ABSTRACT
Japan was ruled by the governments of samurai from the end of the twelfth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. Nominally, the emperor was the supreme ruler who granted the authority to govern to the samurai leader, but the real power rested with the latter. The Edo society was agrarian, particularly at the beginning, with about 90 percent of the population being peasants although this ratio subsequently declined a little. The basic unit of production was the small family. By the late seventeenth century, land expansion came to a halt. The rapid growth of farmland in the previous period also brought some negative effects including labor shortage, deforestation, and frequent occurrence of floods. Villages were well organized and permitted autonomy as long as they paid rice taxes as stipulated by the central or local government. The entire fiscal system was based on the rice taxes. The fiscal unit of account was the "koku".
