Price formation in land title certificate markets of medieval Japan: The depths of the manorial market economy

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K18421
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 7:Economics, business administration, and related fields
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Nakabayashi Masaki 東京大学, 社会科学研究所, 教授 (60302676)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 西谷 正浩 福岡大学, 人文学部, 教授 (80248468)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-07-09 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 荘園制 / 土地証券 / 加地子 / 加地子還元土地価格 / 法の保護

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Under the manorial system in medieval times, claims of landlords who were responsible for management of farming were actively traded. While it has been known that the landlords' claims prices, or land oprices, varied, the causes of of the variances have not been addressed. We hypothesized that the landlords' claims depended on "additional return on land (kajishi)" that accrued to landlords, and constructed a database. Statistical analyses of the database revealed that prices of landlords' claims were indeed statistically significantly positively correlated with land prices. We next studied the relationship between land taxes paid to manorial lords and returns earned by landlords and found that manorial lords' land taxes and landlords' returns were statistically significantly negatively correlated.

Free Research Field

専門分野:取引システム,経済史,開発経済学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

私たちは、中世荘園制における地価を、地主の投資収益である加地子によって説明できるとする仮説を実証すべく、データベースを構築、分析し、その仮説を統計的に有意に支持する結果を得た。一方、荘園領主が収取する年貢と、地主が収取する加地子との間には、統計的に有意な負の相関関係があることが判明した。すなわち、中世荘園制において、荘園領主と地主は分配をめぐってゼロサムの関係にあった。中世の農地価格は、農業生産性の向上による加地子の上昇だけでなく、生産性上昇分を荘園領主と在地の地主のどちらが稼得するのかにも依存していたことが予測される。中世の農地市場に客観的な分析基準を適用することに成功したと言えよう。