ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses certain aspects of internal village organization which developed during the Tokugawa period, and which became characteristic of the village in the following periods. The important point is that the Tokugawa system established the village as the basic social and economic unit in rural Japan; and the household as a production unit responsible for revenue. The chapter presents the household composition of the Tokugawa peasant. Confidence was engendered in the peasants by their being made responsible for farm management under the new administrative system, and as a result state agriculture as well as peasant life greatly improved. Detailed and tabulated data on the status of households in a Tokugawa village are available in the works of economic historians. Details of the network of the water in Gorohei-shinden village in 1771 were as follows. This water was divided into three streams at the entrance to the village in order to feed separate sets of fields belonging to the village.
