C. von Verschuer
Conclusion: a diversity of agricultural practices and food production
Throughout Japanese history, rice production was the first concern of public administrations.
Rice therefore has the largest presence in written sources from all periods. But as the foregoing
discussion indicates, we also understand that rice was not the main staple food for most of the
population in the medieval period, before an increase in production in the Edo period. Until
then, only a small part of the harvests remained with the households of the rice farmers them-
selves, whereas the bulk of the production was absorbed by fiscal levies meant to feed the élites.
In contrast, dry grains, beans, and tubers that were cropped either in permanent or in swidden
fields did remain with the farmers’ households for their nutrition. Gathering was another
important food resource. In some cases, gathering nuts, seeds, kernels, acorns, and green wild
plants provided an important proportion of the diets in upland areas. With an overwhelming
majority of mountainous areas, and their rich biodiversity, foods have been available through
various polycultural and gathering activities.
These means of food acquisition produced the calories, proteins, vitamins, and starches for the
subsistence of the population of classical and medieval Japan. In other words, rice did not occupy
a more important space in the lives of the Japanese than other plant foods. We can say that the
long- standing argument of a rice- centered society is not valid anymore. In this chapter I have
introduced both previous and recent research on agricultural techniques encompassing irrigated
rice and showing multiple farming practices. Yet this is only the beginning of a change in our
overall appraisal of Japanese traditions. Interdisciplinary research in archaeology, history, anthro-
pology, and ethnography is still needed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the agri-
culture and food production of premodern Japan.
Notes
1 Charlotte von Verschuer, Rice, Agriculture and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan: The Place of Rice
Hirose Kazuo, Jōmon kara Yayoi e no shin rekishi zō /FHJUB:PTIJP
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inasaku. From 2009 to 2011, the National Museum of Japanese History devoted a research program
to the “Formation and Development of Agrarian Society: Reconstruction of the Image of the Yayoi
Period” and published the results in 2014. In this volume, Shitara Hiromi, “Nōkō bunka fukugō to
Yayoi bunka” assesses (p. 465) the passage from the Neolithic (Jōmon) period to the Yayoi period at
the beginning of agricultural cropping practices (well before the introduction of irrigated rice cultiva-
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southwest of the archipelago.
2 Verschuer, Rice
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Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645–900.
For eighth- century agriculture, see also Gina Barnes’ general outline, “Japan’s Natural Setting.”
3 For Kuroda Hideo, Nihon chūsei kaihatsushi no kenkyū, 70–73, the main medieval innovation was the
introduction of the taitōmai variety of irrigated rice. See Kimura Shigemitsu, Hatake to Nihonjin,
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from the Neolithic appears in Sasaki Kōmei, Nihon bunka no kiso o saguru, 223.
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195–230.
6 Miyamoto, “Jōmon nōkō to Jōmon shakai,” 115–138.
7 Shitara Hiromi maintains that the number and volume of the plant remains in Neolithic sites are too
limited (sometimes only four or five grains in a site) to draw conclusions on any agricultural activity. See
Shitara, “Nōkō bunka fukugō to Yayoi bunka,” 460.
8 Verschuer, Rice, 301–315, presents a list of two hundred plants from the Engishiki.
9 Nōgyō zue, 1717, Tsuchiya Matasaburō (1642–1719), Nihon nōsho zenshū, vol. 26, pp. 137, 138, 260, 261
(sowing wheat and barley in the eighth and ninth months and harvesting them in the fifth month). See
the table “Agricultural Calendar (Kaga Region in 1717)” in Verschuer, Rice, 318.