The evolution of marriage, inheritance, and labor relations in the family firm in Kyoto

Abstract

This article is from a paper written for a workshop of the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations, 1500–2000, so the paper applies the categories from the Taxonomy of Labour Relations produced by the Collaboratory to the various labor relations discussed in the paper. The main aim of the paper, however, is to discuss the interaction of gender, marriage, inheritance and family patterns with labor relations in the history of Kyoto from its founding in 794 until the mid-nineteenth century. This period begins earlier than the time period of the Collaboratory to provide a sense of how these relations evolved over time. It begins with the evolution of labor relations, then the early modern family business, and finally marriage patterns and transmission. The nineteenth-century discussion is based on a combination of quantitative data from the population surveys and qualitative documents such as land transmission documents and court cases. The pre-modern parts of the paper, however, are a synthesis of library research on gender, labor, family and marriage.

Keywords:

• Labor
• family firm
• marriage
• inheritance
• property
• family

Notes

1. Asao Naohiro cites the Jesuit monk Frois for population figures.

2. I provisionally place them in category 14.1, although this is not accurate. They weren’t free wage earners, although technically they were free to go, they weren’t kin, but they were ‘almost kin’, who nevertheless received wages.

3. The population surveys are the Shūmon ninbetsu aratame chō commonly referred to as ‘population registers’ in the research literature.

4. Yamatoya Kane, toshiyori Shinbei, goningumi Kashichi [to obugyō sama] ‘Osore nagara sosho’, legal suit, Fukui collection 248, 4.23.1834, Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents. We can see here Kane moving from self-employed kin producer to leading producer of a cooperative subcontracting business with a piece rate; however, her workshop likely employed more than three craftsmen, so instead of 12b and 12a, in the Global Collaboratory, there needs to be a 13a leading employer/producer and 13b kin employer/producer.

5. ‘Nanjū sha kazoku tori shirabe sho shita gaki’ [Draft of an investigation of families in distress], Hanakuruma-chō collection, C14, 1853, Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents.

6. These figures come from probability analyses of the extant population surveys of 30 Kyoto neighborhoods, 1843–1869.

7. These branch managers could profit from the retail branches they managed (14.1), be paid wages, or be part of some profit-sharing arrangement as non-kin members of the family, a 13c where 13a is employers and kin members of employer households working in a family firm that employs more than three people.

8. All of these employees were wage earners paid a standard rate for six months or a year of service with the transition to tedai equally a transition tont non-kin family member as discussed previously. The deshi apprentices, however, may have been in a more reciprocal relation as they were students and their training was part of their compensation. Saito’s sources for this part of his 2011 study were documents from two large firms in Osaka, leaving open the question of whether the career paths, gender division and labor hierarchy he found in those two firms were representative of a norm or merely specific to those two firms.

9. Kyōto Muromachi dōri Nijō sagaru Takoyakushi chō ‘Shūmon Ninbetsu Aratame Chō’ [Individual faith and population surveys], Takoyakushi-chō collection, J2 and J4-18, 1841, 1843–1853, Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents.

10. Takoyakushi chō, Yashiro Jinbei yaku chū, ‘Nikki’, Takoyakushi neighborhood journal (1/1/1841–3/2/1842, Takoyakushi chō collection D2, Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents), pp. 10, 50, 67, and 102.

11. Kyoto neighborhood population surveys did not record ages before 1842, so the 1841 survey is not included in the quantitative analysis sample.

12. Yuzurijo no koto [Land transmission wills]. Koromotana Minami chō collection, No. 08520, 2.14.1848. Kyoto Prefectural Library of Historical Documents.

13. Kyōto Higashi no Tōin tōri Matsubara agaru Tōrō chō ‘Shūmon Ninbetsu Aratame Chō’ [Individual faith and population surveys], Tōrō-chō collection, J2-11, 1843–1844, 1848, 1850, 1855–1856, 1858, 1860–1861, 1863, Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents.

14. Chikiriya Nobu [to toshiyori Yasubei and machi chū]. Yuzurijo no koto (Land transmission will). Koromotana Minami Chō collection, No. 08520, 2.14.1848. Kyoto Prefectural Library of Historical Documents.

15. Kyōto Abura no koji Ane no koji sagaru Sōrin chō ‘Shūmon Ninbetsu Aratame Chō’ [Individual faith and population surveys], Sōrin-chō collection, J2-3, 1868–1869, Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents.

16. ‘Shūmon okite’, Draft faith surveys, 1841–1860, Endo Yasaburō collection No. 624 and ‘Shūmon ninbetsu aratame chō’, Individual faith and population surveys, 1861–1866, Endo Yasaburo collection No. 625, Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents.