The Cycle of Household Structure in Early Modern Peasant Society

Abstract

This paper analyses the household structure in peasant society during the late Tokugawa Era. The major objective is to observe the cycle of the household structure.The ninbetsu-aratame-cho of two villages in the domain of Nihonmatsu was used as historical documents for the study. The Hammel-Laslette model was modified and adopted for the classification of household structure to determine accurately the number of stem family households. The result of the observation proved that the household structure depended on social class. The landowning class had a high ratio of permanent residents and stem family households in both villages. Also, about thirty percent of this class was found to have a cycle that formed a stem family household. On the other hand, the ratio of permanent residents among the non-landowning class was low. Half of the people belonging to this class moved to other villages within five years. Further, the ratio of stem family households was low, while the ratio of simple family households and solitaries was high. But the most characteristic of all was that the cycle of the household structure itself could not be observed in the non-landowning class.As a result of this observation, it can be said that stem family households were the typical household structure in peasant society of the Tohoku region during the late Tokugawa Era. However, this assumption is true only for peasant households belonging to the landowning class, and it does not apply to non-landowning peasant households. Therefore, we should be cautious when discussing peasant societies of the Tokugawa Era on the premise that they had a stem family system. Even though peasants lived in the same village and had the same social status as peasants, they established totally different social and economic structures depending on their class.