What Kind of People Were the Fugō?
— Not Owners of Wealth, but Agents Who Mobilized Resources
1. The Starting Point of the Problem
When we hear the Japanese term fugō (富豪), the first image that usually comes to mind is that of a person who possesses a large amount of wealth.
But is that enough?
This is the starting point of the present inquiry.
To explore the problem, I have first limited the scope of the investigation to the occurrences of fugō found in the Ruijū Sandai Kyaku (類聚三代格). When these examples are examined together, the conventional understanding of fugō as simply "a wealthy person" becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.
The examples reveal that fugō could be:
selected for service as a district official (gunji);
required, in times of famine, to have their wealth surveyed and to lend grain to people in distress;
concentrated owners of high-quality agricultural land;
individuals who used their private wealth to assist the sick and hungry during epidemics;
participants in the transportation of goods using packhorses;
accumulators of large quantities of cash;
owners of substantial stocks of rice stored in their residences;
purchasers of imported Chinese goods brought by Chinese merchant ships;
merchants who bought and accumulated wheat.
What immediately attracts attention is the variety of resources associated with the fugō:
land, rice, cash, wheat, horses, and imported commodities.
Yet the diversity of these assets is not, in itself, the most important feature.
What matters more is what these resources did.
In case after case, the wealth associated with the fugō generated some form of social, economic, or administrative effect. Their resources were not simply sitting in private possession. They could be accumulated, lent, exchanged, transported, purchased, sold, deployed for relief, or incorporated into systems of local administration.
I therefore propose the following working hypothesis:
The fugō were not simply people who possessed large quantities of wealth. They were actors who accumulated resources on a significant scale and generated consequential economic effects within local society by possessing, managing, exchanging, transporting, lending, and supplying those resources.
If this hypothesis is correct, the question we should ask in studying the fugō is not simply:
How much did they own?
but rather:
What did they possess, and what could they do with it?
The distinction is fundamental.
2. The Fugō as an Administrative Resource
One of the most revealing examples is the case of Ena District (恵奈郡) in the second year of Jōkyō.
The difficult terrain between Sakamoto Station and Achi Station placed an exceptionally heavy burden on the station laborers. Many had become exhausted under the demands placed upon them.
The central government therefore ordered the selection of
"富豪恪勤者"
—that is, wealthy persons distinguished by diligence—
from among the district officials, and instructed that they be appointed to administer the district for a fixed period:
"募以五位、期三年内令治件郡."
What is striking here is not that the state sought to exclude the fugō from government.
Quite the opposite.
Being a fugō could itself become one of the qualifications for assuming administrative responsibility.
Moreover, the relevant expression is not simply fugō, but fugō kakkinsha—wealthy persons who were also diligent in their service.
The state was therefore not evaluating wealth alone.
What it appears to have valued was a combination of:
financial capacity + administrative reliability.
In other words, the state's interest lay in the possibility that private economic resources could be converted into administrative capacity.
This example therefore calls for a reconsideration of the familiar image of the fugō as a powerful local figure standing outside the state.
At least in this case, the state did not regard wealth as inherently incompatible with public administration.
Rather, it appears to have recognized that a person's economic capacity could itself be an administrative resource.
The fugō could thus be incorporated into the machinery of local government precisely because of what he possessed and what he was capable of doing with it.
3. When Public Resources Were Insufficient, Where Did the State Turn?
The example from the seventh year of Jōwa makes this relationship even more explicit.
A famine had depleted the government granaries, leaving the state unable to provide sufficient relief on its own.
The response was:
"宜遣使者実録富豪之財、借貸困窮之徒."
Officials were to be dispatched to investigate the wealth of the fugō and use those resources to make loans to people in distress.
The significance of this measure deserves close attention.
In principle, the state possessed its own granaries and stored grain for precisely such emergencies. Yet when public reserves proved insufficient, the resources accumulated in private hands became relevant to the state's relief operations.
Here the wealth of the fugō was no longer merely private property.
It was identified as surplus resources existing within local society that could be mobilized when the state's own capacity proved inadequate.
The provision also applied without regard to social status:
"王臣百姓."
The issue, therefore, was not simply the relationship between the state and a privileged class of wealthy individuals. Rather, the measure reveals an administrative conception in which privately accumulated resources could be connected to a public system of relief.
The movement of resources can be represented schematically:
Fugō wealth → state identification and mobilization → loans to people in distress
The fugō mattered not merely because he was wealthy.
He mattered because his wealth constituted a stock of resources that could be made to move when circumstances required it.
This distinction is central to the argument of this study.
4. The Fugō and Concentrated Ownership of Good Farmland
The example from Kii Province presents a rather different situation.
There we encounter the statement:
"良田多帰富豪之門."
Large quantities of high-quality farmland had come into the possession of the fugō.
The consequences were described in terms of difficulties in the operation of the public lending and collection system:
"出挙徒給貪弊之民、収納難済、官物自失."
Here the presence of the fugō becomes a problem for the state.
But once again, the critical issue is not simply that the fugō was wealthy.
The problem was that:
the concentration of high-quality agricultural land in the hands of the fugō affected the functioning of public systems of lending and collection.
The state's concern was therefore not wealth in the abstract.
It was the effect of the concentration of productive resources on public administration.
This suggests a useful way of understanding the apparent ambivalence of the state toward the fugō.
The same economic capacity that could be useful to the state could also undermine the operation of public institutions when resources became excessively concentrated.
Thus the fugō could be simultaneously:
an administrative resource
and
an administrative problem.
The contradiction is only apparent.
In both cases, the state was responding to the same underlying phenomenon:
the concentration of economically significant resources in private hands.
5. The Rice Stored in a Fugō Residence
A particularly revealing expression appears in the tenth year of Jōkan:
"富豪宅取其所蓄之稲."
Here, substantial quantities of rice were stored in the residence of a fugō.
But the significance of the rice lies not simply in its existence as stored food.
The rice had become involved in a private debt relationship with a house of royal or aristocratic lineage, and the rice stored in the fugō's residence became subject to seizure or collection.
The rice was therefore simultaneously:
an asset held in storage;
a reserve of economic value;
and a resource that could be mobilized in the settlement of obligations.
This example sharpens the image of the fugō.
The fugō was not simply someone who "had rice."
Rather, he was someone who could:
accumulate substantial quantities of rice and mobilize that stock within relationships of lending, collection, and debt settlement.
The wealth of the fugō was therefore not static property.
It was an asset embedded in economic relationships.
6. Accumulation as a Capacity
The prohibition against the accumulation of cash in the ninth year of Jōkan provides another important perspective.
The document refers to:
"畿外諸国富豪之輩"
—the fugō of the provinces beyond the capital region—
whose accumulation of cash had become a matter of concern.
At first glance, this example might appear to contradict the present hypothesis.
If the defining characteristic of the fugō were the ability to make wealth circulate, what are we to make of a prohibition directed precisely at the accumulation of wealth?
I would argue that this is not a contradiction.
Rather, it points toward an essential qualification:
The capacity to mobilize wealth presupposes the capacity to accumulate it.
Consider the following activities:
acquiring land;
accumulating rice;
storing cash;
purchasing commodities.
All of them require the ability to hold resources for a certain period of time before deploying them elsewhere.
The fugō therefore possessed two complementary capacities:
accumulation and deployment.
We should consequently avoid defining the fugō simply as an agent of circulation.
The more fundamental capacity may have been the ability to create and maintain a substantial stock of resources, and then to decide when, where, and how those resources should be deployed.
In this sense, accumulation was not the opposite of economic mobility.
It was one of its preconditions.
7. The Economic Activities of the Fugō Extended Beyond Agriculture
The example concerning transportation makes it clear that the activities of the fugō were not confined to landownership and agricultural production.
A document from Kōtai 2 refers to:
"坂東諸国富豪之輩、啻以駄運物."
The fugō of the Kantō provinces accumulated wealth through the transportation of goods using packhorses.
The passage subsequently connects these transport activities with groups of robbers who moved between mountain and coastal routes.
What matters here is the economic infrastructure implicit in the passage:
goods → packhorses → transportation → routes → markets
The fugō was therefore not necessarily merely a landowner.
He could also possess the capacity to move goods.
This introduces another type of resource into the analysis:
logistical capacity.
Economic power required more than productive assets.
It could also depend upon the ability to transport those assets and commodities through geographical space.
Thus, in considering the resources controlled by the fugō, we must distinguish between:
productive resources
and
circulatory or logistical resources.
The capacity to move goods may itself have generated economic returns and may have connected local producers and resource holders to wider markets.
The fugō therefore begins to look less like a static rural landlord and more like an actor positioned at several points within regional economic networks.
8. The Fugō as Purchasers of Imported Goods
The prohibition concerning Chinese goods in the third year of Engi takes us still further.
When Chinese merchant ships arrived, we are told:
"郭内富豪之輩心愛遠物、踊直貿易."
The fugō desired foreign goods and purchased them at high prices.
The economic world represented here extends well beyond agricultural land and locally produced grain.
The fugō possessed sufficient purchasing power to participate in the market for commodities arriving from overseas.
This is significant because the state was now confronting wealthy local actors whose purchasing power could affect the operation of commercial exchange.
Again, the important point is not simply the amount of wealth possessed by the fugō.
It is their:
purchasing power and capacity to participate in long-distance exchange.
The text explicitly describes them as buyers of imported goods. It does not, however, by itself establish that these same fugō subsequently participated in exporting Japanese products to China. Such a possibility may be worth considering in a broader study of maritime commerce, but it should remain a hypothesis unless supported by independent evidence.
Even without such an inference, the evidence is sufficient to establish that the economic horizon of the fugō extended beyond their immediate agricultural environment.
They could connect local wealth to overseas commodities.
9. The Fugō and Wheat
The prohibition on the sale of wheat in the tenth year of Kōnin reveals yet another dimension of their economic activity.
The document states:
"富豪之輩不顧憲式"
and describes a pattern in which:
"売麦忘食、積習為常."
The fugō sold wheat and, in some cases, accumulated it.
Their behavior became particularly problematic in periods of poor harvest and food shortage because the possession and sale of grain could affect the supply available to the wider population.
Once again, the issue is not simply that the fugō were rich.
The issue is that they possessed the capacity to control and exchange a strategically important resource:
food.
The examples of land, rice, cash, wheat, horses, and imported commodities may initially appear unrelated.
Viewed through the perspective proposed here, however, they begin to form a coherent pattern.
The question is:
Who could accumulate which resources, at what scale, and what could they do with those resources?
10. The Fugō as Nodes in the Regional Economy
When the examples are considered together, a substantially more complex image of the fugō emerges.
The fugō could:
own land;
accumulate rice;
lend rice;
accumulate cash;
sell wheat;
transport goods using packhorses;
purchase imported goods;
use private wealth for relief;
and, in certain circumstances, assume responsibility for local administration.
These activities can be represented as a series of interconnected resource flows:
land → production → grain → accumulation → lending / exchange → cash / commodities → transportation → trade
This does not mean that every fugō personally participated in every stage of this process.
Nor should we assume that all individuals designated as fugō possessed identical economic portfolios.
The more modest—and more useful—proposition is that the category fugō identified people who possessed sufficient economic capacity to connect with one or more of these resource flows on a socially significant scale.
For this reason, I propose thinking of the fugō as:
nodes within regional economic networks.
From the perspective of the state, a fugō represented a concentration point of resources within local society.
That made the fugō impossible to ignore.
11. How Did the State Deal with the Fugō?
Once the fugō are viewed in this way, the apparently contradictory policies of the state become easier to understand.
The state could:
recruit fugō into local administration;
survey their wealth;
mobilize their resources for relief;
target their assets for collection;
prohibit excessive accumulation of cash;
regulate the concentration of farmland;
restrict certain forms of commercial activity;
regulate the sale and accumulation of grain.
At first sight, this may appear to indicate an inconsistent state attitude toward the fugō.
I would suggest a different interpretation.
The state may have been remarkably consistent.
Its primary concern was not the existence of the fugō as such.
Rather, it was:
the effects produced by the resources accumulated and controlled by the fugō.
When those resources could supplement public administration, the state could make use of them.
When their concentration threatened public revenue, food supply, or other administrative mechanisms, the state attempted to regulate them.
When their resources could assist famine relief, they could be mobilized.
When their commercial activities disrupted public economic regulations, they could be restricted.
Thus, recruitment, regulation, mobilization, collection, and prohibition need not be understood as separate or contradictory policies.
They may all reflect one underlying problem:
How should the state deal with economically significant resources accumulated within local society?
This perspective also explains why the same fugō could become both useful and troublesome.
The very capacity that made them valuable to the state could also make them difficult to control.
12. The Fugō Defined by the Social Effects of Wealth
The evidence examined here suggests a reconsideration of what the term fugō actually meant.
I propose the following working definition:
A fugō was not simply a person who possessed a large amount of wealth. Rather, a fugō was an actor capable of accumulating resources on a significant scale and of generating consequential economic and social effects through the possession, management, exchange, lending, transportation, and supply of those resources.
This definition shifts the analytical focus away from wealth as a quantity and toward wealth as a capacity for action.
The relevant questions are therefore not limited to:
We must also ask:
What resources did the person control?
How much could be accumulated?
How long could those resources be held?
To whom could they be lent?
Where could they be transported?
What could they be exchanged for?
What purchasing power did they command?
What effects did their economic activities have on public administration?
Could their resources be incorporated into systems of relief or local governance?
From this perspective, fugō may be understood less as a fixed social class than as a category used to identify individuals whose accumulated resources had reached a scale at which they generated socially and administratively consequential effects.
The distinction is subtle but important.
The term may not have been primarily concerned with wealth as a static condition.
It may have been concerned with wealth once that wealth became socially operative.
13. The Next Question: Where Did the Wealth Come From?
Yet we should not stop here.
To conclude that the fugō were people who "mobilized wealth" would take us only halfway.
The more fundamental question is:
Where did their wealth come from?
And an even more difficult question follows:
How did they transform one resource into another?
Consider a hypothetical sequence:
land is acquired;
land produces rice;
rice is accumulated;
accumulated rice is lent;
lending generates additional returns;
rice is converted into cash;
cash is used to purchase commodities;
commodities are transported or traded;
trade generates additional resources;
part of the accumulated wealth is subsequently returned to the community or incorporated into relations with the state.
If such cycles can be demonstrated in the historical record, the fugō can no longer be adequately described as simply "wealthy people."
They would instead appear as:
economic actors capable of accumulating resources, transforming one form of resource into another, and repeatedly reinvesting or redeploying those resources to generate further economic capacity.
This brings us to a potentially more fundamental definition of wealth.
Wealth was not merely something a person had.
It was something a person could make work.
14. From Wealth as Possession to Wealth as Capacity
The distinction between possession and capacity may therefore be the key to understanding the fugō.
A person may possess a large quantity of rice without possessing the means to transport it.
Another may possess land but lack access to credit.
Another may have cash but lack access to imported commodities.
Another may have horses and transport capacity but little productive land.
The historical fugō, however, appears in the sources precisely when such resources become sufficiently concentrated or interconnected to generate effects beyond the household itself.
The decisive characteristic may therefore have been not merely wealth, but capacity.
Capacity to accumulate.
Capacity to store.
Capacity to lend.
Capacity to purchase.
Capacity to transport.
Capacity to exchange.
Capacity to supply.
And, in some cases,
capacity to intervene in local administration itself.
The fugō was thus not simply the endpoint of wealth accumulation.
He may have been the economic actor produced by successful accumulation—an actor whose resources had become sufficiently substantial and sufficiently mobile to matter to the surrounding society and to the state.
15. Conclusion: Who, Then, Was the Fugō?
The fugō of early Japan should not be reduced to the image of an ancient "rich man."
The surviving examples reveal individuals associated with land, rice, cash, wheat, horses, transportation, overseas commodities, lending, relief, and local administration.
What unites these activities is not the particular type of asset involved.
It is the capacity to accumulate resources and make them operative within social and economic relationships.
The fugō could store grain.
He could lend it.
He could acquire land.
He could transport goods.
He could purchase foreign commodities.
He could accumulate cash.
He could sell wheat.
He could use private wealth for relief.
And in certain circumstances, his economic capacity could even become a qualification for public office.
The most important characteristic of the fugō, therefore, may not have been the quantity of wealth itself.
It was the capacity to turn accumulated resources into economic, social, and administrative effects.
I therefore propose that the fugō be understood as:
an actor who accumulated resources on a significant scale and possessed the capacity to store, manage, transform, exchange, transport, lend, and supply those resources, thereby generating effects that were consequential for the surrounding community and, at times, for the state itself.
This definition changes the central question.
Instead of asking:
How wealthy was the fugō?
we should ask:
What resources did the fugō control, how did he make them move, and what effects did their movement produce?
The difference is more than semantic.
It shifts our attention from wealth as property to wealth as an economic capacity.
And this, I would suggest, opens a new path toward understanding the emergence of the fugō in early Japanese society.
The real history of the fugō may lie not in the amount of wealth accumulated at any particular moment, but in the processes through which one resource was transformed into another:
land into grain,
grain into credit,
credit into further accumulation,
accumulation into cash,
cash into commodities,
commodities into trade,
and trade into still greater economic capacity.
If this circulation can be demonstrated through the surviving evidence, then the fugō was not simply a person who possessed wealth.
He was a person who knew, or was able, to make wealth work.
And perhaps that is the more fundamental historical meaning of fugō.
