Apr. 23, 2022
中世後期日本の実質賃金 －－変動と格差－－
Real Wages in Late Medieval Japan: Changes and Differentials
要旨Abstract
本論文では，日本の中世後期における実質賃金の計測を通じて当時の労働市場のあり方を検討する．既往の推計とは異なり，熟練・非熟練の別に加えて，中世日本に特徴的な銭払と米払という支払形態の別，および精銭とビタ銭が混在した銭市場をも検討の対象とし，とくに貨幣市場の変動とそれに影響された物価の動向が，どのようなインパクトを実質賃金水準に与えたのかをみる．通貨供給を渡来銭に依存していた中世日本では，15世紀から流通通貨の品質による銭の階層化が発生し，1560年代後半には大陸からの通貨供給が途絶して銭市場が混乱をしたが，この間，労働市場では2つのことが起きた．一つは貨幣賃金の底上げという長期的な変容，もう一つが16世紀後半に起きた米払賃金への切換という短期的な反応であり，どちらも熟練労働者にみられた現象であった．本稿では，それらの結果として生じた賃金格差の変化をも明示的に算出し，その変化と実質賃金水準の変動との間にはどのような関係がみられたのかを明らかにする．
Following the lead of a recent effort by J.-P. Bassino et al. to provide a long-run series of real wages (rice wages) for the unskilled in an attempt to estimate GDP per capita for pre-modern Japan, this paper aims to broaden the scope of exploration of the wage and price database utilised by J.-P. Bassino et al. Our emphasis is placed on the distinction between skilled and unskilled wages and between payments in money and in kind (rice): our attention is thus focused on the impact of monetary changes on rice wages of both skilled and unskilled workers over the period between 1348 and 1593. No medieval political authority issued its own currency, as a result of which price levels were dependent on the supply of currencies from China, which included privately produced, low-quality coins. The fifteenth century thus saw the domestic money market stratified into a multi-layered structure with differing grades of currency. When the supply of Chinese coins stopped in the late 1560s the use of low-quality currencies expanded, driving the fine-quality ones out of the market. One obvious consequence of this change was inflation but the value of the low-quality coins soon started to rise, making the grain market of this period extremely turbulent. Another change that accompanied the monetary turbulence was the increased use of rice in place of coins on the labour market, particularly for the skilled. By estimating new series of rice wages, therefore, this paper attempts to show how those monetarily induced changes exerted differential influences on the real-wage levels of the skilled and the unskilled over the 250-year period.
書誌情報Bibliographic information
Vol. 71, No. 2, 2020 , pp. 129-143
HERMES-IR（一橋大学機関リポジトリ）: https://doi.org/10.15057/31243
JEL Classification Codes: E31, J31, N35
