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The story
The Nara City Board of Education announced on the 7th that excavations at the Heijo Palace ruins turned up a wooden tablet (mokkan), found in what appears to be a well dating to the late Nara period (late 8th century), recording the sale of a person of the lowest social class, known as “nuhi” (slaves/bondservants). The tablet records the sale of a 27-year-old woman for 8 kanmon (8,000 coins) — making it the first mokkan ever unearthed nationwide that documents a human trafficking transaction. Until now, the reality of human trafficking could only be confirmed through old documents, so this find is drawing attention as a source revealing new facts, such as the method of payment. On 5ch, a thread discussed a wide range of topics, from the history of slavery and human trafficking in Japan from the Nara period through to modern times, to debates over average life expectancy and childbearing age back then.
The Nara City Board of Education announced on the 7th that a wooden tablet recording the sale of a “nuhi” — a member of the lowest social class under the ancient ritsuryo legal system — was unearthed from a well at the Heijo Palace ruins (Nara City). It records the sale of a 27-year-old woman for 8 kanmon (8,000 coins), and based on the dating of the well, is believed to date to the late 8th century (late Nara period). While old documents also record the reality of human trafficking at the time, this is said to be the first such case ever found on a wooden tablet nationwide.
Under the ritsuryo system, the status hierarchy known as the “Five Colors of the Lowborn” included “public nuhi” managed by government offices and “private nuhi” managed by individuals such as nobles, both of whom could be transferred or sold while under their owners’ control. The woman named on the tablet is believed to have been a private nuhi, and it is thought the seller may have written the tablet in order to apply for a “certificate” from the government office authorizing the sale.
Koki Takemura, a technical staff member at the Nara City Archaeological Research Center, said: “This is an important finding, as it lets us get closer to the reality of things like payment methods that documents alone couldn’t tell us.” (Source continues below)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
a traditional Japanese custom?
It probably came over from ancient China via the Korean peninsula
It was completely normal until Hideyoshi unified the country
That's just what women's rights amounted to back then
Especially so in the Heian period
27 was already "old maid" territory
Even in the Edo period, the Ōoku (the shogun's inner palace of women) had a mandatory retirement age of 30
Wasn't average life expectancy back then around 30?
So 27 was already clearance-bin material?
If you made it through childhood, when mortality was high, living to about 60 was normal
Say you live to 50 — that leaves 20 years.
Just barely enough to raise one child to adulthood. But factor in 10 months where the mother can't work (pregnancy/childbirth), and that's rough for an ordinary family.
It existed back in the Yayoi period — Himiko even sent slaves as tribute to the Wei dynasty in China
But as for being the "oldest," during the same era as the Jomon-period Sannai-Maruyama site, Egypt and other civilizations were already building pyramids, waging war with horse-drawn chariots, and had writing, laws, and kingdoms
People love saying "Jomon was amazing" these days, but honestly it wasn't advanced at all
Guess that's because samurai were running the government
No, it was totally common
Once the government started cracking down on it, indentured servitude ("nenki boko") took off as a loophole
Noh theater, a pastime of the samurai class, actually has quite a few plays about children being hauled off by slave traders
The Christian daimyo sold people to buy gunpowder, didn't they
Moses's era is way older
Qin Shi Huang is older too
Japan's history is honestly pretty shallow
so it can't really be the "origin" of much of anything
I've forgotten way too much Japanese history, this is bad
The slave market itself wasn't abolished until the Showa era
Before that, there were even cases in the early Showa period of buying people from the slave market as "hitobashira" (human sacrifices buried to appease flood disasters)
Their signature play "Jinen Koji" is actually about the sale of a young girl
There was even an anime about it (´・ω・)
Then suddenly it's 500 straight years of brutal civil war and a nation of bloodthirsty berserkers
What happened to you, Japan
Civil unrest broke out constantly though
Even Heian-kyo itself apparently couldn't be fully governed — about half the city was said to have fallen into ruin
The Heian period is famous for not being peaceful at all
The aristocracy was corrupt, and things only became orderly once the warrior class took over — that's exactly why it happened
If it's for a sex slave, wouldn't someone younger be better?
That's exactly why she went unbought, see Re: #1
So it wasn't even as peaceful as advertised… that's sad
Where's this "land of harmony" everyone talks about?
They said "harmony is precious" precisely BECAUSE there was no harmony
and somehow that got twisted into "Japan is the land of harmony" — it's a mystery
That's basically the story of a state's bondservant worked to the bone clearing the frontier with nothing but his own body
In the Meiji era, prisoners were apparently worked brutally hard building Hokkaido's infrastructure, and a lot of them died
and buying her would be like buying a worn-out 45-year-old woman today
yet they paid serious money for her
Life expectancy was only short because so many infants died
That's exactly why, in those days, ordinary women kept having children into their 40s
It's just that a lot of children died before reaching adulthood and childbearing started early — if you made it to adulthood you lived a fair while, and plenty of women were still easily having children up to around 30
Even with a first birth at 16, six pregnancies later you're already 30
Background and Key Points of This Story
“Nuhi” referred to the lowest tier of the “Five Colors of the Lowborn,” the status system under the ritsuryo legal code, split between “public nuhi” managed by the state and “private nuhi” owned by nobles and temples/shrines. Privately owned nuhi could be transferred or sold, and this newly found tablet is believed to be a draft of the certificate used to report such a transaction to the authorities. Human trafficking regulations themselves were already known from old documents like the Yoro Code, but primary sources showing actual transactions have been scarce — which is why revealing a concrete figure for the payment method (8 kanmon in coin) is being praised. The thread saw repeated claims that “27 was already elderly back then,” but the prevailing view is that this is because high infant mortality dragged down average life expectancy, and many people who survived into adulthood lived longer than modern readers might assume. It’s also worth noting that the ritsuryo-era nuhi system and later forms of bonded labor, such as indentured servitude, were not one continuous, unchanged institution — the reality differed by era.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Nara] Wooden tablet from the Nara period records sale of a 27-year-old woman as “nuhi” — first such find in Japan at Heijo Palace ruins, “an important source for understanding the reality of human trafficking”.”
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