Trends of regional and local socio-economic changes
Periodization of history is always somewhat arbitrary. However, looking at temporal changes in local development, domain policy contexts, and environmental conditions in the Nihonmatsu domain and in northeastern Japan as a whole, we can discern, to some extent, the trends of socio-economic changes during the entire 154-year period under consideration (1716—1870).10 The Nihonmatsu domain government was in debt from the late seventeenth century (Nagata, Kurosu, and Hayami 1’’8).
In an attempt to achieve financial solvency, the government thus implemented several extraordinary taxes during 1728—4’. The combination of these extra taxes and a series of poor harvests contributed to a major peasant uprising in 174’, after which taxes were reduced and delayed payment was allowed (Koriyama-shi 1’81b: 351—60; Nihonmatsu-shi 1’82: 79—81).The commercialization of agriculture based on family farming also began on a large scale in the 1750s (Hayami 1’85: ’1—2). Due to the continuing agricultural commercialization and also because of an intensified need to increase rice production after the Tenmei famine in the 1780s, the Nihonmatsu domain government reversed its official economic policy at around the end of the eighteenth century. Once having discouraged the development of proto-industries, the domain government began to encourage locally specialized production of cash crops such as mulberry and lacquer trees (Nagata, Kurosu, and Hayami 1’’8). This resulted in the proto-industrialization of villages in the domain, as seen in the growth of the silk textile and lacquer industries.
The region was again seriously affected by the great Tempo famine in the 1830s. After the Tempo famine, the rigid social structure and hierarchy of Tokugawa Japan that had been sustained for almost two and half centuries became increasingly slack, leading to the period called bakumatsu, the last years of the Tokugawa political regime.
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