Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/53647

As no critical examination of agricultural statistics has been conducted, no progress has been made regarding a statistical analysis of agricultural growth during the early Meiji era of Hokkaido for many years. The amount of information related to the administration system during the early stage of development in Hokkaido has been increased remarkably by the analysis of public documents of the Hokkaido Development Agency, called hutatsu. This paper aims to clarify the institutional development of the agricultural statistics system during the early Meiji era of Hokkaido and evaluate the accuracy of the statistics by surveying the public documents.Although the agency began to collect statistics in 1870, the jurisdiction of statistical services and the statistics division in the agency were clarified by a regulation enacted in 1875. The new agricultural statistical information system, which covers areas in remote locations, was developed in 1877. Due to communication problems, reports on these areas often missed the scheduled deadlines. This is probably the main reason that data on Hokkaido were not included in published statistics such as nousanhyo. After the introduction of the new agricultural information system, nouji-tsushin, statistics gathering and publishing began to work effectively even in the last frontier of the Nemuro region. The accuracy of statistics had probably reached a level comparable with that of other prefectures in 1886.