"Need help about Koku" Topic

Hi!
Our club are planning to do a Samurai campaign and are trying to figure out how to deal with the economy.

The Koku-system looks like a simple way ahead but there's a few things we have not managed to figure out. So if anyone know the answers or know a good sourse, We'll be very happy.

Here we go:
A Koku is supposed to be the amount of rice that one man need for a year.
1. A Samurai is given a fief that is worth 200 koku – what does it mean? Does it mean that the area produce rice to feed 200 people, or does it mean that the samurai can collect 200 Koku as tax?

2. The size of the force a Samurai had to provide to his Daimio varied depending on how many Koku his land produced. Were there any general rules on how this force was calculated, or was it up to each Daimio to decide?

Thanks/Lars

I don't have my books around to check just now, but maybe someone else can confirm/verfy what I'm going to say.

1- Koku was a capacity measure that varied with time. Somewhere during the Tokugawa period it was fixed at roughly 180 liters. Domains were graded according to the income they could provide, so a 200 koku domain was estimated to produce a revenue of 200 koku, which doesn't mean rice. A domain's main source of income could as well be lacqueur, wood, or potterware.

Supposedly this valuation would be accurate based on a census, but in reality it probably failed a lot as the economy evolved.

2- Each Daimyo would decide, but there are limits to what is feasible. I think Osprey as a book that has several examples in their Battle Order series. "Samurai Armies" if I'm not mistaken.

Originally it was the amount of rice produced and IIRC, one koku could support a man for a year. That's why it was such an important measure of wealth. Indirectly, it also reflected the military strength as estates of a certain size were able to support a certain size of contingent and, in fact, were required to during times of war. In other words, when a daimyo needed an army, he'd look at his list and saw that Joe had a fief of x koku. He knew from that that he could count on Joe to supply y number of men for his army (or else). It has been a long time since I really read up on this so I might be off on the nuances but that's the general idea.

Supposedly this valuation would be accurate based on a census, but in reality it probably failed a lot as the economy evolved.

Very true. Around the mid 18th century, Japan underwent an "industrious revolution" (not industrial, industrious). For various reasons, including the spread of printed "how-to" texts on agriculture, peasants got better at farming and harvests got bigger. The koku taxation system remained stuck in its ways so taxation did not increase, and consequently peasants got richer (and merchants and craftsmen along with them). This was a major factor in the gradual weakening of samurai social status which culminated in the Meiji restoration.

I suppose this isn't really relevant to the thread, as it's nothing to do with feudal Japanese warfare, and the OP is probably more interested in the centuries prior to the Edo era. Still, I thought it might be an interesting aside.

Once you get into the Sengoku Jidai, then any Samurai's holdings were a definition of how many troops he was supposed to bring when called up. However, at least by the Osprey, it wasn't a fixed 200 koku=200 men, but a graduated system.

I like to allocate koku.

Thank you guys for cortributing.

As we belived, the number of Koku represented the tax income (in rice or what ever the area produced), not the actual production.

I have found just one example, and that is in Stephen Turnball's Nagashino 1575 (p.15): "As a rule of thumb two mounted men and 20 foot per 1000 koku". Would you say that the amount of troops provided varied a lot from that?

Remember, this is for a campaign game, not a master degree :-)
/Lars

Killer Katana's II has a point system for "buying" troops, which rates some 50+ clans over several decades on their available resources. There is a standard table (KOKU Wealth Table) you roll against to allocate how many hundreds of points you have to spend. Different clans modify the die roll depending on their speiocifc revenue capabilities (i.e., 1582: Mori +3 Satomi +0.

Where did I bury Samurai Armies 1467-1649? Ah, here we go: Earlier in the Sengoku Jidai, number of troops was determined by the Daimyo. After the Tokugawa came to power, it became a national assessment.

You could probably get away with using a later support system. The book gives a few examples of smaller, 200-300 kanmon holdings in the mid-1500s. (A mon is a copper coin, and a kan is a string of one thousand mon, so think about what $10 USD would buy someone in the 1800s in the US.) Also, before about 1570, a samurai was only told how many troops to provide, not how they should be armed.

An 1559 example, from page 24 of Turnbull's Samurai Armies 1467-1649:

… a certain Matsudama Sama no suke was assessed at 1,277 kan 200 mon, but as part of this was exempt, his military obligation was based on only 1,000 kanmon of 'taxable income', requiring him to supply 120 men.

A post-1570 example, from page 25 of Turnbull's Samurai Armies 1467-1649:

Thus Miyabe Shiroge no jo from Musashi Province, whose land was assessed at 284.84 kanmon, was required to supply seven mounted samurai (himself included) and 28 ashigaru, namely two arquebusiers, 17 spearmen, one archer, and eight others.

Ah, here's a koku example, also from from page 25 of Turnbull's Samurai Armies 1467-1649:

… for each 10,000 koku a retainer was required to supply seven banners, 20 mounted samurai, 25 arquebusiers, 50 archers, 50 spearmen, and an unspecified number of labourers. A 500 koku retainer had to supply one arquebusier and three spearmen. The Mori [clan] required 50 spearmen, 50 arquebusiers and 25 archers from a 10,000 koku retainer. A 500 koku man supplied two spearmen, two arquebusiers, and one archer.

Because the proportions of firearms increased over time, that is an important thing to keep track of! As a rough guess for proportions in the 1570s and 1580s, it varies by clan. Nobunaga used ~27% spearmen and ~13-14% gunmen, while the Hojo clan was 33%-50% spearmen and the Takeda clan was 50%-66% spearmen.

That said, the Hojo are specifically mentioned as building specialist weapons squads. In 1588, Inomata Kunimori, had a 150 kanmon estate but had to spend 100 kan of that to provide 20 gunmen for the army, while his personal forces were only one flag bearer, two spearmen, and one gunman.

For simplicities' sake, I would run with the two mounted samurai and 20 ashigaru per 1000 koku 'rule of thumb' (huh, looks like I found a typo!). With all the examples in 'Samurai Armies', that proportion seems to hold true (allowing for some variations, of course).

If you look at a report of an army of 10,000 men, then most of those aren't fighting men, but are the logistics corps. In 1592, the Shimazu clan sent 10,000 men (out of the 15,000 they were supposed to muster) to Korea, but that was 600 samurai and 3600 ashigaru. The other 5800 men were porters and boatmen! Gotou Sumiharu was supposed to bring 840 men, but only led 700: 11 staff officers, 11 mounted samurai, 40 foot samurai, 38 attendants, 120 ashigaru, 280 laborers, and 200 boatmen.(pg 27)

Note that a major change in the army composition happened in 1591. Before Hideyoshi's Separation Edict, a farmer could be conscripted as a soldier and become a samurai, even a general, like Hideyoshi had done. After that, all a conscripted farmer could be was a pack mule. This made it harder to get ashigaru, but they needed training to be effective by this point in time.

Page 89 of Samurai Armies has the 1649 troop levy table. A 10,000 koku retainer needed to supply 20 arquebusiers, 10 archers, 30 spearmen, 16 foot samurai, 10 mounted samurai, 149 servants, and 3 flags. A 500 koku retainer only needed to provide 1 archer, 1 spearman, 2 foot samurai, and 7 servants.

Thanks a lot Lion for your input!

I think we have someething to work on from there. To be safe, I'll try to get my hands on the Samurai armies though.

/Lars

Same here. So as you increase in wealth, you must levy exponentially more troops. This makes sense, as when you increase in wealth a larger proportion of it will be "extra", beyond what is required to support your lifestyle.

Is there a conversion rate in a given period between kanmon and koku, though? Is that in the book? I know one is hard physical currency while the other appears to be a unit of value for tax assessment, but there's bound to be overlap.

M.

I didn't see a conversion between kanmon and koku in Samurai Armies. Rooting through wikipedia, the koku we're talking about for this time period is roughly 150kg of rice (about 280 liters). The 180 liter koku dates from 1891.

From wikipedia:

Kokudaka (石高) refers to a system for determining land value for tribute purposes in Edo period Japan and expressing this value in koku of rice. This tribute was no longer a percentage of the actual quantity of rice harvested, but was assessed based on the quality and size of the land.

After some more wikidiving, 4,000 mon (4 kanmon) is equal to three koku (give or take, since we are talking about commodities on both ends of the exchange). see link