It is very difficult to compare old prices.
At that time, it was impossible to simply fix the products and services that were in circulation at modern prices, and even experts set various conditions to set the price of [one car]. Depending on the expert, the set amount may be 40,000 yen or 300,000 yen for each car, which is quite different.
In a historical drama, a vicious merchant handed over a thousand boxes to the lieutenant [ You are also bad ~ ] Is often seen, but have you ever wondered how much the value of the Senryobako is in modern times?
Is it 10 million? Maybe it's 100 million yen.
This kind of feeling is also an indicator for comparing the monetary value of the past with that of the present.
Even today, there are several price indicators.
- Consumer Price Index
- Wholesale Price Index
- Retail Price Index
There are several such things because it is impossible to express the actual situation with only one index. Although it is difficult to grasp the actual situation of life now, it turns out that it is very difficult to clarify the Edo period with different lifestyles.
If you end up with difficulties, the story will not continue, so let's set certain conditions and look at prices in the Edo period.
Various ways of thinking
Considering 1 car based on the price of rice, 1 car =40,000 yen It seems to be.
Based on the labor cost of the professional carpenter at that time, 1 car =300,000 It seems that it will also be ranked.
The amount difference is more than 200,000 depending on which one you bring to the base, and it is not possible to compare with this.
Therefore, I will think based on the feeling I wrote earlier.
As a matter of fact, rural farmers rarely ate rice.
Inferring from that fact, it is assumed that the value per kilogram of rice is about 1000 yen. Then, 1 stone =150 kg =1 car =150,000 yen It will be.
The farmer's feeling of making rice may be that the value of one car is about this.
See prices assuming that one sentence is 20 yen
1 car =4000 sentences So, 80,000 yen It is a setting.
The bathing fee for a public bath is 10 sentences =about 200 yen Will be. Considering that most people used public baths in this era when there was no indoor bath, it seems reasonable.
Inari sushi , which was like a rice ball at that time Is 6 sentences =120 yen for 1 person If you think about it, it's a little profitable.
One nishiki-e of Sharaku and Kamaru 20 sentences =400 yen So, considering the current value, it is cheap, but at that time it was sold like a raw photo of an idol, so it would have been a reasonable price considering that one photo of an idol is 400 yen.
This 1 sentence =20 yen How much was the salary of a carpenter in the Edo period?
According to one document, the carpenter's daily allowance is 540 sentences a day . There seems to be a record.
Then, daily allowance of 10800 yen It will be that. At that time, there was no concept of a holiday, so I might have worked 30 days a month. Then, the monthly income will be about 300,000 yen.
Based on the above, 1 sentence =20 yen, 1 car =80,000 yen I think that is a reasonable feeling.
Medical and Yoshiwara prices cost a considerable amount
Nowadays, anyone can get a certain amount of medical care, saying, " I don't have the money to buy medicines ... . There is no such thing.
On the other hand, medical expenses in the Edo period Seems to have been quite expensive.
According to the records of the late Edo period, it costs about 1 to 2 minutes (30,000 to 60,000) for the medical examination fee to be seen by a practitioner in the town, and if you ask for a home visit, it will take another 1 to 2 minutes. It seems that it took. Since it costs 1 minute for 3 days to pay for the medicine you care about, if you think that 1 car =4 minutes for money, it will cost about 80,000 just to see it once.
Even if you pay 30% for health insurance, it costs 24,000 yen, so you can see that the medical expenses at that time were very high.
There was a lot of entertainment in the Edo period, but one of them is Yoshiwara's Yukaku play.
When giving Yoshiwara's top class [Tayu] for the first time, it cost 530 silver (about 1.07 million yen) and 5 cars (600,000) for the first banquet just by calling from Okiya to Ageya.
He said he had to go three times to get used to it, and he actually spent the night for the third time.
Even though I've written so far, Yoshiwara play, which costs so much money, has nothing to do with the common people of Edo, and is a prostitute of the rank below the room owner, about 1 vermilion (about 15,000 yen) at a time, or 100 sentences at a time (about 15,000 yen). It was common to play with a cheap prostitute called "Mawari" (about 3000 yen).
Differences between life in the Edo period and modern people
People's lives in the Edo period were poor but good at recycling, without spending extra money and producing garbage.
In the town of Edo, there is a recycle shop that buys advanced goods . There was also a store like.
It seems that the common people living in Nagaya lived strong, helping each other, though they were poor, because it was natural to lend and borrow seasonings and share the side dishes. On the other hand, in the town of Edo, there was a life that was far from the current life in Tokyo, which suffered from the garbage problem and the relationship with the neighborhood was weakened due to the importance of privacy.
It seems that the lives of ordinary people in Edo have higher food costs and higher Engel's coefficient than in modern times. The town of Edo, like today, had a large population in a small area, so land prices were high and it was impossible for ordinary people to own a house. Therefore, most of them lived in rental housing, but the rent was considerably cheaper than it is now. One room in Edo (Tokyo) is about 9000 yen a month That's why I'm surprised.
It is said that the landlords at that time were very wealthy and did not get rent to make money, but to return their margins. Thanks to such a generous landlord, the housing situation in Edo was very blessed.
Perhaps because of that, the common people didn't have the idea of owning a home at that time.
Not limited to housing, I didn't have to spend a lot of money on cars and education, so I didn't feel like buying something with a lot of money, so I think it was quite different from the modern sense of money.
However, since there was no social security system in the Edo period, there was no expenditure for health insurance or national pension, but it seems that all medical expenses and retirement expenses were borne by the individual.
Finally
As mentioned above, I wrote a little about the life of Edo, but it seems that there are many things that I don't really understand.
It is also strange that there are relatively no records of the lives of the common people in the early Meiji era, but no records of the lives of the common people in the late Edo period. Perhaps the new government has erased the buildings and materials of the previous administration.
This is not uncommon in history, and even in modern society, those who have taken the new government tend to deny the previous government in order to justify themselves. Perhaps the Meiji government also wiped out things related to the old government in order to emphasize their legitimacy.
There are some materials that describe life in the Edo period, but it is thought that there may be more in the era. For that reason, even if the last year of Edo and the first year of the Meiji era are the same, you may feel that the Edo period is a long time ago and the Meiji era is just recently.