Farmers were the highest of the peasant classes as they produced the food that everyone in the social pyramid needed and consumed.

Their main food crop was rice which they planted in ground that was flooded to a depth of about 3 to 4 centimetres.
 
As Japan was very mountainous, farmers often had to terrace sloping ground with low dam walls so they could still grow rice. (See below.) The water helps the rice grow tall but also stops weeds growing and pests from eating the young plants.

Rice production was labour intensive as you can see in the picture on the left.

Since there was very little land available for farming in Japan, there were few farms, therefore making food valuable.

Even though the farmers were an honoured class, they still had to pay heavy tax fees.  It got so extreme, that when the third shogun, Tokugawa, ruled, the farmers were to hand over all of their rice to him, and received only a small percent back as ‘charity’!

(From: http://veryasian.weebly.com/feudal-japan.html)

Since the beginning of Japan’s history, wood has been the most sourced material used in the building of: temples, shrines, houses and even castles. Wood was also used as fuel within houses and industries.

Towards the end of the 17^th century, cities became more populated meaning a higher demand for timber. Since it was forbidden to import timber from foreign countries, the Japanese people had to cut trees down from their own forests, with permission from the feudal lords (daimyo) of course!

The Tokugawa shoguns realised that they had a problem; they had to cater for the increasing number of people who needed houses, but also ensure that they did not use up all their natural resources.

 To ensure that the forests in Japan were not all cut down, and would survive and remain healthy into the the future, the Tokugawa shoguns introduced the following laws and reforms:

·        Reforms were introduced to protect seedlings and ensure selective cutting of trees.

·       Logging without permission became a serious crime

·       Plantations were created on ‘common’ land near the villages. The local people were responsible for the planting, forestry and selling of their own timber.

To maintain this so-called Pax Tokugawa, the bakufu instituted its sakoku (closed-country) policy in an attempt to keep foreign powers out of Japan.

The Spanish, the English, and the Portuguese were expelled as subversive influences. Christianity was banned, and Japanese Christians were hunted down and persecuted.

But sakoku was far from pure isolationism. Japan still conducted frequent but strictly regulated trade with Korea and China.

And not all Europeans were driven out: the Dutch were allowed to maintain a small trading post on an artificial island in Nagasaki harbor.
(From: http://www.ushistory.org/civ/10e.asp)

1. Under the heading provided, summarise the top two paragraphs into point form notes.

2. Explain the policy of 'sakoko' that was followed by the Tokugawa samurai.

3. Using this website: http://www.ushistory.org/civ/10e.asp or your own research, list the cultural and entertainment activities the Samurai engaged in during this period of about 200 years of relative peace.

4. Look at the nine traditional Japanese games the many children played during this period: http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia26/en/topic/topic01.html   

Select one that you think might be fun to try and briefly explain how it was played.