision would surely not have been made. Furthermore, through the institutional reform of Rakuichi Rakuza (free markets and open guilds), he placed the market at the source of the people's happiness and sought to rule the realm through its expansion. Hideyoshi's greatest contribution was the nationwide development of the land cultivation system through the Taiko Kenchi (land surveys). As settled farmers increased and each became independent from the master-Myoshu management, the standard for cultivation came to be based on the fact of who was cultivating that piece of land (Makoto Numata), rather than ownership. The content of the famous passage "The mountains are deep, the sea as far as the oars can reach" perfectly matches the process of executing new laws when applying R. Coase's theorem in modern economics to actual cultivation system reforms. Finally, regarding Ieyasu, his greatest contribution was the establishment of the monetary system, the lifeblood of the market economy. Since the Kengen Taiho, the last of the Twelve Imperial Coins, Japan had entrusted its currency to Chinese coins (Song and Ming coins) as if it had abandoned the sovereign right of coinage, but with Ieyasu, coin minting finally resumed, leading to the establishment of the triple currency system.

The work of these unifiers was to stabilize the realm nationwide by institutionalizing the liquidity of production factors, which is the lifeblood of the market. The subsequent Bakuhan system then brought waves of technological innovation into individual farm households, turning them into bases for industrial production and achieving the long-awaited import substitution of silk products. Along with this, the capital market for rural industry grew steadily, and in the Choshu Domain, a long-term and stable downward trend in interest rates was observed throughout the 18th and 19th centuries (Miho Tanaka). This wave of rural industrialization advanced powerfully from Western Japan to Northeastern Japan. The trend of the Shogunate's real money balance beginning to rise, leading to Modern Economic Growth (MEG), started after the Great Tenmei Famine (1780s) (Shigeo Akashi).

The independence of farm households and their transition to Hon-byakusho (regular farmers) progressed with the times. The population growth rate from the 17th to the early 18th century also reached 0.4–0.5% annually. The contribution of household formation to population growth was immense. Households became the basic unit of life, including production and consumption. Rural sociologist Kizaemon Ariga positioned the farm household as the "last bastion of livelihood security" and considered it an organizational and social structure that could not be replaced by the market or market economy; however, in the formation of these stem families, they enlivened the surrounding labor market by producing collateral relatives. The Bakuhan system also designated the household as the unit of observation for social reform and implemented various institutionalizations.

At the same time, however, a newly emerging risk was the spread of infectious diseases centered on the household. In particular, the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis was clearly a disaster brought to the household by the actions of its members. With the rise in household independence and the acceleration of distribution in the market economy, the speed of transmission increased at once, first almost swallowing the three major cities and then spreading to surrounding areas. This momentum continued until the post-war period when the distribution of the miracle drug penicillin was achieved. Until then, at the popular level, treatments using Kampo medicine or Dutch-style pharmacy were being explored. It was also discovered that a drug containing arsenic compounds, the same as Salvarsan which was later expected to be a miracle drug, was being formulated at the Tekijuku school at the end of the Edo period (see references in my paper). The people boldly faced these risks. In that sense, they fully fulfilled their role as a center for the systematization of Asian knowledge, but they were still distinct from the Western knowledge system where causal relationships were organized in a logical and orderly manner.

What did the heads of farm households from the Edo period to the pre-war period fight against? This is a question that naturally emerges when conducting research that links living standards to farm household finances. In his work "The Family" (Ie), Meiji-era author Toson Shimazaki carefully buried the falling farm household as literature, intertwining it with problems inherent to farm households such as the family-first principle of old houses, patriarchal attitudes, lineage, and heredity (linked to chronic infectious diseases like syphilis). The opponents the farm household heads fought were not just these groups of problems as a negative chain that can be fully discussed in modern literature, but the mission to protect the positive chain of life, production, and livelihood.

Until the pre-war period, farm household heads were immediately thrown into the vortex of a frequent exchange economy traded between village settlements. Administrative villages after the Murauke system (where household decision-making independence strengthened after the Land Tax Reform) were usually formed from multiple settlements. Homogeneous farmers with the same origins or surnames gathered to form a single settlement, and daily life within it was managed through barter. However, goods and services that required adjustment beyond the settlement were acquired through an exchange economy (labor organizations like "Yui" were also an exchange economy through the provision of meals) (Tsuneichi Miyamoto and Yoshiji Nakamura). Production factors such as land, labor, and capital were the central goods and services traded in this exchange economy. In the Edo period, the village managed this under the Murauke system (after the Meiji era, systems such as tenancy were introduced).

In this context, the head of the household was forced to know the average prices of various goods and services generated within the daily exchange economy. As far as production factors were concerned, the frequency of exchange transactions between settlements (using currency when it was sufficiently supplied) must have been high. The emergence and evolution of these prices likely gave the household head opportunities to reflect not only on his own labor productivity and labor pain but also on whether the labor productivity of family members and their living and upbringing costs were in balance. Furthermore, the decision to introduce rural industry into the home followed the same logic. In time, good household heads were distinguished from those who were not, rumors spread in settlements and villages, and through various twists and turns, they created the history of that house.

By the way, another important role left to the household head is to protect the lives of family members. To utilize the expanding market, working away from home (Dekasegi) in urban areas was indispensable. Even if they remained in the household, with an unsatisfactory standard of living, the head had to decide on the feasibility of working away, considering the risk of contracting chronic infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis in urban areas. Anyone in a village that had experienced urbanization knew that a rash decision to "just go work away" was something an ignorant household head would do. It could be said that the judgment of the household head (actually after consultation with relatives), who possessed the ability to ask who to raise how, and when and where to send them to work away, decided the fate of the farm household. In the Shimo-Ina region of Nagano Prefecture, the engagement of farm households in side businesses such as carp farming and sericulture significantly affected the physical growth of children (see my paper). Furthermore, the time when tuberculosis became an object of crisis management for farm household heads as an external risk should be considered at the latest after the Tenmei Famine, and in that sense, the implications of the Hayashibara paper mentioned at the beginning are historically very deep.

Akira Hayami, "Population, Economy, and Society in the Nobi Region in the Early Modern Period," Sobunsha, 1992

Kenichi Tomobe, "Population Strategies of Early Modern Society," in Akita et al. (eds.), "World History of Population and Health" (Minerva World History Vol. 8), Minerva Shobo, 2020, pp. 63–82

Ibid., "On the Causal Relationship between Venereal Disease (Syphilis), Stillbirth/Miscarriage, and Fertility in Early Modern and Modern Japan: Keio University, at the Center of its Possibilities," Journal of Modern Japanese Studies, Vol. 34, Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies, 2017, pp. 1–38

Ibid., "Fluctuations in Physical Stature, Population, and Economy," in Socio-Economic History Society (ed.), "Encyclopedia of Socio-Economic History," Maruzen, scheduled for publication in 2020