SOCIAL TRENDS IN LATE-EDO JAPAN AND DISCRIMINATED PEOPLE

THE BAKUHAN REGIME which had been such a strong ruling system was eroded still further at its economic base by the development of commercial agriculture and production from the middle of the Edo period. The Kyōhō reforms (1720s) and Kansei reforms (1790s) in the end were unable to repair the system. During the later Edo period there was an increasingly rapid development of social division within rural villages between the wealthier and poorer classes. We can also see the development all across Japan of cottage industry production based on wholesalers and in the more advanced areas even the birth of manufacturing industry. This aggravated the contradictions within the Bakuhan system and it moved toward crisis. At the end of the Edo period the number of peasant rebellions began to increase and during the major famine of the Tempo era – 1833–1839 – they increased sharply. The Bakufu central government and the local lords sought new solutions to this crisis trying to make use of commercial capital and at the same time local regimes sought to increase their monopoly of the production of certain products. Meanwhile both central and local authorities developed policies to repress the people and strengthen status discrimination.

At the national level: the Bakufu issued regulations in the fourth month of 1802 that stipulated that eta and hinin should use different forms for all kinds of administrative purposes. Any attempts to leave their communities should be subject to prolonged enquiries – in fact the enquiries should continue without limitation until they were tracked down.

AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

In the Ozu han in Iyo (Ehime) in the eighth month of 1798 it was decreed that eta had recently behaved in ways ‘inappropriate to their station’ amounting to the ‘height of insolence’. This suggests that they were trying to ‘pass’ as mainstream Japanese. So it was decreed that from now on ‘as in the past’ they should wear on the front of their clothing a piece of leather about 15 cm square and should place a leather hide at the entrance to their homes to make their identity clear to all.