Samurai questions

[AK_Aramis 1,002]

13 hours ago, Azrael40 said:

Except for élites or specialized units that doom to be exclusively constituted with samouraï, i believe that most of squadrons in compagnies are ashigarus constituted and led by samouraï staff.

Additionnaly, a one on tenth ratio proposed to determine the samouraï population, think it should rather be considered 10 or 20 non samouraï family for each samouraï, similar ratio as medieval europe, thus armies are more easily constituted.

 

 

Historical rates were 10% samurai in both the overall population and in the formed militias during the Tokugawa era, for which good data exists, but similar (less reliable) data is stated in several professional historians' works for earlier (12th C & later) for the Samurai. So, no, not 10-20 families per samurai. It's worth noting as well, historical samurai families were nuclear with 2-5 children, while peasant families were frequently multi-generational - typically 3 generations, Gen 1 (grandparents) - 0-4, Gen 2 (usually 2-4, long-right-tailed distibution; one couple plus adult or subadult siblings), plus Gen3 (children of the gen 2  couple and/or widowed gen 2 members) in the 0-10 range, again, long-right-tail  with an average of 3-4 working the fields per 8-15 (nominally 10)  person household. So, for the typical 5 person samurai household - 2 parents and 0-5 children, centering on three, for a range of 2-6, and a median and mode of 5 person.  

For a 1:9 population, with a 1:2 ratio on family size; even at 5% (,  you're looking at only 4-5 times the number of households. Note that the peasant family didn't change much after Meiji-heika, but the samurai quickly tapered off to about 3-5 persons per household, median 4, and also started to include grandparents as normative in that number..

Note that in the 10th to 15th centuries, western farming techniques could only support a 20% total tax rate (typically 10% to the lord, 10% to the church) with occasional excess. Meanwhile, in Japan, tax rates on farmers hovered around 50% - and since the population continued to grow, that means that  much larger portion of the population can be non-peasant-farmer... up to half. (In just-pre-Meiji, the estimates were only 65% or so were farmers. Japan had a HUGE middle class by comparison to the West.)