Have you ever gone through life believing one thing, and then one day you find a piece
of information that proves you wrong, and it changes your entire world view?
Japanese historians felt that too when they realized something
about medieval Japanese society.
There’s a popular belief that medieval Japan was a farming society,
where most people were rice farmers just working in the fields all the live-long day.
Japan learned about wet rice farming more than 2000 years ago, and like a courtesan’s legs,
they spread it far and wide, making a whole country based on rice farming.
Even historians bought into this idea that medieval Japan was an agricultural society.
This is a video all about how historians started off thinking one thing,
then had their minds blown when they peeled back the kimono of evidence
to uncover the soft naked truth underneath.
[The Farming Trap]
When historians looked at population records,
the documents clearly showed that most people were farmers.
It was as clear as your dating calendar.
Here’s the population in 1849 of one domain.
76% farmers.
Problem was, there was a translation error.
These documents used the word hyakushō 百姓, which means farmer in modern Japanese,
so people translated it as “farmers.”
But back then it had a different meaning.
It meant the “common people.”
So really these old records showed that most people were commoners, not farmers.
Ah the old trap of translating historical words by today’s meaning.
My father once fell into that trap, and now he’s dead.
Now historians aren’t dumb.
The first thing they teach history majors is that you shouldn’t read words
by their modern definitions.
The second thing they teach them is how to apply for welfare programs.
So why did historians fall into this trap?
Well because actually, a ton of evidence pointed towards Japan being a rice farming society.
Taxes were calculated by how much farmland you had, and the tax amount was in rice.
Most surviving records and petitions were about land.
People kept detailed records about who owned which farmland.
Petitions to the government and landlords were mostly people whining and crying about
how bad their crops were doing.
Their lives did seem to revolve around farmland.
But here’s where we peel back the kimono.
Yes, taxes were expressed in rice, but you didn’t have to pay in rice.
Say you’re a silly little commoner…there, that’s you…
and you get a tax bill for 1 bag of rice.
You could pay the 1 bag of rice, or you could say,
“Well one bag of rice is worth two bags of wheat, so I’m gonna pay 2 bags of wheat instead.”
Or you could say,
“Well it’s worth 3 bags of millet, so I’m gonna pay 3 bags of millet instead.”
Or you could say, “Well it’s worth about a million Russian Rubles right now,
so take that worthless s--t away from me.”
Turns out, when we look at tax records, we find that most people didn’t pay taxes in rice,
they paid using another crop, like wheat, barley, or millet.
It shows that people grew all kinds of crops.
They didn’t just live on rice 24/7. That’s an offensive stereotype.
It’s an Asian country, we live on MSG.
Alright so Japan grew other crops, but surely most people were farmers, right?
What else could poor people in the countryside do?
But you gotta ask yourself one question: Who made the noodles?
How does a complex society function with most people just making rice?
Who made all the other stuff…the clothing, the weapons, the buildings, the noodles?
Who made the noodles?
Perplexed by the noodle question, nood-ologists dove back into the tax records, and found
that people didn’t just pay taxes in crops, they also paid in a million different products.
It’s a slap in the face telling us that people were not just farmers.
If someone could afford to pay taxes in salt, it meant they made so much salt that
it must have been a full time job.
So if they weren’t all farmers, why were all their records and petitions about land?
Again, we dive into taxes.
If your lands determined your taxes, what would you do?
You would hold on tight to those land records like you were Elon Musk and those were prenups.
Most petitions were about farmland because the easiest way to get a tax cut
was by complaining to the government that your crops did really badly.
“Ah the gods must be in a bad mood this year,
anyways can I get the natural disaster deduction?”
All of these records about landownership, land sales,
and taxes survive because people kept them safe.
Maybe people tossed out other types of documents because they weren’t related to taxes.
When historians hunted down documents that people threw away or recycled,
they painted a totally different picture.
The most useful were documents that people reused by writing on the backside and papers
that people stuffed inside of sliding doors for insulation.
These sliding door papers are super hard to read because they’re like my underwear,
all ripped up and not in any order.
It’s like putting together a puzzle but the pieces are hidden all over Japan,
there are missing pieces, and there are a million puzzles.
But historians worked really hard for years to tell their grad students
to do all the work piecing together these documents.
What they found was a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view.
They found loan documents, and receipts for shipping and all kinds of goods.
Turns out it was a whole different economy with all kinds of products and even greedy moneylenders.
Besides farming, there were a million other RPG professions
that we’ll talk about in a bit.
Since ancient times, Japanese rulers have always had these rice supremacist views.
The first Japanese state assigned every person a piece of land for rice farming.
Over the years, the rice-ism stuck.
Government officials constantly called the common people farmers,
and called agriculture the foundation of the country.
To them, non-farming jobs were side jobs.
Even someone who fished 90% of the time and only spent 10% farming…
he was called a farmer, who just dabbled in fishing.
Similar to how my dad still calls me an engineer even though I’m doing YouTube full time now.
Still holding on to that hope.
It was easy for the nobles in government to slip into this way of thinking,
because farming meant tax dollars for them.
[ravage me, aladdin]
Aladdin showed me a whole new world on his magic carpet,
now you can ride my magic carpet while I show you this new world.
Historians found receipts for all kinds of goods in those sliding door papers,
revealing all kinds of jobs.
Here are a few jobs that medieval Japanese parents might pressure their children into.
Most people were not farmers, or they only did farming on the side.
So this guy…probably not a farmer.
Many people did still pay taxes in rice, but rice was more important as a standard measurement.
Rice back then was a lot like the US Dollar today,
the currency by which all other currencies are measured.
They calculated taxes by rice, and paid an equal amount in goods.
Historians used to think that mountains and coasts were poor,
because they couldn’t support much farmland.
Landless commoners struggled to live.
Japan seemed to be full of poor landless beggars who survived by being slaves to richer families.
But when historians broke the chains of agricultural thinking, they decided to take another look.
They dusted off their graduate students, and revisited villages
near the waters, and deep in the mountains.
The island of Yugeshima was disconnected from the mainland and had terrible soil for farming,
a poor, isolated island where people lived hard lives fishing and making salt.
Salt making was common in coastal villages.
These people were forced to make salt to keep up with tax payments.
Or were they?
When researchers looked harder, they found a record of a dude who owned almost no rice fields,
but had 10 cattle, 5 servants, and some nice household items
like an expensive kimono.
Not things that belonged to a starving islander.
The island also had boats, lots of them.
Turns out, being an island doesn’t mean you’re isolated from the rest of the country.
They used their boats to ship salt all over the place, including the capital.
Historians realized Omg they had money.
Yugeshima was actually famous across the country for being an island of salt.
Its port was a busy trading spot, full of sailors and courtesans,
ready to put their wet fingers all over your money.
This other remote backwater place called Niimi estate deep in the mountains
actually supported huge industries.
It was famous for blacksmithing.
Metalworkers from faraway visited the shrine at Niimi to worship.
They sold high-quality paper.
They grew lacquer trees and woodworkers created nice lacquer bowls and cups and stuff.
Being deep in the mountains didn’t isolate them,
because they used a river to transport goods and trade.
Niimi paid taxes in iron, paper, and lacquer, along with crops like rice, wheat, and soybeans.
Other than the land tax, there were taxes on goods too.
Historians found places like these all over Japan, and realized that mountains and coasts
were not poor at all, they just didn’t farm much.
Old documents revealed shipping titans, families who owned little land,
but were able to give out huge loans.
These families had big ships that sailed up and down the Japan Sea,
delivering goods all over the country.
Medieval Japan was more connected than we thought.
It wasn’t just isolated villages living off the land.
Rivers and coasts are everywhere in Japan, and the water gave people networks for shipping,
travel, trade, and communication.
The Japanese will be happy to know that Japan wasn’t full of poor, sad mfers.
Back then.
There were plenty of businessmen and merchant families who had enough money
to give out loans to nobles and temples.
People raised silkworms to make silk.
In the mountains, they cut trees to sell lumber and charcoal.
They mined metals like iron and gold.
They did freaking oyster farming.
They had so many jobs.
Now okay commoner life was better than we thought,
but don’t fall into the opposite trap.
The average villager was probably not living like a king.
If you really want to find out how the common people lived, a story not often told,
you gotta click on this video.
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You’re awesome.
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Alright I love you and spread the knowledge!