This monograph examines population in regard to social conflict and political protest in a preindustrial agrarian society: Japan under the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns. The dimensions of population under consideration are absolute size, density, pressure (on the food supply), distribution, and crisis (resulting from natural calamity). The research suggests that demographic crises of all kinds should be linked with contentious behavior. The linkage between postindustrial growth and conflict should come as no surprise: the former contributes to a larger vulnerable population, to rising expectations, to new economic and potentially political resources in the hands of previously resource-poor groups, and to secular price rises.