How much are you worth?

[CDNSushi]

It's Friday! Hooray! (In Japan, anyway). So I thought I'd share with the rabble a little bit of a Japanese history lesson combined with some end-of-week silliness.

As I live and work in modern-day Japan, it's only logical that my salary be denominated in yen… But it has not always been this way, obviously, and I got to thinking… What if a time machine transported me back a little over 200 years and landed me smack in the middle of Edo period Japan. Of course, many of you already know that for roughly 200 years, up until Commodore Matthew Perry's visit to Japan in 1853, doors were closed to foreigners. But just for the sake of interest and argument, I thought it would be interesting to compare how much I would have earned had I been around during the Edo Period. Now, I'm not about to reveal to you exactly how much earn, but I will give you the tools to figure out how much YOU would have earned in feudal Japan, all else being equal.

In the Edo Period (1603-1868), people were generally not paid with money, but received a stipend in the form of rice. The amount of rice that it took to feed 1 person for 1 year was called 1 koku (石) which was about 278.3 litres of rice (it was later changed to 180L in 1891). A Hatamoto rank samurai would earn about 100 koku, while a Daimiyo would earn at least 1000.

Now, when British explorer William Adams sailed with the Dutch fleet, he landed in Japan aboard the Liefde in April, 1600, sick, hungry, accused of piracy by Jesuit Portuguese who were already in Japan, who advised the Japanese government to crucify Adams and his crew. (If this sounds like James Clavell's novel Shogun, it's because he loosely based his fictional account on real events. However, please don't get your Japanese history from Clavell -- it's pure fiction). Anyway, Adams was able to successfully plead his case, set "free", and quickly got in with the right people, and eventually, having learned sufficient Japanese was awarded the rank of hatamoto (bannerman) by the Shogun (warlord ruler) Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was given the two swords (katana, wakazashi) of a samurai, and appointed to serve as the Shogun's diplomat and trade minister. Anyway, I digress. The interesting thing is, that Adams was given a salary of 250 koku.

Anyway, cut to modern times. Today we don't measure rice in litres but in kilograms. According to a recent price check on the Internet, an average 10kg bag of rice costs about ￥3400/10kg. Which means, ￥340/1000g. Now, mind you, we're talking rough averages here. There's cheap rice and expensive rice. Asking: "How much is rice?" in Japan is a bit like asking: "How much is a car?" That all depends. But let's stick with averages here.

When I first calculated this, I was forced to look up the specific gravity of dry rice (which is 753 g/L). (If you failed science, this means that 1L of dry rice weighs 753 grams... And that is what I used to convert the price of rice per kilogram to price per liter). However, recently, I was able to find a better (hopefully more accurate figure) that tells me that 1 koku of rice (at a volume of 278L weighs approximately 150kg (or 330lb or 24 stone).

Therefore, if 10kg of rice costs ¥3400, 150kg of rice costs ¥51,000.

Now it's time to convert this into something a little more understandable for us Westerners. Using today's exchange rates, the cost for a litre of rice is approximately:

(1) For Japanese: 1石(koku) = ￥51,000 by today's standards.
(2) For Americans: 1石(koku) = $550.73 by today's standards.
(3) For Brits: 1石(koku) = £369.59 by today's standards.
(4) For EU members: 1石(koku) = €443.04 by today's standards.

Knowing this, all you need to do, is take your yearly salary and divide by either (1), (2), (3), (4), as your case may be.

For example, let's say you make $36,000 USD. $36,000 / $550.73 = 65.4 石(koku). You would earn 65.4 石(koku), which, while respectable, is still not of samurai rank.

SO, I don't know if you could be a hatamoto or not, but I suspect many of us still may have been fairly well off -- probably much better so than the larger part of the population. Somewhere I read that a few famous sumo rikishi earned somewhere around 50 koku, but I can't find the source on that. But everything is also relative. Just like today, a lot depends on lifestyle choices and individual expense differences. If you had a propensity for visiting houses of ill-repute, even a high salary may not be enough. One person I shared this with told me that he read somewhere of some individual earning 50 koku and living hand-to-mouth, having to do odd-jobs just to make ends meet. Whereas if a sumo earned 50 but already had his room and board covered, it would only be spending money. 50 koku in spending money only could have been huge. I don't know. Results will obviously vary.

[Danwell]

I think that's a great way of finding out the approximate value that actually gives some creedence to purchasing power parity..fascinating!

[haukehaien]

Now, when British explorer William Adams sailed with the Dutch fleet, he landed in Japan aboard the Liefde in April, 1600, sick, hungry, accused of piracy by Jesuit Portuguese who were already in Japan, who advised the Japanese government to crucify Adams and his crew. (If this sounds like James Clavell's novel Shogun, it's because he loosely based his fictional account on real events. However, please don't get your Japanese history from Clavell -- it's pure fiction).

I have a question about Clavell's novel - I know it's fiction and doesn't represent actual events, but how does his description of 17c Japanese culture stack up? In other words, is the world of Shogun very like the actual Japan of the time, wildly different, or somewhere in between? I love history, but know very little of the history and historical culture of that part of the world.

[wildrover]

What made me choke on my wheaties was the part in the M.C. Perry Wiki article where it mentions Key West was sold for 2K$ in 1821. Granted, that was 1821, but in today's money, I suspect that's about the price of the average new car.

[auld argonian]

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

You'd be about right about the price of Key West = new car. Use the above link to the inflation calculator.

Best

AA

[CDNSushi]

I have a question about Clavell's novel - I know it's fiction and doesn't represent actual events, but how does his description of 17c Japanese culture stack up? In other words, is the world of Shogun very like the actual Japan of the time, wildly different, or somewhere in between? I love history, but know very little of the history and historical culture of that part of the world.

Clavell was painting with broad strokes... Extending the metaphor, when you use a roller instead of a brush, you'll get a general idea about certain pervasive trends, but you could just as easily find many examples that wouldn't fit in with that picture. For the large part (from my recollection) Clavell does seem to be able to capture culture and the human emotions quite well.

I would also strongly recommend his novel "King Rat." It's also eerily accurate about certain things. Careful, though -- its depiction of WWII Japanese soldier mentality cannot and should not be extended to post-WWII civilian Japan, but it's easy to see a certain pattern of thinking about things and how they relate to each other and other people.

[Pleater]

I think I read of a method of computation of equivalence for Western salaries using Mars Bars - though of course the modern Mars Bar is a far distant thing from those of my youth, and it has even altered from the bar being used for the calculation.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[CDNSushi]

I think I read of a method of computation of equivalence for Western salaries using Mars Bars - though of course the modern Mars Bar is a far distant thing from those of my youth, and it has even altered from the bar being used for the calculation.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

Yes, that's very possible. After The Economist started publishing The Big Mac Index to show purchasing power parity (as Danwell pointed out) it became popular to create similar indexes. Another one is the Starbucks Index...

These are all really cool... But the only thing about them is, is that to my knowledge, no one has ever gotten paid in Big Macs in lieu of a salary, making it a little abstract to imagine.

[ThistleDown]

That was so thorough, CDN and far from silly. Makes me very proud to share a nationality (or two?) with you. And you were so polite in not pointing out the obvious: that wealth is really in the eye of the owner of the rice field, the folk who tend and harvest it, those who manufacture the bags and the scales and the twine, the ones who cart it about from here to there around the world (and their donkeys and oxen and lorry- and ship-builders and drivers/sailors), receivers and warehousers and distributors and haulers and -- finally -- the wee shop-keeper with the bag of rice to sell, if he has a buyer because he can keep the price somewhat in line with the income of his potential customer. Wherever in the world he is, of course.

Superbly done! Is there one among us who could do the same thing with any other grown or manufactured product: a dram, or a pint, or a yard/metre of tartan fabric?

[Pleater]

The only other commodities I can think of which were used for paying salaries are the original one - the Roman army's salt, and the lady gold workers who were not actually paid directly at all, they just gathered up the tiny grains of gold from their bathtubs after a day's work, and kept their hair long to maximise gathering potential.

Anne the Pleater :ootd: