Chapter from the book: Tanimoto M. & Wong R. 2019. Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe.
This chapter, by Kazuho Sakai, focuses on a case in which a lord (hatamoto) outsourced the fiscal management activities to local notables, who reduced the lord’s household expenses and created a fiscal surplus. This surplus was used not only to repay a debt owed to intra-domain creditors but also to create a fund that they expected to spend on civil engineering, building, or relief projects for the domain’s inhabitants. The notables diverted the lord’s finances to establish a financial basis for providing public goods to local inhabitants. This diversion can be recognized as a contribution to the formation of local public finance that played a significant role in public-goods provision well into early twentieth-century Japan.
Sakai, K. 2019. Outsourcing the Lord’s Finance: An Origin of Local Public Finance in Early Modern Japan. In: Tanimoto M. & Wong R (eds.), Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.63.d
This is an Open Access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).
This book has been peer reviewed. See our Peer Review Policies for more information.
Published on Jan. 15, 2019