Famine and infanticide in 18th century Japan

"There is, among the customs of Hitachi Province, one of crushing a newborn to death at its birthplace, called 'culling' children."
- Kubo Akamizu, 1773 report to Mito Clan

War, filth, famine, infanticide - in A Farewell to Alms⁵, Gregory Clark argues that, before the Industrial Revolution, the world's societies were in Malthusian traps. Their populations needed control of some sort. In Europe, this control was by war, filth and occasional famine; in the rest of the world less by war and filth, more by famine and infanticide. After the Tokugawa family took control of Japan in 1615, war was essentially absent, and, by Clark's accounts, hygiene in Japan surpassed that the rest of the world. This left population control to famine and infanticide.

Any reader tempted to derive a morality tale from the documents described below should keep in mind that, before the Industrial Revolution, all societies of the world were in Malthusian traps.



Short at only 83 pages and written at a high school level, Shiryo de Saguru Ibakaki no Rekishi (Exploring Ibaraki History with Historical Materials)¹ presents 40 historical sets of documents or artifacts. Each set is accompanied by a note on its origins, annotated original text and translation into modern Japanese if documents, interpretation and historical notes. The information below was taken from two of these sets.

Religious inquisition registrations (宗門人別改帳) were created during the early Edo Period for the purpose of exposing Christians (pp 44-45). Entered by household, these records included the individuals of the household, their temple affiliations, genders, ages, and home districts. They soon found other uses such as listing available labor and included whether or not household owned horses, which could be impressed for military use. The book annotates a rare 1630 sample for Sakata Shinden Village near Tsuchiura.

To illustrate the use of religious inquisition registrations for historical research, the book's authors compiled an age distribution pyramid for Tamatsukuri in 1735. The table below is extracted from that pyramid.

Age Range	Persons	Male	Female	Percent Female
85-90	2	0	2	100%
80-84	8	5	3	38
75-79	35	18	17	49
70-74	39	25	14	36
65-69	75	47	28	37
60-64	105	53	52	50
55-59	113	50	63	56
50-54	103	46	57	55
45-49	128	74	54	42
40-44	142	69	73	51
35-39	158	87	71	45
30-34	155	86	69	45
25-29	108	54	54	50
20-24	117	59	58	50
15-19	139	76	63	45
10-14	149	80	69	46
5-9	130	84	36	28
0-4	103	67	36	35

Fewer than one third of children under 10 years of age were girls.

Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th edition, 1974, defines 'mabiku' (間引く) as "v. thin [cull] (out) [[plants]]." In a 1773 report to the Mito Clan calling for better civil administration, head geographer Kubo Akamizu gave the following definition². (translated from authors' modern Japanese translation of Kubo's Edo era Japanese)

"Item - There is, among the customs of Hitachi Province³, one of crushing a newborn to death at its birthplace, called 'culling' children. Long ago, this was done by people who had reached their limit. But lately it has become customary and without any thought that it might not be good. On the contrary, some cullers ridicule those with many children for not knowing their place in society. Reasoning that raising many children causes hardship, it is taken as granted that, after two or three births, babies that follow will be culled without exception. Led by village officials, the wealthy often cull. In contrast, it seems that few poor people cull."

"Item - Abandoning children is old and is practiced by people in extreme hardship. It is more admirable than killing. Even if an abandoned child freezes and starves, it is better than culling. Abandoning children is a custom that I want to popularize."

Kubo's report was written nine years before the Tenmei famine.

In 1721, Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune⁴ ordered the clans to aggregate religious inquisition registrations to derive a census. These gave a population of 26 million. Estimates of those omitted from the census gives a population of Japan in 1721 of 30 million. Between 1721 and the end of the Shogunate almost 150 years later, the population rose only 3%. The graph below was derived from a table on page 49 and shows relative changes in population across Japan.

An unusually cold summer in 1782 started the Tenmei famine. Crop failures repeated for the next three summers, plus a major eruption of Mt. Asama in 1783, left up to one million dead (see also String of disasters kills up to one million Japanese). These deaths and flight from the region resulted in the North Kanto provinces of Hitachi and Shimonotsuke losing more 20% of their people between 1756 and 1792; their populations did not recover for the remainder of the Shogunate.

This reference relates, without elaboration, that regional authorities implemented, along with other measures to deal with the famine, measures to discourage culling by increased monitoring of pregnancies and financial assistance.

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¹Ibaraki 2004. 茨城県高等学校教育研究会歴史部編、史料で探る茨城の歴史、山川出版社、東京、2004．Ibaraki Prefecture High School Education Research Association, History Department, Shiryo de Saguru Ibakaki no Rekishi (Exploring Ibaraki History with Historical Materials), Yamakawa, Tokyo 2004 Amazon Japan link
²Page 48
³Hitachi Province corresponds roughly to present day Ibaraki Prefecture east of the Kinu and Kokai Rivers. It was first established by the Yamato State in 645. Shimotsuke Province corresponds to Yochigi Prefecture. Musashi Province corresponds to Saitama Prefecture, Tokyo Metropolis outside of Edo proper, and eastern Kanagawa Prefecture.
⁴For more about Tokugawa Yoshimune, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Yoshimune
⁵Clark 2007. Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms, Princeton Press, Princeton, 2007. Japanese edition: 10万年の世界経済史 上/下. Clark also argues that ages of marriage were later in England and that this provided some measure of population control. However, data in Ibaraki 2004 compiled from religious inquisition registrations gives ages for marriage in rural Japan similar to those presented by Clark for England.