Farm Management and Labor Composition under a Small Landlord in Western Ibaraki Prefecture from the Late Meiji Era to the Early Showa Era

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The typical small-scale farm management in Japan originated from the introduction of an intensive agricultural system in the 17th century by Kenchi. This system, however, was corrupted in the 19th century, and landlords with large arable estates and servants appeared. Although these landlords cultivated parts of their land at first, they gradually turned most cultivation over to the hands of sharecroppers in the 20th century.Many studies have been made about landlords in geography and other fields, because the landlords constituted an important class in Japanese agricultural society before World War II. These studies, however, mainly focused on large landlords who owned more than 10ha. Few studies have investigated smaller landlords who were also cultivators even in the 20th century. The class of these small landlords, which included many agricultural leaders called tokunou, played a very important part in Japanese agriculture and agricultral society from 1900 to 1960.This paper aims to identify the characteristics of farm management of the small landlord through farm size and labor organization from the late Meiji Era (1910) to the early Showa Era (the 1930s). The case farmer of this study is the Nakajima family in Awano in Yachiyo village, Ibaraki Prefecture.Nakajima was a large farmer who cultivated 2.8ha of land and rented a small land in the late Meiji Era (1910). After the middle Taisho Era (1920s), the land cultivated by the Nakajima family decreased to 1.5ha in 1929. Although it increased to 2ha in1935, it decreased again to 1.4ha during World War II.The change of land cultivated by Nakajima family was closely related to agricultural labor composition. In the late Meiji Era, the second daughter of Nakajima, who was older than the first son, married and her husband was received into the family. As a result, the Nakajima family formed a composite family with Nakajima, his first son, his second daughter and their spouses and children. They cultivated 2.8ha of land exclusively by family labor. However, the family became smaller in 1916, when the family of the second daughter moved out and started a branch family and their parent died. As the number of family workers decreased, the Nakajima family employed some servants in order to cultivate a large area. However, the rise of wages forced them to decrease the area of cultivated land during the 1920s. The land abandoned by the Nakajima family was rented to branch families, and Nakajima became the landlord of branch families. In the early Showa Era (the 1930s) family workers of the Nakajima family increased in number, because children had grown up. As a result, the Nakajima family could enlarge the cultivated land to some extent for such prosects as sericulture. However, the area of cultivated land of the Nakajima family did not reach the level of that in the Meiji Era because of the labor shortage. The family did not grow as before and laborers were difficult to hire from branch families.