From Food to Feudalism: How the Evolving Landscape of Agriculture in Japan Shaped Social Structures

• Published: 12 May 2025 • • Last updated: 12 May 2025 • • Written: 6 October 2024 •

(This entry is part of an ongoing series of papers I've written for various assignments. It is not necessarily representative of my beliefs; only my effort.)

From Food to Feudalism: How the Evolving Landscape of Agriculture in Japan Shaped Social Structures

In the historian’s mind lingers the question: how did Japan transform from harboring egalitarian pre-agricultural societies, to evolving the strict bureaucracy and eventually, feudal might that it would become famous for? In answering such a question, an appreciation must be had for Japan’s dual role as both a prime site to explain theories of social evolution—and to challenge their limits.

The Jōmon people, whose population and influence in Japan was highest during the prehistoric Jōmon Period, was one of “the most materially affluent hunter-gatherer [societies] known to the modern world” (Farris 5). Jōmon people constructed rope-patterned earthenware (Farris 5), hunting equipment, such as the bow and arrow, and fishing equipment, including hooks, harpoons, and weighted nets (Farris 6). Archaeologically, Jōmon Period graves “almost never disclose markers for class distinction,” (Farris 7-8), which Farris attributes to “a fundamentally egalitarian society with little surplus to extend for a ruling elite” (Farris 8).

However, due to the general instability of natural resources, as well as limited ability to store and preserve food, “humans often just barely managed to reproduce” (Farris 7). Jōmon lifespans were short, and their civilization was vulnerable to disease and ecological strain. These weaknesses, which led to the decline of Jōmon societies, left many parts of the Japanese archipelago ripe for new populations to migrate in, most notably the Yayoi, an agriculturally-dependent people from mainland Asia (Farris 9).

Upon their first arrivals to Japan, Yayoi farmers used “simple methods,” yielding “feeble” harvests (Farris 10). They also lacked draft animals like cattle and horses, making rice farming inefficient, back-breaking labor. But by 250 CE, new technologies, like iron metallurgy, promised to improve the yield of agriculture, and lessen the burden on the farmers (Farris 12). Improved efficiency resulted both in greater population growth and surplus crops, which Farris argues contributed to frequent warfare. Indeed, archaeological evidence from the Yayoi Period features many battle-wounded skeletons, high concentrations of weapons in burials, and increased numbers of moated settlements (Farris 13)—all phenomena that were almost unheard of during the Jōmon period (Farris 13).

The Yayoi Period marked the beginning of inter-family conflict and pronounced hierarchy in Japan. This period had “given birth to a small ruling class,” demarcated specifically in the fact that they restricted their bicep growth, and thus did not perform manual labor—which, at the time, was mostly farming (Farris 15). In this sense, the elite class was defined relative to the working class, and the working class was personified in the farmer.

However, despite this emerging trend of class divide, Japanese society was not yet centralized, with no geographical seat of power independent from, and presiding over, the multipolar order of families and clans. Such a development would define the Tomb Period, which saw the rise of “what might be called Japan's first organized governments” (Edgar 309). Technologies that particularly enriched Tomb Period Japan, such as increased capacity for blacksmithing due to iron imports, and more diverse types of tools and cookware, were often imported from China and Korea, via the Korean Peninsula (Farris 16). And as populations grew alongside the increasing rate of crop output, a distinction gradually began to arise between “locally powerful notables and members of a courtly elite” (Farris 15).

By the time of the Nara Period, which was denoted by an emphasis on copying legal, infrastructural, and social cues from Tang China (Farris 30), a solid imperial rule had been established, centered around Japan’s first capital city, Nara. During this time, court-appointed governors, who lived and mostly stayed in the imperial capital, were often at odds with local notables, who lived in their polities and were expected to collect taxes on behalf of the imperial government (Farris 42). Each party regarded the other as unfairly prioritizing their own agenda–service to the imperial government, or service to the polity, respectively.

The predominant resolution to this conflict came at the expense of the farmer, where governors offered a deal: if the local notable gave them a certain percentage of the value of the crop as tax, then the notable could keep the remainder. Thus, the amount of tax sent to the capital wasn’t based on actual crop output, and if the harvest that year was poor, then the governor would keep the same profits, while the notable’s profits would suffer, and the farmers, who already received little, would receive even less (Farris 52).

This gradual process of governmental corruption, combined with the spread of disease (Farris 49), volatile weather patterns like flooding (Farris 59), and the uprisings of a new warrior class called samurai (Farris 55), represented a trend of further depreciation of the working farmer, still the prototypical commoner. The consequential decreasing trust in the imperial government and existing structures of power, as well as the economic weakness that the aforementioned factors had thrust Japan into, would lay the groundwork for the rise of feudalism in the coming centuries.

Bibliography

Edgar, Robert R. “Culture, Power, and Trade in the Era of Asian Hegemony, 220-1350.” Civilizations Past & Present, 12th ed., I&II, Pearson, London, England, 2007, pp. 308–316.

Farris, William Wayne. “The Building Blocks of Japan, Origins to 600.” Japan to 1600, Illustrated ed., University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2009, pp. 1–26.

Farris, William Wayne. “An End to Growth, 600–800.” Japan to 1600, Illustrated ed., University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2009, pp. 27–52.

Farris, William Wayne. “State and Society in an Age of Depopulation, 800–1050.” Japan to 1600, Illustrated ed., University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2009, pp. 53–80.