Nengu

• Japanese: 年貢 (nengu)

Nengu, literally "annual tribute," was a tax on the annual harvest, collected by Edo period domains; in most domains, throughout most of the Edo period, nengu was the chief source of revenue for the domainal government, even in heavily commercialized or proto-industrialized domains.

Though conceptually counted in rice, in practice, other goods or commodities, or hard currency, were substituted for the rice payment. The tax rate usually varied from village to village, or even within villages, but was often organized so as to average out to a target rate, in an adjustment system known as narashimen. Even the adjusted average rate could differ widely between domains, and across time, but often was around 40-50%. The actual collection of taxes within each villages was generally undertaken, or overseen, by the village headman (shôya).

In some domains, in certain periods, domain officials undertook annual assessments to determine the tax rate; this is referred to today as the kemi (検見) system. In the early Edo period, this was the more common system, but later in the period, the jômen (定免) system became more widespread. In the latter system, assessments were only conducted once every five or ten years, and tax collection was based on a rate fixed at the time of each assessment. Some scholars have argued that since the annual assessments of the kemi system captured any increases in agricultural production, they served as a disincentive against such increases. However, in practice many domains only conducted assessments irregularly, even if supposedly operating under the kemi system; as a result, the two systems did not in truth function too differently from one another.

Nengu was just one of over 2,000 different types of taxes levied in the Edo period; most of these were known as komononari, but took on a myriad of names in different regions.

References

• Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan, Stanford University Press (1999), 53-55.