(The information collected by the author is relatively confusing, so please raise your noble hands and don't laugh.) ）

During the Tokugawa shogunate, Fuso was a thoroughly agrarian society, but what was the real situation in the countryside?

During the Edo period, peasants were divided into several classes according to their land holdings, similar to the Chinese landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants, and tenant farmers. According to the book "Mature Edo", the average number of people in the countryside during the Edo period was people, and there were various classes among the hundreds of people.

According to whether there is their own land, it is divided into two types: high holding and no high.

(In fact, the peasants only had the right to cultivate, and legally the land at that time was owned by the shogunate, the daimyos, the imperial family, and the temples and shrines, similar to the Chinese fields and bones, and the right to use and ownership were separated.) ）

Takachi is also known as "the general people", "the common people", "the head people", "the main people", "the people", and "the people", that is to say, the people of the Edo period were not casual, at least they had land!

As for the small number of "Ishimori", "Famous Lords", and "Shoya", they were the descendants of the samurai or the wealthy peasants (landlords and rich peasants) at that time, and their status in the countryside was very high, and the ordinary middle peasants were called "the common people" or "the common people".

Among them, the "countryman" is more special. Ordinary villagers are samurai in the countryside who have their own land, but they may not have a lot of land. Most of the villagers farmed at home, and the feudal lords were required to serve in the military if they fought in war. In Tosa, the village priests were more complicated, in addition to the samurai in the countryside, there were also some wealthy farmers who bought the status of samurai, similar to Edo and other big cities at that time, many townspeople bought the status of ashigaru when they had money, and de jure required military service, but in fact, the shogunate and the princes did not arrange positions for these people, and military service was generally nothing for them.

In addition to the above-mentioned rural high-level farmers, there are also small and medium-sized farmers such as "grass fen" (those who reclaim wasteland) and "root" (native-born), all of whom are "local people" or "common people" who have land at home, but sometimes they also do odd jobs for others, and are sometimes contemptuously called "underground people" or "people (わきびゃくしょう)".

As for "Shuitun" and "Xiaoqian" are completely landless poor peasants, "Shuitun", which means that they can only drink water if they can't afford to eat, and it is said that Shuitun has a small amount of land, but Xiaoqian is a landless peasant, and both mainly make a living by helping other people.

Under "Shui Swallow" and "Xiao Qian", there are also "family hugging the people" (house slaves), "being officials" (house slaves), "genealogy descendants" (house slaves), "Mingzi" (house slaves), and "Tingzi" (children born to slaves, which can be bought and sold). These people and "water swallow" and "small front" are called "detachment", which means to survive by relying on others.

The "villagers", "shiji", "famous lords", and "village houses" were often authorized by the government to retain the privileges of housing and dress handed down from their ancestors, while other peasants lived in much more modest dwellings and wore simple clothes. In some villages, the upper and lower peasants even worship different shrines. The disparity between the upper class of the villagers and other peasants was the result of a combination of traditional social practices and decrees granting privileges to the higher families.

However, because of the "sect people's separate account" system, that is, the temple invitation system, the peasants' weddings, funerals, travel, and tourism had to go to the temple shrine to open a certificate, so in the later period of the Tokugawa shogunate, a village often believed in a temple or shrine.

In addition to economic differences, differences in status also bring political differences. In the Edo period, the village annual tribute contract system and the five-person system were used to collect land rent and other taxes from the village as a whole. The five-member system is not limited to five, but may be more than a dozen, guaranteeing each other to jointly maintain order in the countryside and bear taxes and labor, and one family is in arrears of land rent or violates the ban, and the remaining five-member families must bear joint and several liability.

"Zhuza" (かぶざ) was originally an organization that held festivals in the countryside, but gradually it became a village-wide autonomous organization. However, the plant was relatively closed and considered the identity of the members (ancestral history), and gradually came up with the challenge of the new rich peasants, and there was a constant struggle between the "new rich peasants" and the "old kuroku" (the original rural high-level), and finally it became a distinction between landed and landless. The landed peasants formed a "village seat (むらざ)", with "whether they have land in the village" as the criterion for judging the "people", in the form of "consignment" (aggregation), to discuss the major affairs of the village, formulate village rules, elect ~ raise village officials, ensure that the whole village pays annual tribute, jointly hold sacrifices to the gods, build projects, etc., and violate the village rules to be punished by "village eight points" (the whole village breaks off diplomatic relations with him). The village seat is composed of the village head, the year of the year, the parents, and the people's representatives (farmers' representatives), and gradually replaced the Zhuza.

In addition, at that time, there were still remnants of ancient commune relations in the rural areas of Fuso, where peasants owned mountains, forests, and grasslands, and there were organizations such as "knots" for mutual labor assistance during the busy farming period, and "jiao" for mutual aid with religious beliefs, but poor peasants, tenant farmers, and hired peasants were not allowed to participate in such autonomous organizations.

In addition to land rent, peasants also have to bear miscellaneous taxes such as land and land additions, as well as "use of money" (apportionment). In addition, the peasants also had to perform various kinds of labor, mainly "national service" and "village service", the former refers to the construction of bridges, roads, embankments, etc., and the latter refers to the daimyo "Visiting the Hajj to give an explanation", the peasants need to provide horses and porters for the post stations along the way.

The members of the village seat have a great deal of initiative in the distribution of rent, apportionment, miscellaneous taxes, and labor on a village-wide basis, especially when the peasants are forced to grow a certain crop.

In order to overcome financial difficulties, the shogunate continued to mint bad money or indiscriminately issue uncashed "feudal clans", increased the annual tribute to the countryside, measured the land, increased the rent rate of fixed output, and even levied annual tribute ("Qianna" or the third year's annual tribute ("Qianqianna") from the peasants one year in advance, and the poor peasants continued to become tenant farmers and hired farmers, and according to Fuso's own data, the tenant farmers in the region reached half of the rural population during the period of Xiangbao (1716-1735 AD). In 1702, 90,048 of the 120189 households in the Ono River Territory of the Owari Domain (present-day Aichi Prefecture) owned land and 28,041 did not have land.

Haonong (landlords) and landed people (rich peasants, middle peasants) all eat rice as their staple food, and "Shuitun" and "Xiaoqian" (landless poor peasants) eat less rice, and feed on wheat, chestnut rice, barnyard and vegetable leaves, and bibimbap or vegetable porridge with rice bran and radish vegetables are also relatively common.

According to a document, at that time, a family of self-cultivated farmers, 1 husband, 1 wife, 1 son, and 1 daughter, jointly cultivated the land of Tian 1 town and 5 hata 5 yuan, and the annual income was equivalent to 170 copper coins, about 33-34 gold, and the expenditure was 143 yuan, and the staple food was 2.5 stone of rice and 4.5 stone of wheat, and the annual balance was 27 yuan, about 4.5-5.4 gold, without any major events and diseases.

At that time, in Edo, in addition to food, shelter, and two sets of clothes a year, the annual income of the male servant was 2 taels of gold and the maid was 1 tael of gold.

The author of the Wuyang Hermit, written in 1816, said, "The inequality between the rich and the poor is so great that there are twenty or thirty poor peasants around it."

After the founding of the country at the end of the Edo period, it was not difficult to imagine the social turmoil of the time when the people were increasingly miserable in the face of foreign economic plundering and the recklessness of the shogunate.