Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (2.1972/1975)

FARM TOOLS IN THE “NOGU-BENRI-RON”
INTENSIVE HOE-FARMING DURING THE EDO PERIOD IN JAPAN
Av
Hisashi Horio

The history of Japanese agriculture has pro-
ceeded through four major stages since the
third century B.C. when rice was introduced
as a crop: 1. a stage of hoe cultivation; 2. a
stage of plough cultivation, beginning in the
fifth or sixth century A.D. when the farming
of north China was introduced, and the use
of the plough spread on large farms. This phase
was accompanied by other technical changes,
for when the plough was introduced from north
China or Korea and used according to its
original function, it was already unsuitable for
the farming techniques, current at the end of
the second stage, when deep digging was being
done to allow for the use of mulch (linuma
1974 Nihonshi 13); 3. a stage again marked by
hoe cultivation, when farming was developed
along Japanese lines without foreign influence;
4. a stage of plough cultivation began in the
nineteenth century under Western influence
(linuma 1971 Nihonshi 1). The third stage is
the main theme of this paper.
A detailed consideration of agricultural
implements during the first and second stages
was reported by Jiro linuma (linuma 1969
Ne-no-hi.). It is worth noting that the trans-
formation to the third stage was brought about
not by foreign influence, but by domestic con-
ditions. As part of the formation of the feudal
system in the 16th century, a land assessment
programme, Taikd-Kenchi, v/sls established,
which also provided for the independence of
lower and smaller farmers (Aragi 181-221), who
became the leading force in agricultural produc-
tion. Their characteristic tilling tool, the hoe,

then became the dominant tool, used for all
tilling purposes and for weeding. Hoes were
developed and differentiated for various soil
conditions and operations. Uniquely Japanese
characteristics evolved during a 300 year period
free from the influence of foreign farming.
Though early farming techniques are dis-
cussed in the copious technical farming litera-
ture written in the 17th-19th centuries,only
two detailed descriptions of farm tools are
given, in the anonymous Hyakusho-Denki (Far-
mers’ Memoirs), 1682, and the Nogu-Benri-Ron
(Treatise on Farm Tools) by Okura Nagatsune,
1817. The former devotes one chapter out of
fourteen to the description of farm tools, con-
centrating on those common in Mikawa and
Toutoumi provinces, the Pacific coastal land
of middle Japan. The latter deals with the ge-
neral conditions for farm tools in Japan and is
well illustrated. It is thought to show the ad-
vanced state of hoe-farming at the end of the
Edo period.
The formation of NOGU-BENRI-RON
Okura Nagatsune, the author of Nogu-Benri-
Ron, was born in a farming family in the
northwest district of Kyushu in southwest Ja-
pan, in 1768. When his grandfather, an expert
cotton grower, died, Nagatsune started work at
11 years old manufacturing wax from lacquer
juice with his father. His concern with the tech-
niques of processing farm products began in
his early teens. He left home at 24 and travelled
about Kyushu, staying several years at Osaka,
where he engaged in the business of selling