著者

梅崎 秀治

出版者

The Human Geographical Society of Japan

雑誌

人文地理 (ISSN:00187216)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.7, no.3, pp.199-210,250, 1955-08-30 (Released:2009-04-28)

参考文献数

28

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In Yamato which advanced in civilization from old times, the type of development of villages is somewhat different from that of other less advanced districts. The writer of this paper endeavoured to investigate the derivation of villages in the Edo era, through the actual circumstances of villages today, documents, gazetteers, oral traditions and legends, and in this way to seek the character of villages in Yamato.1. The Yamato basin is a productive alluvial plain where agriculture has developed through periods. The density of population within the Basin is more than 1, 000 persons per 1 square kilometer today. It is supposed that villages developed from the bases of mountains at the circumference of the Basin to the low, swampy land of the western part. In the Basin, great and small farming villages of 20-100 houses lie scattered with a cultivated field at their circumferences.2. Villages in the Basin having been established for an age, there are many the origins of which are almost impossible to be traced. In this country, when a new village is formed, it is usually an independent one named “Shinden” which literally means “a newly-established village with reclaimed rice-field”. In the case of Yamato, however, small villages called “Komura” literally meaning “a baby-village” were born by separating from their mother-villages, just like cell-division, in the village areas before the municipality system was put in force.3. The baby-villages generally come about filling the spaces among the existing villages. The states of these villages form a slight contrast to each other in the east and in the west of the Basin. Mary of them are found in the east and very few in the west. In the former, babyvillages are not far from their mother-villages, while in the latter there is a long distance between these two kinds of villages.4. There are some types of derivation of the baby-villages, namely, one baby-village is born of one mother-village and one mother-village has several baby-villages and one baby-village is born of several mothervillages, etc. It is an interesting phenomenon that some types of mothervillages and baby-villages make communities of different social constructions.5. Most of these baby-villages were established by the fact that the number of houses gradually increased as the result of people's setting up a branch family for the sake of their living convenience. From the point of view of social structure, baby-villages are subordinate to their mother-villages.From what were mentioned above, it is understood that the development of villages in Yamato was iust like a cell-cleavage, without any reform of farming technics and management. Practical investigations are remained for further research in this subject.