This article examines, on the basis of landholding patterns, the
relationship between the peasant family economy and its family life cycle
in the latter half of the Tokugawa era (1603–1867). The analysis is focused
on the life-cycle patterns of the stem family. In such a system, the
continuation of the family and its assets assumed prime importance while
hired labour did not provide a substantial proportion of the workforce on
the farm. In fact, the stem family was officially recognized as the lawful
family form by the Meiji government, but even in earlier periods the stem
family system provided the dominant form. Among the samurai it was
always the required form. Among the peasantry, by the early eighteenth
century the stem family was the predominant family system.The family system observed here differs in structure from that found in
western-European family systems. Even when developmental aspects of
European households are discussed, it is the relationship between the
simple, nuclear family forms and their economic and social correlates –
especially poverty, inheritance and landholdings – that is analysed. How
Japanese stem family households operated with respect to landholding
and other variables is the main theme of this article. The data come from
an agrarian and considerably backward area of north-east Japan where
harvest failures were not infrequent even in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.