『塵劫記』にみる農業計算に関する一考察

Abstract

There is the word "Soroban kanjou" since olden times. It means that people act always thinking of profit or loss. Therefor "Soroban kanjou" is very important for management of enterprise. Then, "Soroban kanjou" is well acquired by caluculating with soroban (abacus of Nippon). It is the problem that there was "Soroban kanjou" in agricultural management in The Edo period, or not. In order to thinking about the problem, let me inspect "Jinkouki" which was the most popular textbook of soroban in the Edo period. It was writen by Mituyosi Yosida who belonged to the Suminokura family which was the famous merchant of wealth "Jinkouki" was characteristic of many practical examples in it. And there were several practical examples about an agriculture. There were 48paragraphs in "Jinkouki" and there were 8 paragraphs about it. Those were not many examples considering that the agriculture was the largest industry in nippon of then and those were not for farmers but for merchants and samurais. If farmers thought "soroban kanjou", M. Yosida who was merchant inserted more practical examples about an agriculture in order to sell the book. Therefore it might be said that farmers of then did not think "soroban kanjou".