著者

橋本 征治

出版者

一般社団法人 人文地理学会

雑誌

人文地理 (ISSN:00187216)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.26, no.5, pp.496-523, 1974

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By analyzing how central places and rural regions were related through the medium of production and circulation of commodities in the Edo Period and what influences they had on each other, this article aims to examine the structure of the urban-rural regions of the Tonami District in Kaga-<i>hanryo</i>, the territory which the Maeda clan ruled.<br>To begin with, the author analyzes the regional systems of production and circulation of commodities. In the first-half of the Edo period, <i>machi</i>, authorized cities, with their previleges, took the initiative in the circulation of commodities, whereas other local nuclei had much less centrality. Consequently, tightly integrated regional urban-rural systems were not developed; the systems were quite simple. But, more complicated systems developed in the second-half of the Edo period, when the production and circulation of commodities developed in the rural regions. And some <i>zaimachi</i> unauthorized cities, came to develop based on the regions producing commodities in the rural area and trading with the merchants from other <i>han</i>. At that time, there were a remarkable difference among the central places and the hierarchical divisions of labor. In the rural region, on the other hand, common rural communities remained engaged in primary production process or supplying raw materials to the central places, while some rural communities with access to the central places were engaged in a higher level production process. It has been observed that changes which took place in rural regions had certain regularity. That is, the changes were related to the differences in situational and physical characteristics of the regions. Considering these points, the author has made an effort to examine concretely the structure of urban-rural regions on the basis of the areas receiving annual tributes from rural communities and the areas from which merchants and craftsmen in the central places came. In the first-half of the Edo period, each central place organized urban-rural areas that directely reflected the local characters of its rural hinterland, but this hardly constituted a nodal region. In the latter-half of the Edo period, however, a highly developed nodal region came to exist in the northern part of the Tonami District. That is, the service centers were organized in several classes, hierarchically related. Overlapping of some service areas is also observed. But in the southern region, where the production and circulation of commodities developed later than the one in the north, the structure of urban-rural regions remained more immature; large or small urban-rural areas lay side by side with little functional integration.