There were several different statuses among the peasantry, including myōshu, prominent farmers with taxable, named fields (myōden) of significant size and long standing; small cultivators with precarious and shifting tenures; and others who paid only labour services to the proprietor or jitō.
For the time being a wary stalemate holds, but the new, precarious balance marks a shift that is portentous.
A succession of precarious jobs followed – long shifts of back-breaking work in the fields or mind-numbing boredom on conveyor belts in the packhouses, sometimes paid the minimum wage, sometimes less.
The ever changing and expanding boundaries of globalized health care were one such factor; another related to the limits not only of physicians' knowledge as individuals, but the knowledge of the field, in that there is a continuously shifting and precarious line drawn between standard of care and innovation, between evidence and hope.
This then, leads to a precarious balance being established, which shifts in response to changes in the environment.
Even in 2016, in the most democratic nations, our equality stands precarious, subject to the whims of shifting political tides.
Even when within the law this is precarious – grinding employment with short inconvenient shifts and long journeys, not just for students and pocket money but for people trying to raise a family.
This issue feels different and more urgent to me, both in terms of the stakes, and the precarious policy balance that can be shifted with enough voices.
Your Middle Schooler, quaking under the stresses and monumental changes in his or her own life, is struggling to find their way in the unfamiliar, precarious world of school and quickly shifting social demands.
The shift into adulthood is particularly precarious for the 153 million children and youth without parental care in the world today.
