Keian Proclamation

• Date: 1649/2/26
• Japanese: 慶安御触書 (keian ofuregaki)

The Keian Proclamation was an edict issued by the Tokugawa shogunate and distributed as an ofuregaki, enjoining peasants to avoid commercial activities, and to adhere to a spirit of frugality.

The edict drew upon Neo-Confucian ideas about the corrupting power of commercialization, lauding frugality, by which the authors meant self-sufficiency, i.e. living only on what one made/grew oneself. It banned, or at least strongly suggested against, peasants drinking tea or saké, or wearing anything but cotton. Peasants were to make their own household tools, and were to eat barley or other grains, and not rice.

References

• Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan, Stanford University Press (1999), 9.