- 著者
-
今井 良一
- 出版者
- 土地制度史学会(現 政治経済学・経済史学会)
- 雑誌
- 土地制度史学 (ISSN:04933567)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.44, no.1, pp.1-16, 2001-10-20 (Released:2017-12-30)
The purpose of this article is to clarify the logic governing the behavior of farming emigrants by analyzing the realities of their village management and living arrangements. In those days, the political purpose in dispatching the first group of emigrant peasants, called the pilot group of emigrants, was to maintain public security, in order to control Manchuria. In order to achieve this goal, it was essential to make these emigrants settle in villages without employing Chinese labor and thus avoid conflict between them and the local Chinese. The first emigrant group of peasants established cooperative management and communal living (the village being divided into ten communities based on member's prefecture of origin) within three years after their settlement in Manchuria (from 1933 to 1935), shifting to unit-based cooperative management and joint living in 1936 (each unit consisted of four farmers). Soon afterwards, in 1937 they changed to individualized farm management and living. In particular, the unit-based joint management did not rely on employing local labor but used draft animals to supplement family labor.This was considered the most rational management style and the most promising agricultural policy. Contrary to this initial policy, however, local labor was employed in the subsequent year of 1937. This facilitated more extensive agriculture, following an increase in the cultivation area for wheat and other grains for animal consumption. Since there was an abundance of forest resources in the first district settled, the migrants decided to branch out into the forestry industry, which would produce greater revenues with the utilization of draft animals. Because of this, migrant farmers easily mastered individualized management. However, none of the massive revenues obtained through forestry operations were ever used for the improvement of agricultural management. In addition,the emigrant farmers cut down trees so recklessly as to drive forest resources to the verge of exhaustion. It is, therefore, concluded that such operations did not reflect the farmer's interest in the permanence of resources ; rather, it resulted from blatantly plunder-oriented colonialism.