| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KITO Hiroshi Jochi University, Faculty of Economics, Professor, 経済学部, 教授 (50138377)
HAMANO Kiyoshi Kansai University, Faculty of Economics, Professor, 経済学部, 教授 (40288585)
TOMOBE Ken'ichi Keio University, Faculty of Economics, Professor, 経済学部, 教授 (00227646)
KUROSU Satomi Reitaku University, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Associate Professor, 外国語学部, 助教授 (20225296)
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| Research Abstract |
This study examines the economy and population in early modern Japan. We included the early Meiji period (1870s and 1880s) to our scope, since we have no national population statistics before Meiji era, but after the Meiji Restoration, the government carried out population registration and published the results. We can first obtain the general picture of urban population. In the early Meiji era, Japan was not entirely industrialized or urbanized, so that the spectrum of Tokugawa Era existed still. Utilizing the urban population statistics in 1884, we can draw the rank-size distribution, by which the degree of social and economic development of the area will be settled.
Professor Carol Smith argued that if the shape of dotting of population was top-heavy, the political authority was very strong and one or a few large cities were predominant in the area (urban primacy). If the distribution takes a straight line on the both sides logarithms graph, the social and economic development was clear (normal type). If the distribution was nearly flat, the development was not enough (premature type). The Meiji Japan's case, the shape was ‘normal.',
The study utilizing the micro data of towns in early modern Japan, we took following four towns.
1.Koriyama (Mutsu Province), 2.Kiryu (Kozuke Province), 3.Okoshi (Owari Province), and 4.Takasago (Harima Province). As these towns had local commercial and industrial characteristics, the population grew when the population of large cities, which were maintained by political power, was declined. But the format of the original data was not common, it was difficult to analyze them comparatively. Some town can give us the general picture of the demographic indices but some one only migration. As a whole, the ‘urban graveyard effect' was not so strong, but population growth of each towns was brought from a large scale of migration from surrounding countryside.
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