Sanctions, Targetism, and Village Autonomy: Poor Relief in Early Modern Rural Japan

Abstract

This chapter, by Mitsuo Kinoshita, discusses autonomous villages in early modern Japan that were delegated the primary responsibility for ensuring the subsistence of community members by their lords. Each village decided independently when communal relief should be carried out, what the duration and amount should be, and who the “deserving” were at that time. Villagers maintained an attitude of willingness to provide relief when help from personal relationships became overburdened, but they did not hesitate to shame and punish the recipients, who were treated as dependents or a burden on their community. The author shows that all these characteristics were underpinned by the micro-politics that evolved in each individual village.

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