Village Autonomy and Articulation with the State: The Case of Tokugawa Japan

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Abstract
When village communities exist in the context of a larger political system, understanding of the system of control at the village level requires analysis both of the system of control imposed on the village by the state and also of that which has evolved within the community through centuries of its existence. These two systems, of course, cannot operate altogether independently of each other but must somehow be articulated with one another. The specific ways in which the two systems articulate differ from society to society. Nonetheless a perusal of the literature suggests a solution to the problem of articulation which is common to many societies. The solution apparently is to maintain a relatively autonomous village community over which the higher authority exercises limited control through certain key agents or agencies, as is, for example, the case with Imperial China, Thailand, Ceylon, and Greece. And this was indeed the solution for Japanese villages of the Tokugawa period, in spite of the tight and rigid control of the military government over the peasantry which historians make much of. (Since our discussion will proceed at a general level at which differences in administration between the Shogunate and daimiate governments are minor, both types of government will be simply referred to as “the government” or “governments” without distinction.)

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