Page 288 - Panjek, Aleksander, Jesper Larsson and Luca Mocarelli, eds. 2017. Integrated Peasant Economy in a Comparative Perspective: Alps, Scandinavia and Beyond. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 288
integr ated peasant economy in a compar ative perspective
innumerable wars, such as the Thirty Years War, the Seven Years War,
the Great Nordic War, the Napoleonic Wars and wars of independence,
and the Franco-Prussian War. However, the wars were not the direct ca-
uses of mortalities, as even more threatening were “the major epidemics
that even small armies spread in their wake. The plague marched alongsi-
de the armies in the Thirty Years War, together typhus carried by the lice
in their clothing. More victims fell to these epidemics than to the small
bands of soldiers with their primitive cut and thrust weapons, their unre-
liable and complicated guns, or even their burning everything in sight”
(Imhof 1990, 39).
In sharp contrast, there were no mortality crises attributable to war
during the Tokugawa era as Japan had no international wars for the two
and a half centuries of the Tokugawa rule, and this characterises the es-
sential mortality regime of traditional Japan. The main disasters in Early
Modern Japan, in the times of the Tokugawa shogunate, were rainstorms,
floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, the spread of epidemics, especially small-
pox, and fires.
The Japanese population is estimated to have increased enormously
over these centuries from 17 million people before the 17th century (Sai-
to 2014, 72) to 31 million people in 1720, when the first national popula-
tion survey was conducted (Hayami 1986, 6). Japan’s human population at
the macro-level ceased to grow after around 1720, and stagnated at around
32 million until the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868–1912), although some
regional differences, including population decrease in northeastern Ja-
pan and population growth in southwestern Japan (Kitou 2000), were ob-
served. During the period of stagnant population growth, the Tokugawa
shogunate initiated attempts to manage and control large rivers for acquir-
ing new cultivation areas, but was unsuccessful in conquering floods. Un-
til the middle of the Meiji Era, floods occurred nearly every year on almost
all of Japan’s alluvial plains and in the delta regions, challenging the inhab-
itants every day with drainage issues (Ōkuma 2007, 12). The enactment of
the River Law in 1896 (Meiji 29) was the first watershed event dividing Ear-
ly Modern and modern flood disaster management in Japan. With the in-
troduction of modern civil engineering technology in the last quarter of the
19th century, water management in Japan changed dramatically, as the initi-
ative for protection against flood risk in major rivers was elevated to a pri-
ority political issue of the State.
286
innumerable wars, such as the Thirty Years War, the Seven Years War,
the Great Nordic War, the Napoleonic Wars and wars of independence,
and the Franco-Prussian War. However, the wars were not the direct ca-
uses of mortalities, as even more threatening were “the major epidemics
that even small armies spread in their wake. The plague marched alongsi-
de the armies in the Thirty Years War, together typhus carried by the lice
in their clothing. More victims fell to these epidemics than to the small
bands of soldiers with their primitive cut and thrust weapons, their unre-
liable and complicated guns, or even their burning everything in sight”
(Imhof 1990, 39).
In sharp contrast, there were no mortality crises attributable to war
during the Tokugawa era as Japan had no international wars for the two
and a half centuries of the Tokugawa rule, and this characterises the es-
sential mortality regime of traditional Japan. The main disasters in Early
Modern Japan, in the times of the Tokugawa shogunate, were rainstorms,
floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, the spread of epidemics, especially small-
pox, and fires.
The Japanese population is estimated to have increased enormously
over these centuries from 17 million people before the 17th century (Sai-
to 2014, 72) to 31 million people in 1720, when the first national popula-
tion survey was conducted (Hayami 1986, 6). Japan’s human population at
the macro-level ceased to grow after around 1720, and stagnated at around
32 million until the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868–1912), although some
regional differences, including population decrease in northeastern Ja-
pan and population growth in southwestern Japan (Kitou 2000), were ob-
served. During the period of stagnant population growth, the Tokugawa
shogunate initiated attempts to manage and control large rivers for acquir-
ing new cultivation areas, but was unsuccessful in conquering floods. Un-
til the middle of the Meiji Era, floods occurred nearly every year on almost
all of Japan’s alluvial plains and in the delta regions, challenging the inhab-
itants every day with drainage issues (Ōkuma 2007, 12). The enactment of
the River Law in 1896 (Meiji 29) was the first watershed event dividing Ear-
ly Modern and modern flood disaster management in Japan. With the in-
troduction of modern civil engineering technology in the last quarter of the
19th century, water management in Japan changed dramatically, as the initi-
ative for protection against flood risk in major rivers was elevated to a pri-
ority political issue of the State.
286
