Land, labour and market forces in Tokugawa Japan

This article examines the markets fir land and labour in traditional Japan, where peasant families accounted for 80 per cell of the population; it focuses on the extent of these markets and how they operated. The survey of evidence, both literary and statistical, indicates that, while the size of the factor markets was small and limited, lease arrangements for farmland and the markets for seasonal labour and the rural-urban transfer of manpower functioned rather well. It is therefore suggested that market forces must have played all indispensable part in the process of Tokugawa Japans proto-industrialization and Smithian growth.