ABSTRACT
FROM THE SLAVE ECONOMY PERIOD TO THE WAGE ECONOMY PERIOD. In the early period of the economic history of Japan, slaves formed the principal factor in the economic system of the nation. From towards the middle part of what is called the Imperial period in which the Emperor personally ruled the country, the arable land, and not the slaves, constituted the principal factor in the nation's economic life, forming the land economic period. But even when arable land formed the principal factor in the nation's economic life, the common peasants had to remain where they were, and had very little freedom to move from one place to another; in other words, their position was still that of a slave. In the slave economic period such lahourers as carpenters, plasterers, smiths, metal-casters, saddlers, dyers, weavers, grooms, and others, who are nowadays called wage-earners, were mostly slaves, or came out of the slave class, and these different kinds of workers had been in a slave state for a longer period than the peasants had been. With the advent of the money economic period, these day-workers quickly got freedom and became free men before the peasants had completely risen above their slavish condition. The peasants, of course, could work on the land only, and hence were forced to remain on it toiling like horses and oxen, but the position of the "wage-earners" was entirely different. Their place was in the cities or towns, where the rich lived, and as money circulates from one place to another, these day-workers moved from one city or town to another as freely as they wished. The market where they sold their labour was wider than that of the peasants, hence they had more freedom than the peasants. In the Tokugawa period the day-workers became a class of people who moved and worked for and lived on wages, and had left behind the state of slavery. It may be said, therefore, that in the Tokugawa period Japan entered the wage economic period, but as very little is known about the circumstances in which the slave developed into the farmer, then into the land-owner, and finally into the feudal lord, even less is known as to how the slave developed into the wage-earner. We have very little material for inquiry into either branch, but since it is still less in respect to the wageearners than the peasant we can assume that in the early period of our history these day-labourers were a less important factor than the farmers in the nation's life.
