Carrying-capacity & colonization

Rjrasva comment

In Edo Japan land was maxxed to direct food production which is why it could feed 30 million. If they used draft animals they 1st had to feed the oxen. This is why draft animals & wheeled transport slowly disappeared in Edo era though they were more frequent earlier.

30 million seems to be the natural pre industrial carrying capacity of Kyushu + Honshu + Shikoku because it hit that by mid 1700’s iirc & for the next century. The population barely grew due to famines like Tenmei (1782-1788) or limiting family size through abortion & infanticide due to poverty.

I can’t find a more efficient agriculture than Edo era Japanese agri. The 4X times more people that live there now do so solely due to fossil fuel inputs.
Today if u remove them 1st thing u will see is mass famine &
the natural carrying capacity would be less as well
due to agri land being used for roads etc
& top soil depletion due to industrial agri

Honda Toshiaki (1744-1821) was a mathematician of the school of Seki Kōwa. 22 He interpreted the period as follows:

“Today all wealth and money have been concentrated in the hands of the merchants. Their prestige and authority overwhelm the other three classes. If we divide the national production of the country into sixteen parts, fifteen of these are acquired by the merchants and one by the samurai and peasants.“23
“Never in the history of Japan have the samurai and the peasants been reduced to such hardship and misery. Unless reforms are carried out we shall certainly court disaster.”

It follows that the root cause of these unprecedented social difficulties is “the mistake of entrusting shipping, transport, and trade solely to the merchant class.“24 He proposed that shipping be managed by the central government. This would correct “inequalities in the prices of commodities” from place to place. He also proposed Japanese involvement in overseas trade and colonization to strengthen the economy.

Thus Toshiaki ascribed the ills of the time to the uncontrolled activities of commercial capital, or, in his own words in Keisei Hisaku, they had arisen “because the system or institution [seido] that should have been established has not yet been established.” But for Toshiaki, the “system that should be established” was not, as Sorai and many other theorists before this had advocated, the simple suppression of commercial capital.

Rather, he proposed the state administration of its functions. In Keizai högen he discussed Banzan and Sorai in connection with his proposals:

During the two hundred years since peace was established . . . a large number of learned men have arisen, but Banzan and Sorai ¹ are the only two who have won recognition as experts in keizai [gov- ernment and political economy]. But the two concerned themselves only with how best to improve the situation by persistently considering different ways to get the greatest benefit from the products of a given piece of land. . . .

But it is impossible to extract a surplus from crops produced in a limited piece of land, after first meeting the need for food, clothing, and housing of the people, who continue to increase in number without limit.+++(4)+++ There is a limit to the crops that can be produced from land that is fixed in size. The people who procreate each year increase in size each year without limit.

Finally there will be more people than the national product, and the national product will be less than the number of people in the country. This is a process which knows no end.

This is what has often been cited as Toshiaki’s “Malthusian” perspective. But Toshiaki’s theories of reform leaped far ahead of anything before them in their rejection of the “political economy which seeks to deal with things within Japan alone” and their advocacy of “the enlightened method of overseas expansion.” He had acquired this point of view as a result of his travels and observations in Hokkaido and the knowledge of the rest of the world he had obtained from Dutch learning, particularly geography.

He was especially struck by the wealth and power of the British Empire. “There are no oceans in the great world without British territories.” But England itself was basically “an isolated island and very cold. It is a wasteland, poor in national production and with nothing of value.” How, then, did it become such “a great and wonderful nation”?

Kamchatka to the north “is a great country extending from 51° north to 70° or more north.” That is, it has more or less the same latitude as England and the climate is similar. Yet one was immeasurably strong and wealthy, while the other remained a wasteland. Recently it had become the possession of “Moscovia” (Russia). This showed that “the wealth and strength of a country depend, not on the quality of its land, but on its institutions and teachings.” 25

Britain was not the only great country.

“The greatest countries in the world are in Europe. How did this come about? First of all, those countries have been in existence for five to six thousand years. Their institutions were established after all the ways had been perfected, the foundations of the art of government developed, and the principle that naturally enriches a nation studied. This is the reason.“26

In comparing the prosperity of European countries with the poverty of Japan, Toshiaki attributed the differences to the fact that they had a system of “overseas expansion” (colonization) and “encouragement of industry and development of resources,” while Japan did not.+++(4)+++ The negligence in inventing such institutions in Japan was responsible for domestic disasters such as “the crop failures and famines that beset this country for three years after 1783, when over two million people starved to death in northern Japan alone.”

“Because Japan lacks the system of ‘developing enterprises,’ government is not extended to the various islands [of Hokkaido]. As government does not prevail there, the blessings of the ruler are unknown. As the blessings of the ruler are unknown, they will quickly submit to the rule of Moscovia.“27

Thus Japan would suffer international disgrace. On the other hand,

“If this system were to be established as I have mentioned before, there would be a great island of Japan in the East comparable with the island of England in the West. In the great world under heaven there would be two most wealthy and powerful nations.” 28

Toshiaki did not probe deeply into the theoretical foundations of his position. But he did see the qualitative difference in values before and after the establishment of these institutions, so it can be inferred that his method of thought was not related to any natural- istic continuism. He did not see the natural order as inherent in the existing feudal society, but expected it to emerge only after the invention of such institutions. “After these institutions (that is, colonization, shipping, and trade) have been established,” he wrote in Shizen chido no ben, “even though a drastic crop failure may occur, the people will not starve to death. This is the kind of good government that will endure immutably forever. These institutions represent the natural way of government.”