The Labour Market and Labour Migration in Small Post Towns in Early Modern Japan: The Relationship Between a Town and Its Outlying Villages in the Northeastern Domain of Nihonmatsu in the Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries

ThePost town purposes of this paper are to investigate the role of medium-sized towns in the labour marketLabour market of Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867), with respect to both supply and demand, and to consider the factors determining labour migration to towns from the farming villages surrounding them. Kōriyama was the political and economic centre of the County of Asaka in northeastern Japan, and thus it enjoyed a high volume of both traffic and regional trade during the Tokugawa era. The town played a significant role in absorbing surplus labour from the 41 outlying villages that together comprised Asaka. Labour migration to Kōriyama fell into two categories: meshimori onna (young women who served food and in many cases acted as sex workers); and men and women from the County of Asaka who worked in households or household businesses as hōkō labour for renewable periods of one year. Migration of hōkō labour to Kōriyama was determined by proximity to the town, and by the economic condition of the village of out migration. As time went by and Kōriyama’s economic importance grew, large-scale merchantsMerchants came to prefer day labour to hōkō labour. This reduced short-term hōkō migration to Kōriyama and encouraged permanent relocation, becoming a major factor in the town’s increase in population.