Kariage

• Japanese: 借上 (kariage)

The kariage was an additional tax levied in some domains at certain times, especially times of financial crisis, in the Edo period.

The term literally means "loaning upwards," and was theoretically seen as a special loan from the people to the lord's household (i.e. to the domain), but in practice it was very rarely repaid. For this reason, in Tosa han, the special tax was renamed in 1789 demai ("a portion of rice taken out"), eliminating the pretense that it was a loan to be repaid in the future.

In many domains, the kariage was a tax levied only upon samurai retainers; however, in some domains, such as Tosa, everyone paid some portion, though the samurai still bore the lion's share of the burden. In the case of Tosa, samurai were taxed based on their fief income, peasants based on net agricultural product after (normal) taxes, townsmen based on the size of the frontage of their house, and fishermen based on the size of their boat. The actual amount of the burden, that is, the tax rate, varied widely by domain, and over time.

References

• Luke Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa, Cambridge University Press (1998), 92-93.