Brown, Philip C. (1990) Reallocation of Arable Land Use Rights in Early Modern Japan: Hypothesis on Its Origin and Functions

Conference: Presented at Designing Sustainability on the Commons," the first annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Duke University, Durham, NC, Septmber 27-30, 1990.

Abstract: "Many communities in Early Modern Japan (perhaps as many as half) extended communal management to some or all or their arable land. Generally instituted at the village level and in close association with the development of villages' corporate responsibility for tax payments, these programs, periodically reallocated each participant's access to specific plots of land without effecting a redistribution of wealth. Although higher political authorities sometimes sought to encourage and benefit from these practices, redistribution persisted (in some cases into the twentieth century, in violation of laws which establiished modern private property rights) largely because they filled villagers' needs. Variations in local circumstances generated differences in specific villages practices. Nonetheless, all sought to maintain an adequate supply of local labor in regions in which a day labor market was poorly developed."