著者

鈴木 直美

出版者

東洋文庫

雑誌

東洋学報 = The Toyo Gakuho (ISSN:03869067)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.89, no.4, pp.407-437, 2008-03

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The aim of this article is to determine the meaning of the terms “tongju” 同居 and “shiren” 室人 as seen in Shuihudi Qin Slips 睡虎地秦簡 through a comparison with the information regarding household registration in the Liye Qin Slips 里耶秦簡. Such an analysis will hopefully stimulate discussion of the research methods employed in studying household composition under the Qin 秦 dynasty.The specific characteristics of the recording system used for household registries are as follows. One wooden tablet was used for each household and contained all the pertinent records. Separate columns on the tablet were reserved for male/female, adult/minor and household servants. Wives and children were listed with notations identifying the names of their husbands or fathers, thus defining simple family units within the household.The term “wushi” 毋室 in the registries confirms that a member’s name had been removed from their parent’s registry, but does not indicate their present household. These people were like those appearing in the early Han 漢 dynasty Zhangjiashan Han Slips 張家山漢簡, who held rights to arable and residential land and were registered in the order of which they were deregistered from their parents’ households. The tom thus shows that the same system existed during the Qin period and functioned in the same manner.Considering both the writing style of the Qin registries and the procedures for confiscating wives and children to make them wards of the state, the term shiren referred to a simple family unit made up of an adult male, his wife and any minor-aged children, while tongju referred to the cohabitation of two or more adult males within a single household, or the practice of several nuclear family units headed by adult males cohabiting within a single household. These two terms limit the scope of the confiscation of wives and children and the implication of criminal behavior, while also regulating military conscription from a single household. These features all can be interpreted as policies giving precedence to the preservation of household communities.