“Learning the History of the Kurashiki Bikan Historical Area” is based on reports and slide materials presented by Taro Yamamoto of the Kurashiki City Historical Materials Development Office and Noriyoshi Fujiwara of the Kurashiki City Board of Education at a study group about the Kurashiki Bikan Historical Area, held in fiscal 2025 by the voluntary group “This Town Time Travel Club.” It was compiled by Kengo Toi, Representative Director of Haretoco General Incorporated Association, incorporating discussions among club members.
This article introduces “Part 2: The Edo Period.”
For “Part 1: The Ice Age to the 16th Century,” please see the article below.
Information in this article is current as of its publication in August 2026. Please note that it may differ from current information.
The Edo Period (Early Period)
Until the 16th century, Kurashiki was a port, so it seems there was very little farmland.
After the start of the Edo period, agriculture flourished, and land reclamation turned the sea into land in the area south of the Bikan Historical Area. Kurashiki then developed as a distribution hub for goods.
The place name “Kurashiki” was also recorded in local documents around this time.
(Image courtesy of the Kurashiki City Historical Materials Development Office)
After the Battle of Sekigahara, the decisive battle that divided the country, the Mori and Ukita clans, who had until then ruled most of Bitchu, including Kurashiki, were driven out of Bitchu. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who won the Battle of Sekigahara and established his hegemony, appointed “provincial magistrates” in 11 provinces, including Bitchu, mainly in the Kinai region.
The “provincial magistrate” was an official post established by Tokugawa Ieyasu during the Edo period to administer the Toyotomi family’s lands. Immediately after the Battle of Sekigahara, the Toyotomi family still existed and the Edo shogunate’s system had not yet been established, which seems to explain this arrangement.
Kobori Masatsugu was dispatched as Bitchu provincial magistrate. After Masatsugu’s sudden death in 1604, Kobori Masakazu inherited the family headship and defended Bitchu Matsuyama Castle. The key locations of the Bitchu provincial magistrate were Matsuyama, where the castle stood, and Kurashiki, a port with ships.
Kobori Masakazu is generally known as Kobori Enshu, and is also remembered in history as a garden designer responsible for Japanese gardens, including Katsura Imperial Villa, and as a tea master.
(Quoted from “New History of Kurashiki City,” Volume 3, p. 38, section written by Taro Yamamoto)
Thereafter, Ikeda Nagayuki and Nagatsune ruled the Matsuyama Domain in Bitchu Province. However, when Ikeda Nagatsune died in 1641 without an heir (the head of a family dies without a successor, and the family is abolished), Kurashiki Village became a shogunate domain.
Becoming a Shogunate Domain
From December 1641, Yonekura Heidayu and Ogawa Tozaemon were dispatched as magistrates, and Kurashiki Village became a town governed by magistrates directly appointed by the shogunate. This marked the beginning of Kurashiki as a so-called “shogunate domain town.”
Today, the term “shogunate domain” is often presented as something special. However, Kurashiki became a shogunate domain through circumstances such as these; it was not selected for the distinction. The term is also a colloquial name for lands directly controlled by the shogunate.
The shogunate likely wanted to increase the amount of land under its direct control. However, with daimyo in place, it could not act arbitrarily, so it seems to have expanded its directly controlled territories in this way whenever the opportunity arose.
For this reason, ordinary people at the time likely had no sense that they had been “chosen” or that “shogunate domains were special.” The idea of shogunate domains as something special emerged only after the Showa era, when the term became associated with tourism.
However, compared with “castle towns” ruled by daimyo, one can imagine that there was a freer atmosphere. There were no samurai, the ruling class, or “samurai residences” where they lived, and Kurashiki was not a town serving samurai.
Administration of Kurashiki Village
After becoming a shogunate domain, Kurashiki Village was administered by village officials.
The Kurashiki magistrate was a samurai, but in modern terms was like “a bureaucrat dispatched from Tokyo.” It seems the shogunate had no choice but to entrust local influential figures with part of the administration of its territory.
From the beginning of the Edo period, the village was administered by old-established families known as the “old elite.” In the early Edo period, these families owned many rental plots and houses and had become influential merchants engaged in wholesaling and brewing.
Hearing that merchants administered Kurashiki Village as village officials may bring to mind the Edo-period status system of “warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants,” and raise questions. Although the idea of “warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants” did exist, the reality was not so simple.
One current view understands society in terms of ruling statuses (samurai, the imperial family, court nobles, senior Buddhist clergy, and Shinto priests) and ruled statuses (farmers, artisans, and townspeople who owned houses). People were organized into groups and communities, such as the samurai’s lord-vassal system, farmers’ villages, townspeople’s towns, and artisans’ guilds. Individuals were assigned a status through their household or group.
For example, people living in a castle town were townspeople, while those living in a village were farmers. Among farmers, some worked in agriculture and others in commerce. Status and occupation need to be considered separately.
Kurashiki Village was a village.
Therefore, regardless of their actual livelihoods, its members had the status of farmers, making Kurashiki Village “a village of farmers, not a village of merchants or townspeople.”
Kurashiki Village extended from the area around present-day JR Kurashiki Station to Nitta in Kurashiki City (around Nitta Junior High School), while the area around today’s Bikan Historical Area was called “Kakoyashiki” (sailors’ residences). It seems that almost everyone in Kakoyashiki was engaged in commerce.
Life in the Edo Period
(Image courtesy of the Kurashiki City Historical Materials Development Office)
In Kurashiki Village during the Edo period, the Kurashiki magistrate’s residence (completed in 1746) stood within what is now Kurashiki Ivy Square, and many houses lined what is now the Bikan Historical Area.
In the early Edo period, the old elite were at the center of village administration, but new, rising merchants known as the “new elite” also emerged. With ordinary people, rather than rulers such as magistrates, at the center of village administration, the village also began undertaking its own initiatives.
| Old elite | Ono family, Mizusawa family, Inoue family, Oka family, etc. |
| New elite | Ueda family, Ohashi family, Ohara family, Hara family, Koyama family, etc. |
The emergence of the new elite later led to the “New Elite–Old Elite Dispute.”
Eventually, it escalated into a village dispute that also involved the farmers under their authority. It is said that for a long time, the two sides would not even speak to each other when they met.
In the Bunsei era (1818–1830), six members of the new elite challenged the old elite, who had monopolized village offices, and the dispute ultimately went to court in Edo. As a result, village officials were elected for the first time. Initially, the Ueda family from the new elite became village head, while the Mizusawa family from the old elite also became village head, and the village was reportedly split over which side to support.
This village dispute was apparently quite intense, and it can be said that Kurashiki Village saw many conflicts during the Edo period.
On the other hand, in a society ruled by samurai, the shogunate domain had few samurai, and farmers played a central role in the village and engaged in disputes. This also suggests that the village was economically prosperous.
The term “Shinroku” was used to refer to the group of six who sued the head of Kurashiki Village. However, the terms “old elite” and “new elite” were not used at the time and were likely coined later.
The mutual-aid organization known as Kurashiki Giso symbolizes the distinctive character of Kurashiki Village.
Kurashiki Giso was a welfare system for helping people in need, in today’s terms. The fact that such a system was established and operated by the community rather than the ruling class offers insight into the people of Kurashiki Village and their “feelings toward their town” at the time.
Occupational Structure in Edo-Period Kurashiki
According to the “Register of Small-Scale Businesses in Kurashiki Village,” in 1772, of the 1,838 small-scale household heads in Kurashiki Village, 893 worked in agriculture and 945 worked outside agriculture.
Among those working in agriculture, there were only 60 landowning farmers, while tenant farmers numbered 828, suggesting that land ownership was concentrated in the hands of a few. This meant that people were not equal simply because they belonged to the “farmer” social class.
The difference between owning land and not owning it was significant. Those without land had little choice but to run small businesses from rented homes or work as itinerant vendors. However, the opportunity to rise through one’s own efforts may have been a distinctive feature of Kurashiki. The presence of newly elevated families who rose through business can be seen as a symbol of this.
In fact, a wide variety of commerce and industry flourished outside agriculture.
Among these occupations, fish sellers (134 people) and cottonseed buyers and produce buyers (45 people) stood out, highlighting Kurashiki’s role as a hub for the distribution of fish and cottonseed. The presence of 10 wholesalers, 6 brokers, 10 innkeepers, and 19 pawnbrokers shows that Kurashiki was a regional center for distribution and finance. Sewing was also reportedly a common occupation among women.
Society in the Edo period was based on the kokudaka system, which expressed the productive capacity of rice fields, other farmland, and residential land in terms of the quantity of unhulled rice produced. Although agriculture was the dominant occupation of the time, the presence of people in a wide range of occupations in a rural village may have influenced later generations.
Continued in “Part 3: The Meiji Period to the Present.”
The full article can also be read on the feature page below.
This Town Time Travel Club Members
- Ohara Akane
Sanraku Co., Ltd., Executive Vice President - Kadokari Hiroko
Director, Ohara House Katalyzer - Inagaki Toshihiko
Trim Design, First-Class Architect Office - Oga Tamako
President, Japanese Folk Toy Museum Co., Ltd. - Akiba Yuichi
President, Kurabiz Co., Ltd. - Takaishi Mariko
Kurashiki City Community Revitalization Cooperator - Toi Kengo
Representative Director, Haretoco General Incorporated Association
Advisors and Article Reviewers
- Yamamoto Taro
Chief, Historical Materials Development Office, General Affairs Division, General Affairs Department, General Affairs Bureau, Kurashiki City - Fujiwara Noriyoshi
Curator, Kurashiki City Board of Education - Nishimura Masanori
Senior Advisor, Kurashiki City Cultural and Industrial Affairs Bureau
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