Sakuotoko - Saku man

A live-in servant in a farming household. They are also called "hired person", "genan" or "genin", but their common names are the same as those for ordinary men, such as "wakaishu", "wakaze", "otokoshu" or "nise". Old names such as "genai", "kerai", "uchinomono" or "okunomono" meant "house member" and meant "farm workers" who were taken into the "house". In the early modern period, there were old forms of farm workers such as "fudai" "kenin", hostage servants (working until debt repayment), and indentured servants (free service for a limited period of time), but they gradually disappeared, and eventually pawn servants shifted to "igeshi" (paying off debts with wages), and indentured servants with wage contracts and employees with annual indentured servants became the norm. Even there, the form of "paying wages in advance" remained for a long time, and many things equivalent to "sell servants" remained. However, from the mid-modern period onwards, one-year contracts for "apprenticeship" gradually became common, with "replacement days" (shift periods) set for each region, wages determined in rice coins and renewed annually. Before the development of modern industry, apprenticeship to upper-class farmers was an important "job" for the children of poor peasants, and many of them would work for many years and be given a house and some farmland or tenant land by their master, leading to their "independence as a branch family." These were the so-called Kamadobecke, Didokorobecke and Kadobecke. The fact that long-time employees were accepted as members of the "family" and that they worked to help them become independent shows that a family consciousness was still deeply attached to the original form of agricultural wage labor as a peasant, and vestiges of this were widely seen even after the Meiji period.

[Toshimi Takeuchi]

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

農家の住み込み奉公人。雇人、下男(げなん)、下人(げにん)ともいうが、通称はワカイシュ、ワカゼ、オトコシュ、ニセなど一般男子の呼び名と同じであり、ゲナイ、ケライ、ウチノモノ、オクノモノなどの古い呼び名は「家の者」の意味で、「家」に取り込まれた農耕の「働き手」を意味した。近世初期には譜代(ふだい)の「下人(けにん)」、人質奉公（借金返済まで働く）、年季身売り奉公（年季を限っての無償奉公）など古い形の作男もあったが、しだいに消失し、やがて質奉公も「居消(いげし)」（労賃で借銭を年季消却する）の形に移行して、労賃契約の年季奉公、年切り奉公の雇人が主体となっていく。そこでも「労賃前借」の形は久しく残り、「身売り奉公」に等しいものも多く残存した。しかし近世中期以後は1年契約の「年切り奉公」の作男がしだいに一般化し、「出替日」（交替期）も地方ごとに設けられて、いちおうは労賃を米銭で定め、年々更新する形になった。近代産業発達前は上層農への「作男奉公」が貧農子弟の重要な「働き口」で、永年勤続して主家から家屋敷や若干の農地・小作地を与えられて「分家独立」する者も多かった。いわゆるカマドベッケ、ダイドコロベッケ、カドベッケの類である。永年勤続の雇人を「家」の一員として受け入れ、その自立にも努めたのは、農業賃労働の原初形態の作男にも、なお家族的意識が深くまとわりついていたことを示しており、そうした名残(なごり)は明治期以後も広くみられた。

［竹内利美］

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