W.W. Farris
a reasonable hypothesis that the populace of much of the archipelago was almost always in a state
of malnourishment during the Warring States’ era.
Just when demographers would appear to feel assured that the population shrank or stayed
about the same, however, a review of many other factors seems to suggest growth. These eco-
nomic indicators imply the herky- jerky continuation of the agrarian, commercial, and industrial
growth first taking place during the 1300s. Farmers kept on clearing small new parcels of land,
building more and better irrigation works, and raising a greater variety of crops, enhancing pro-
ductivity little by little. The commercial boom taking off in western Japan expanded to the Kanto
and even northern Japan, as Warring States’ warlords began developing the industrial and com-
mercial potential of their growing domains. Free markets using cash sprang up. Transportation
arteries were rebuilt and initiated afresh. New industries such as cotton textiles, architecture and
stone fitting, and mining and metallurgy enriched the archipelago as never before.^41
The figures proposed for the year 1600 after which most of violence ceased show how diffi-
cult it has been for demographers to read this era.^42 Yoshida Tōgo proposed the first guesstimate
in 1911 at 18.5 million, reasoning that since Japan seems to have produced 18.5 million “bushels”
(koku) of grain in 1600 and one bushel could support one person for a year, the solution was at
hand.^43 After World War II, however, Hayami Akira rejected Yoshida’s easy equation of one
bushel with one person and extrapolating backward from the early 1700s figures of the Toku-
gawa bakufu, reasoned that the population in 1600 was a mere 6.2–9.8 million.^44 In 1975, he
increased the number to 12.3 million.^45
Criticism for Hayami’s second figure was slow in coming, but in 1999 the Tokugawa period
specialist Fujino Shōsaburō utilized fragmentary data from several domains throughout Japan
between 1665 and 1734 to show that the growth rate during the seventeenth century was less
than half the 1 percent proposed by Hayami. According to Fujino, since the growth rate was
much smaller during the seventeenth century, the population of Japan must have been much
greater than 12 million in 1600. Fujino suggested that Japan’s population around 1600 was
between 19.4 and 23.65 million.^46 Kitō and Saitō, both Hayami pupils, soon suggested much
higher numbers than their mentor, 14–15 million and 17 million, respectively. At present,
Table 16.2 Deaths by month: Shimo ̄sa, 1395–1600
Month Males Females Total population
1 442 149 591
2 395 133 528
3 432 153 585
4 469 139 608
5 407 125 532
6 496 163 659
7 410 123 533
8 409 118 527
9 286 102 388
10 289 97 386
11 366 73 439
12 320 108 428
Total 4,721 1,483 6,204
Average 393.4 123.6 517
Source: Chiba-ken shiryo ̄, Chu ̄sei-hen: Hondoji kakocho ̄. Chiba: Chiba-ken, 1982.