The Land Tax Reform Of 1873 And The Transformation Of Agrarian Relations In Meiji Japan
Keywords:
Meiji period, land tax reform,, chiso kaisei, land certificate (chiken)Abstract
The paper examines the land tax reform (chiso kaisei) that began in Japan in 1873. The reform legalized land sales that had existed in practice under the Tokugawa despite an official ban, replaced the tax in kind with a money tax on assessed land value, and moved the tax obligation from the village community to the individual landowner. The author shows that the reform gave the Meiji state a stable income independent of the harvest, but shifted the risk of bad harvests and price swings onto farmers: during the deflation of the 1880s this led small owners to lose their land.
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Land Tax Reform Law of 1873 [English translation] // Japan Society. About Japan: A Teacher’s Resource. – URL: https://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/content.cfm/land_tax_reform_law_of_1873
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