From Tribute Payers to Full Peasants: Kodaira, 1629-1849

Titled peasants are often understood to be descendants of peasants entered on the early land surveys as landowners and tribute payers. Ancestry and ownership would thus be necessary to qualify for the title of "titled peasant." Accordingly, one would expect that as the population grew (especially during the seventeenth century, when the growth rate was 50 percent) and the number of kin-related small landholders that branched off from the original households increased, the number of titled peasants also increased. On the other hand, if many new peasants came from the ranks of non-kin dependents (who were not descendants from original titled peasants) and ancestry was more important than landownership, one might expect nontitled peasants to outnumber titled peasants. Honbyakusho^[*] , "titled peasant," is specifically a title, and its rarity points to privilege and limited access. Ancestry, however, was only one way to anchor and preserve this privilege against other claimants, and it was not an absolute criterion: it was only one strategy among others to secure distinction and status.

Thus, a number of questions have to be answered with regard to the status of titled peasant. Why did the number of tided peasants tend to become limited? Whence the rarefaction? What criteria controlled entry to this status group—ancestry, ownership, wealth? And did the overlords or the village council control these criteria? How did lineage power intersect with the power or prestige individuals derived from the fide? Was this symbolic capital—which within the village was political capital—immune to devaluation (could one lose one's status as a titled peasant) or marketable (could one sell or buy the status as such)? Could one transfer the title independently from the land, or were the two inseparable? I touched upon some of these questions in chapter 1. Here I shall discuss them more fully.

In discussing the original titled peasants, identified as homestead owners in the early registers, I have described their function in rather vague terminology: they were accountable for the tribute, responsible for it, and they channeled it. This language is intentional, because non-titled peasants also produced and contributed to tribute and corvée. The original titled peasants were clearly the economically wealthier peasants, if for no other reason than that they had homesteads. The basis for the title was thus economic and rested on ownership not sim-

ply of land but of homesteads as well. By the same token, it was also political, since it was the local elite that became titled. The term "titled peasant" thus has two sides, an extramural and an intramural one, the former having to do with responsibility for tribute and corvée, the latter (both reinforced by and the basis for the former) with local status and power.

The early titled peasants managed land, not uncommonly estates of more than one hundred koku, and a number of dependents co-residing on the homestead as well. Gradually these estates were divided and parceled out to dependents, who thereby became economically independent to some degree from the original owner, who nevertheless retained his preeminent position within the expanding lineage by registering the various households (ie) and their land as being part of (buntsuke) or within (uchizuke ) the main holding. Often, but not always, the former referred to kin (affines, descendants, and relatives), the latter to non-kin.^[51] Genealogically, or perhaps more precisely, linealogically , these new units were branch houses of the main house.

In Shimo-Kaize, as we have just seen, there was a great difference between kadoya and kakae, which I referred to as semi-established and fully established branch houses, respectively; and the trend was "emancipatory" from kadoya to kakae. The evolving relationship of these kakae to the titled peasants can be described as follows. The number of titled peasants increased until the last decades of the seventeenth century, when they appear to have reached a quota in most villages that was maintained for about a hundred years. During that century the number of kakae grew, but then it decreased and by the end of the period, in the 1860s, they had virtually disappeared, having become titled peasants.^[52] These turning points in the trajectory of the relationship between kakae and titled peasants need explanation. Why a growth in the numbers first of titled peasants, then of kakae, and then once again of titled peasants?

To follow this trajectory, the struggles that determined it have to be analyzed and the question of status that constitutes their center

[51] Ichikawa Takeji, "Kakaebyakusho^[*] ," 6.

[52] For instance, in Ozawa village of Saku district in 1704, 33 percent of the peasants were kakae, but in 1864 all kakae had disappeared. The same drastic drop occurred in nineteen out of the twenty-five villages that constituted the Tanoguchi bakufu fief, of which Ozawa was a part (ibid., tables 3 and 4 [7, 8]).

addressed. With this in mind, we shall follow in some detail the history of Kodaira village (presently part of the town of Mochizuki in Kita-Saku district) as presented to us by Ozaki Yukiya.^[53] In 1647 its assessed yield was 175 koku, making it a small village.

In 1629 Kodaira counted thirteen peasant owners of residences (yashiki), making them "tided peasants" (see table 14) In 1643 there were twenty: the original thirteen plus two branch houses, all holders of between 8 and 21 koku, and five others with holdings between 4 and 8 koku as yet without homesteads. Since the latter five were entitled to a yashikibiki , an exemption of tribute owed on their residence, they must have been titled peasants as well.^[54] In addition, there were two other peasants with less than 1 koku who differed from the other twenty in that they did not enjoy the exemption; they were nontitled peasants.^[55] The number of titled peasants thus increased from thirteen to twenty in about a dozen years.^[56] Two hundred years later, in 1849, there were twenty-one Kodaira peasants marked in the registers as osabyakusho^[*] ("head peasant"), a variant of honbyakusho^[*] . Nothing seems to have changed, yet this longue durée is filled with colorful events.

The 1677 population roster shows clear status divisions. The peasant population, aside from one outcaste, then comprised twenty titled peasants (including seven patrons), thirteen clients (including three kadoya), and a number of bond servants (fudai and genin). Economically, however, the members of the two main groups are not always distinguishable. Although all holders of more than eight koku are titled peasants, some clients have equally large or even larger holdings and bond servants as well. The three clients and the one outcaste have holdings larger than that of the smallest titled peasant (under 1 koku). Nine of the clients, however, have no holdings at all (mudaka).

Over the next twenty years two great shifts occurred. In 1694 one titled peasant, a sake brewer (whose descendant is still in business

[53] Ozaki Yukiya, "Kinsei sonraku naibu no mibun kaiso^[*] ni tsuite: Shinano-kuni Saku-gun Kodaira-mura kakaebyakusho^[*] mondai o chushin^[*] ni," Nagano 29, no. 8 (1977): 752-68, no. 9 (1977): 815-30.

[54] In Matsumoto domain this amount was 1 koku (Naito^[*] , Honbyakusho^[*]taisei , 85).

[55] Although the five holders of 4 to 8 koku had no yashiki they were nevertheless granted the yashikibiki , which means that they must have been (new) titled peasants (Ozaki, "Kinsei sonraku," 755).

[56] Ibid., table 1 (755).

(Table continued on next page)

(Table continued from previous page)

today) had become very successful, for he had 80 koku, which put him far ahead of the next two holders, with 25 and 13 koku. The situations of some of the kakae had also improved: the nine taka holders, the largest with 11 koku, each had more land than sixteen of the twenty titled peasants, but there were now also twenty-seven landless clients. The total number of clients now stood at thirty-six. By 1731 the picture has changed again. The sake brewer, had nineteen servants and had acquired another 28 koku, bringing his holding to almost 100 koku. But twelve of the now twenty-one titled peasants had only x koku or less. Now, there were forty clients, of whom all but one had land. This does not mean, however, that there were no landless peasants (mizunomibyakusho^[*] ): there were eighteen of them, one of whom was a client.

Ozaki does not detail the composition of the goningumi, but it is likely that the kumi were structured along lineage lines. It is important to note as well that membership in the goningumi was limited to titled peasants, twenty-one households out of a total of seventy-eight.^[57] As we shall see, lineages played an overwhelming role in village politics, one that has not received much scholarly attention. As lineages grew, the number of temples grew from one temple of z koku to three, one with less than half a koku, the other two with 5 and 16 koku. It is likely that these temples serviced nor simply "the village" but the lineages.

We should take a closer look at who the titled peasants and clients were. A comparison of three population registers (shumon^[*] aratamecho^[*] ), for the years 1694, 1695, and 1698, reveals numerous and frequent changes in the identity of titled peasants and clients. Between 1694 and 1695 the number of titled peasants increased by one (to twenty-one); however, this new titled peasant, who had been promoted from the status of client, became a client again three years later, but under a different patron. In another case, a patron changed places with his client, the latter now assuming the position of lineage patron and titled peasant. Another titled peasant went into service outside the village for

[57] This was also the case in Tenjinbayashi, a neighboring village. In 1699 there were nine goningumi in Tenjinbayashi, each counting exactly five members (rifled peasants), except for one group that had only four members. Together with the headman, this adds up to forty-five rifled peasants; nineteen of them were patrons for a total of thirty-two kakae. In addition, there were six servants and four outcastes (see Ozaki Yukiya, "Mochizuki-machi no buraku no rekishi [1]," Mochizuki no burakushi 1 [1975]: 53).

several years and gave up his title. Other cases in 1698 show a similar instability in the membership of both ranks. One titled peasant passed his title on to his client when he left the village on a service stint. One Jihei who in 1695 was a client turned up three years later as not only a titled peasant but also a patron of three clients: one was Jihei's former fellow client; one was Sajihei, a titled peasant who had two clients in 1694 but only one in 1695 and was himself Jihei's client by 1698; and the third was the successor to Sajihei's former client.

The situations of a number of titled peasants were precarious, and their clients stood ready to take their place. (By now the titled peasants constituted a numerus clausus .) These clients were often second and third sons and in some rare cases bond servants. The fiction that they were all born within the village, however, was maintained; although most bond servants came from the outside, when they were promoted to client status they were recorded as "born in the village." Also, as we saw in chapter 1 to be the case in Makibuse, none of Kodaira's approximately thirty bond and indentured servants were married. Either they could not afford a family (a very widespread phenomenon beyond Japan also)^[58] or they were not allowed to have one (they needed their patron's approval to take a spouse).^[59]

In the 1702 population rosters of the neighboring village of Kasuga, one looks in vain for clients. Instead, there are a good number of mudaka, peasants without taka, recorded as doing "internal work" (naisaku ) for their parents or brothers. They had families and lived in separate quarters and were thus kin, established as branch families who officially had not been granted land by their main family.

What qualified one to be a titled peasant, and why was their number restricted at a time when more and more branch houses were being created? Economic power obviously was not the decisive factor: quite a number of clients held larger holdings than most of the titled peasants. There was no upper kokudaka threshold that automatically made one a titled peasant or a lower one whereby one lost one's title. At the same time, all of the clients who were promoted held at least close to

[58] I referred earlier to Pierre Bourdieu's study of the Béarn region in France. I still remember the live-in stable hands on the farms of the village in Belgium where I was born, all bachelors who were never taken seriously and bore the brunt of many jokes and pranks.

[59] Minegishi, Kinsei mibunron , 140-42.

five koku. Unlike the holding, the title usually could not be divided (although in Niremata it was). Hierarchical lineage structure seems to have determined all important relationships within the village. In society at large the great divide was between samurai and nonsamurai, in the village between rifled and nontitled peasants; both the nonsamurai and the nontitled peasants were subjects of governance. The nature of status in samurai society differed from that in peasant society. Whereas samurai status adhered to all descendants of samurai, for long periods of time during the Tokugawa period the number of titled peasants was limited; only one of a titled peasant's sons could inherit the title—which was also the case with samurai offices . The title of "titled peasant" thus seems to have functioned not simply as a marker of status but also as a title of office. And initially this was the case, since titled peasants were created and set up as such to provide the overlords with the goods and services they expected from their subjects. But why its scarcity, given that many nontitled peasants obviously provided the same function? Were there also extramural influences at work in the limitation of the number of titled peasants?

Naito^[*] Jiro's^[*] answer to this question, which is perhaps too one-sided, is that the titled peasants were those who had a hyakusho^[*]kabu , or "peasant share."^[60] In the beginning only the "titled peasants" (homestead owners) had such a share. While this may sound tautological (titled peasants are those who have a share in the status of peasant as opposed to those who do not), the term share , as we shall see shortly, was used very early on to refer to title holders.

In accounting for the nearly universal phenomenon of the continued restriction of the number of title owners, Naito^[*] concentrates on extramural factors, thus ignoring the increase in the number of titled peasants in roughly the first half of the seventeenth century. He cites two cases where daimyo legislated explicitly against an increase in the number of "peasant shares," one of them using the term kabu .^[61] In bakufu legislation there is no explicit reference to limiting the number of rifled peasants, but many bakufu-initiated village laws (goningu-

[60] Naito^[*] , Honbyakusho^[*]taisei , 28.

[61] The two cases revolve the Kaga domain and the village law of Iwamoto village in Echizen (ibid., 94-95). The latter mentions the term kabu and is a document that dates from between 1601 and 1607. For the full text of this document, see Miyagawa, Taiko^[*]kenchi-ron , 2:304. Another case is Ueda domain (see NAK-T 4:464).

micho^[*] zensho) mention the need to provide successors to bankrupt peasant houses.^[62] Naito's^[*] interpretation of this injunction seems plausible. He argues that if shogunal policy had simply aimed at establishing small landholders, there would have been no need for such encouragement: there were plenty of small landholders with lands and homesteads who could have succeeded to bankrupt titled peasant houses. This injunction makes sense only in a context of limited access to the status of titled peasant.

Another extraneous influence was undoubtedly the bakufu's 1673 prohibition against dividing land below a certain size: For peasants the minimum size was ten koku, and for headmen, twice that amount.^[63] This law was issued around the time that the great riparian works of the seventeenth century were coming to an end. In many regions the acreage had been increased, so that an expanding population could be absorbed. Thus the further creation of branch houses would result in smaller holdings, and often, for example, in small mountain villages, even in a reduction of acreage of arable by the amount of land taken up for new homesteads. In many areas the branch houses established during this period of expansion became titled peasants.

In the registers in Ueda domain, a few kilometers to the north of Kodaira, one finds clients until around 1624, when they begin to be entered on the name rosters as equal to the titled peasants, and by 1654 they are all registered as such on the cadasters; that was when the number of titled peasants was frozen. And this seems to have been in response to orders from the overlord. Subsequently, in the 1670s, clients reappear on the kumi rosters under various labels—"kakae," "elder brother kakae," "younger brother kakae," "nephew kakae," and so on—as dependents of titled peasants and yet as owners of homesteads and lands.^[64]

The same thing happened in Gorobe-shinden (discussed in chapter 2), a few kilometers to the east of Kodaira, with the large development of new fields by a dogo^[*] . When all the available flat land was brought under cultivation by the late 1660s, the number of titled peasants froze at forty-five households, and kakae were entered on the population registers (shumon^[*] aratamecho^[*] and goningumicho^[*] ) as dependents of

[62] Naito^[*] , Honbyakusho^[*]taisei , 95-98.

[63] For an English translation of this law, see Lu, Sources , 1:207.

[64] NAK-T 4:463-64.

titled peasants, hence not as full community members. Half a century later, in 1712, the number of titled peasants in Gorobe-shinden was still forty-five, but thirty-four of them had a total of eighty-three kakae.^[65]

Naito^[*] points out that if there was a limitation on the number of titled peasants set by overlord power, as was sometimes the case, and if, by bakufu order, it had become difficult to establish branch houses (and if, one may add, certain sectional intravillage interests were served by such restrictions), then new branch houses, even if they were economically independent and as well off as their parent families, had officially to be registered as still part of, or dependent on, their parent families. In other words, this limitation maintained hierarchical relations between main and branch families and the importance of lineage structures.^[66]

This arrangement looks very much like another tatemae reconciliation of the contradictions between legal principle (making branching a virtual impossibility for the majority of peasants) and actual practice (it was not admitted to on paper, but it happened nevertheless). A tatemae approach to law can perhaps best be rendered as a "nod and wink" approach—the Italians' perception of their own relationship to law. The authorities had documents showing compliance with the law (the stable number of titled peasants), and the peasants had a practice they could live with—an eminent illustration of what Pierre Bourdieu calls a misrecognition of reality that fools nobody.^[67]

Thus, the lineages used bakufu restrictions on partitioning holdings to structure themselves and were at the same time structured by it. In and of itself, however, lineage economic power was not effective if it could not be translated into political power, which meant acquiring for its members the title "titled peasant." Since the number of titled peasants was restricted, however, they had to wait for the moment that a titled peasant, for one reason or another, had to give up his share. Another bakufu institution leveraged by lineages was the kumi system. Kumi organizations were used to strengthen lineage filiations, because

[65] Ibid., 464.

[66] Naito^[*] , Honbyakusho^[*]taisei , 50, 175-79.

[67] Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 133, 171. The Japanese categories tatemae (face, façade) and honne (real intention), which John O. Haley skillfully uses in his discussion of "law as tatemae " (Authority without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991], 186-90), fit perfectly Bourdieu's analytic notion of misrecognition.

all heads of the five-household neighborhood groups were patron houses. Intravillage lineage hierarchies and administrative structures, the latter ordered by overlord authority, thus overlapped.

Let us return now to Kodaira village. By 1731 forty landholding kakae and seventeen landless peasants, all incorporated into hierarchical lineage relationships, were ruled by twenty titled peasants, half of them virtually landless (i.e., having less than one koku). The situation was unavoidably wrought with tensions. Some tatemae, or cosmetic, as opposed to substantial, changes had been made in the entries of the population registers a few years earlier, changes that reduced somewhat the difference in status between tided and nontitled peasants. The former were no longer entered as having been tided peasants daidai , "for generations and generations," and to the latter's name was no longer added onbyakusho^[*] tsukamatsuri makari ari , "deferentially in service of titled peasants."^[68] But how could these nontitled peasants go about effecting substantial changes? Some overlords (in Ueda domain at one point) had legislated against such changes; others (often in bakufu territories) were not interested in such matters.

In 1769 a number of kakae in Kodaira organized themselves as spokesmen for their class, although they did not form a majority, and raised an issue that was of some interest to the authorities, namely, the structure of the neighborhood kumi. That year eighteen (out of fifty-eight) kakae filed a suit requesting that the kakae system be abolished. They argued that patrons should not also function as kumi heads because this constituted a repressive, overlapping authority structure. On 2/29, however, before the suit was even filed, sixteen of the twenty-one tided peasants of Kodaira submitted a written rebuttal to the five village officials (the other titled peasants). They argued that there had been twenty-one tided peasants in the village "since ancient times"; that they, together with the kumi heads and the representative of the peasants (hyakushodai^[*] ), made all the important decisions; and that issues of kumi membership were always discussed by all the peasants. The next day the remaining forty kakae wrote to the village officials that they disapproved of the suit by their eighteen status mates.

This attempt at staving off the suit failed, and the officials filed a recorded testimony with the bakufu's intendant at Mikage-shinden,

[68] Ozaki, "Kinsei sonraku," 767.

stating that the overlapping system was according to longtime village law and that at a meeting of 2/8 "all" the peasants had decided not to change the entries in the new population rosters that were due within a few weeks. Moreover, they reminded the authorities that prior to this suit of the eighteen, three among them had gone directly to the office in Mikage-shinden about this matter and that that office had shown little interest, ordering a private settlement (naisai ). The plaintiffs, however, had ignored the decision that was subsequently reached in the village. Finally, a few days later, in the third month, the suit was filed together with a rebuttal signed by the village officials and the titled peasants.

The plaintiffs obviously wanted to use the institution of the neighborhood kumi as leverage to break the power of their bosses, while the defendants stated that the overlapping system was village law and did not cause problems to the plaintiffs. The latter, however, argued that while Tokugawa law required that kumi be established by neighborhood and that a head then be designated, in Kodaira only patrons were kumi heads. The plaintiffs made it clear that they believed the village officials had been maneuvering to prevent kakae from becoming kumi heads. (The case of nearby Iribuse, discussed in chapter 2, was very similar.) The defendants, conceding this point somewhat, proposed a compromise whereby the titled peasants would constitute three separate kumi and the other peasants would be grouped in genuine neighborhood associations and would choose their own heads. This compromise solution was rejected. The eighteen were intransigent and wanted to negotiate only if the entry "patron" (kakaeoya) were taken off the population register. They cited the precedent of neighboring Makibuse, where the overlapping system had been abolished. But the village officials were unimpressed, arguing that Kodaira had its own village law and that it did not matter what was practiced elsewhere.

This suit describes concretely the trouble patrons caused their clients; some complaints are about the symbolic distancing of the village officials from the peasants. In the third month the new population register had to be signed. The custom had been for peasants to drop by the headman's home to certify their entries with their seals, but now they were all summoned to assemble in the headman's yard, with the officials inside and the representative of the peasants acting as a go-between. The officials gave three reasons for this hierarchical arrangement. First, since the village had become part of the bakufu domain (in

1765) the village law had to be read to the peasants once a year, which was why they were gathered together to hear the reading and sign the register at the same time. Second, the headman's house was too small for a gathering of all the peasants. And third, since the weather was fine, it seemed like a good idea to use the outdoors. The last two reasons sound spurious: it is doubtful that the headman's house was too small, and in the mountains of Nagano in the third month the weather is still bitterly cold. Obviously, the kakae interpreted this setup as arbitrarily emphasizing the differences in status between the officials, or patrons, on the one hand, and the peasants, or kakae, in general, on the other.

The eighteen had set out for the bakufu office at Mikage-shinden (some sixteen kilometers away) with their suit once before, but the village officials had gone after them and persuaded them to return by promising a private settlement. The negotiations had faltered, however, over the abolition of the patron system, and the eighteen had reintroduced their suit. Then the issue of a conflict of interests was raised, the plaintiffs expressing their concern that the decision by the titled peasants to have the village shoulder the officials' travel expenses might have had something to do with the overlapping responsibilities of patrons and kumi heads. The titled peasants simply denied the allegations and asserted that the decision about shouldering the defendants' costs had been made not only by the twenty-one titled peasants but by all the peasants. Costs had also been a factor in postponing the suit of the eighteen for over four years. They had submitted their suit to the peasant representative several times, but the village officials had ordered prepayment of the costs of the suit. The titled peasants' view of this was that all these earlier attempts had constituted only informal talks, not formal proposals for a full-fledged suit.

The plaintiffs, conscious of their economic independence, also requested that any household that could not be self-sufficient be excluded from the kumi. The officials responded by arguing that economics had nothing to do with full kumi membership: lack of economic self-sufficiency was no reason, they said, to lose one's status as titled peasant and patron. Only if one became a servant in another village did one lose one's status. But this was not the case with Kyuzaemon^[*] , whom the plaintiffs cited as an example. Kyuzaemon^[*] , patron and kumi head with a meager holding of 0.085 koku, was working as a servant (hokonin^[*] ) in

another household. He had in his kumi one successor house and one doshin^[*] (a Buddhist priest without a temple). When one of these two disappeared the field had to be taken over by another peasant, who had himself only 0.15 koku but never lifted a finger to cultivate the minuscule plot.

The suit contains yet another reference to a previous suit, this one involving a kumi head (0.4 koku) who had expelled one of his kakae "because not only had he always been insolent but he had also ignored advice from the village and he was selfish (wagamama )." The village officials had then told the kakae that because he now had no patron he could no longer live in the village. This kakae also had brought a suit to the Mikage-shinden office. The case had been stopped, however, through mediators brought in from another village. The same expelled kakae, together with his three co-kakae, were among the eighteen plaintiffs.

By the time of the suit, the titled and nontitled peasants were economically virtually undistinguishable. Only five titled peasants had holdings of more than z koku (the sake brewer, with 120; the headman, with 14; and three others, with 5, 4, and 3 koku), four more had x koku, and the remaining twelve had holdings below 1 koku. On the other hand, nineteen kakae had more than x koku. Both plaintiffs and their ten patrons were spread evenly on both sides of the 1-koku divide. Four patrons found all their kakae united on the side of the plaintiffs, and eight had succeeded in rallying all theirs in opposition, while the kakae of the remaining eight were divided between plaintiffs and opponents to the suit.

The outcome of the suit, mediated at the wealthy temple Fukuoji^[*] , appeared to be largely a victory for the plaintiffs: reference to kakae and mizunomi in the kumi membership lists was to be dropped, kumi would now be arranged geographically, and kumi leaders were to be elected from within the kumi every other year. But it was a hollow victory, because after four years, in 1773 and 1774 three separate but identical suits were submitted (by twenty plaintiffs, thirteen of them new ones) about the problem of overlapping jurisdictions. This time, however, the plaintiffs' demands were on a smaller scale: they wanted to be freed from their status as kakae and to be "recognized in the population roster as born in this village." There was no critique of the kakae system as such, no insistence on abolishing it. This obviously was not a

"class suit," for all kakae. Moreover, all petitions were also co-signed by the officials and the patrons in question. What was the rationale behind this new drive, coopted, it seems, by all those with any power? Who among the kakae signed, and why not all of them now that the drive enjoyed official sanction? (There is secondary evidence of an additional petition, now lost, by another ten kakae, bringing the total kakae supporters to thirty, still just above half of the total kakae population of fifty-six.)

The petitioners made a distinct, on between kakae that were related by kinship and those that were not. What four years earlier had appeared to be a united front as far as claims were concerned had broken down along kinship lines. Fictional kinship was fine, the petitioners seemed to say, but it was not the real thing and should not be treated as such. Distinctions were introduced, or made stronger, in order to separate the two and to produce distinction that was acceptable to the authorities.

It annoyed the thirty kin branch houses that they would have the same status as the twenty-six non-kin branch houses, and they wanted not simply to have their kakae status removed but to be acknowledged as hyakusho^[*] , "peasants." (A similar distinction between kin and non-kin kakae had been made in Shimo-Kaize.) The result, however, was not equality with the old titled peasants, here called onbyakusho^[*] , or "honorable peasants," but a further splitting of this status whereby the kin kakae became second-class onbyakusho^[*] , while the non-kin kakae became simply hyakusho^[*] , peasants—but the term no longer simply described an occupation: it now was a title designating their status within a finely graded hierarchy.

The population register of 1780 includes the following seven ranks of peasants (the number of peasant households in each rank is given in parentheses):

1. "onbyakusho^[*] [honorable, i.e., titled peasant] living in this village since ancient times" (18)

2. "onbyakusho^[*] born in this village" (29)

3. "hyakusho^[*] born in this village" (18)

4. "hoko^[*] [in service] at X with Y (born as onbyakusho^[*] in this village)" (5)

5. "X's kakae, born in this village" (3)

6. "X's mizunomi ['landless' (tenant)]" (3)

7. "mizunomi born in this village (onbyakusho^[*] since ancient times but now mizunomi)" (1)

This new status stratification was an ingenious device to accommodate some of the demands while preserving distinction and the distinctions that constitute the symbolic capital—they had hardly any other—of the dominant fraction of the village. The demands of the kakae, both kin and non-kin, were met: in ranks z and 3 they were now recorded as "born in the village" and no longer as kakae but as peasants, hyakusho^[*] . The special demand of the kin kakae was also met, for they were now distinguished from the non-kin by the "honorable" prefix on . And former titled peasants (onbyakusho^[*] ) were recognized as such: in rank 4, for those who had to give up their title because they went into service outside the village while retaining some land, and also in the lowest rank, because they had lost all their land (below the mizunomi of rank 6, who had some land). There are, however, a few kakae left, in rank 5.

Later population rosters tell the continuing story of wranglings over status promotion and maneuvers against status pollution. All non-kin hyakusho^[*] of rank 3 became absorbed as onbyakusho^[*] into rank 2, and all dependent mizunomi of rank 6 were promoted to dependent kakae of rank 5, who later were gradually incorporated into rank 2. On the 1849 roster only the names of peasants are listed, without any prefixes. Had equality been achieved? Not quite, because there are "sidescript" entries next to the names. On this roster, twenty-one peasants are marked as osabyakusho^[*] , "head peasants" (three of them mizunomi), forty-eight as hyakusho^[*] , "peasants" (among whom are three mizunomi), and two as kakae (one mizunomi). Finally, after some two hundred and fifty years all but two in this peasant village had become "peasants." Had status been superseded by class at the end of the Tokugawa period, as the historians mentioned at the beginning of this chapter argue? Not quite. Mizunomi is a clear economic marker for landless peasants. Yet three mizunomi are among the elite twenty-one.

Similar struggles concerning the status of titled and nontitled peasants took place in the area around Kodaira at roughly the same time. We shall look briefly at two additional cases that involved "mass" decisions, one involving promotion to, the other demotion from, the status of titled peasant. A group promotion of kakae to titled peasants

should not be interpreted too readily as a final step toward equality. Often, subtle or even explicit social distinctions were maintained between the old elite and arrives.

In 1780 in Nagatoro (in today's Saku city, some fifteen kilometers east of Kodaira) thirty-five clients were set free by twenty-five patrons, and they became full members of the neighborhood kumi (resulting in the creation of seven new kumi); but all of them had to be given permission by their former patrons, who thus became their guarantors.^[69] The reasons these guarantors gave for setting their clients free included the following: "he has his own holding"; "he has a separate house but no land yet, but he will cause no trouble"; "I shall give him land, and he will cause no trouble"; "he is my relative, and I shall give him 1.44 koku."

Having a clear title to some land (even one koku or less) was a basic condition for becoming a titled peasant in Nagatoro. It is ironic, however, that these amounts of land were insufficient to maintain even a small peasant household. These peasants, now nominally "full peasants," must have supplemented their income through nonagricultural pursuits. Economically, the term "titled peasant" was an empty title; its significance was purely political and social.

The "independence" thus gained was conditional upon good behavior; the guarantorship certainly suggests as much. Sometimes the difference between old and new titled peasants was codified and expressed in public signs. In Tanoguchi village (also in Kita-Saku district) the village laws of 1681 stipulated that clients promoted to the status of titled peasant were not allowed to wear haori coats, hakama ceremonial aprons, or ashida (high rain geta, or wooden clogs) or to use umbrellas, and the pillars of their houses could not exceed eight shaku (2.40 meter); nor could they use tatami mats, and they were not allowed to enter homes of "real" titled peasants, but had always to stay in the entrance way. (As we shall see in chapter 5, prohibitions identical to these were issued against outcastes.) Such distinctions within the ranks of titled peasants could be maintained for a long time. In one case, someone whose household had been promoted to titled peasant in the 1780s was reminded in writing two generations later, in 1844, that he could not wear a kamishimo ceremonial over-

[69] Ichikawa Takeji, "Kakaebyakusho^[*] ," 12-13.

coat except when he was the main mourner at a funeral or the groom at a marriage (an allowance made because of relaxing standards, it was stated). If these things were disregarded, he was warned, his house would return to its former kakae status.^[70]

The group demotion case, a rare occurrence, is from Kasuga-shinden (a few kilometers south of Kodaira), which, with only 145 koku, was a rather small village.^[71] In 1767 the headman in one stroke demoted twenty-five titled peasants to kakae status. The result was a suit (in the third month, as was so often the case) brought by the demoted to the headman. The headman, however, single-handedly, and without any further endorsement by village officials, passed the suit on to the bakufu authorities in Mikage-shinden—in an effort to doom it.

It should be noted in passing that this circumstance throws some light on the process of lodging suits. Dan Fenno Henderson has argued that villagers' suits had to be approved by the village headman and could be initiated only after conciliation efforts had failed.^[72] Japanese scholars have disputed this point. According to Ishii Ryosuke^[*] , no conciliation efforts were needed; the headman had simply to provide an accompanying letter, which the headman failed to do in this case.

All four kumi heads (the only ones among the twenty-two patrons who had not been consulted, "because this would have led to a dispute") immediately wrote to the same authorities, explaining the case and requesting an investigation. The headman had put the twenty-five former titled peasants as kakae under their relatives (brothers or parents), who thus became their patrons. His reason for this drastic step was that there were too many tiny peasants in the village with holdings of "0.02, 0.03, 0.05, 0.08, 0.2, 0.3, 1 and z koku, and too many irregularities, making it difficult to apportion expenses to each and every peasant; it was much easier to rechannel this through patrons." The intendant investigated the case and returned the original petition to the village, noting that he would attend to the matter if the request was forwarded properly, via all the village officials. In the second month of the following year the kakae were reinstated as titled peasants.

[70] Ibid., 8-9.

[71] For a summary statement of the case and some of the documents, see ibid., 10-12. All full documents for this case can be found in NAK-KS2 (1): 964-68 (nos. 490-93); for the village kokudaka, see ibid., 724.

[72] See Henderson, Conciliation 1:136; and Ishii Ryosuke's^[*] critique in his long review of this work in Law in Japan 2 (1968): 216-17.