Abstract
This study aims to examine the purpose, process and location of land acquisition by farmers. Two villages with different land ownership patterns were chosen for investigation, and the transformation process of land ownership from the Meiji era to the present time was traced. The results show that, firstly, the transformation of ownership often took place in response to the introduction of land legislation which came out at a time of social unrest. Secondly, within an area which formed a social and physical unit with a cluster of houses at the center, the land located close to the homes was highly owned by farmers living within and this proportion became much lower around the village boundary, thus forming a circular distribution of ownership density with the cluster as the center. Thirdly, farmers acquired land which was located either close to their home or to their land, so that their holdings could be consolidated. Fourthly, although the Agricultural Land Reform of 1947, which was the major force in the whole land transformation process, contributed to some extent to the narrowing of class differentiation of the farming population, this was only in terms of the size of holdings and there still remain differences in other terms such as the level of the consolidation of holdings and their nearness to the home.
