One of the biggest changes for daily life of a peasant farmer would have been the various fiscal measures that culminated in the Land Tax Reform of 1873-81. This meant ended the Tokugawa system of taxation in which a peasant farmer would pay his taxes in rice. Instead, landowners had to now had to pay in cash. The Meiji state looked to its agricultural base both as resource for modernization and as something to be modernized; the Tax Reform set out to accomplish both.

On the surface, the reform was quite successful. Agricultural productivity went up as farmers had an incentive to make their land more efficient and the new cash economy made farmers acutely aware of the market value of their crop. By 1890, the land Tax made up 60% of government revenue and the Land Tax helped Japan avoid what it rightly feared: a reliance upon foreign investment. But in reality, the Land Tax created a new rentier and landlord class in rural Japan that squeezed out smaller tenant farmers. Given the nature of Meiji representative system, these landlords were very well represented within the Meiji diet. Foreclosures and bankruptcies became more common, but also get rich quick schemes; one commentator noted this new commercial culture:

Today in the village administrative office, there is nobody who avoids the sale of mortgage. In recent years, the money lending business has been flourishing, the farmers are conscious of the concept of interest. Suddenly they sell the land they have been cultivating for so long and meet with failure, or speculating on quotation rates the farmers sell their land.

Much of the discontent with this system culminated in the 1876 Ise riots in which 50000 farmers were convicted.

Sources

Jansen, Marius B. The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002

Vanoverbeke, Dimitri. Community and State in the Japanese Farm Village: Farm Tenancy Conciliation (1924-1938). Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2004.