A HISTO-GEOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF THE CULTIVATED FIELDS IN THE VILLAGE OF UPLAND FARMING

Abstract

The writer has made a case study of lkekita Buraku in Takahara Mura, Myozai Gun, in order to better understand processes of the change in the utilizatian and ownership of land in the village of dry field farming since the Meiji Era. The followings have been confirmed: 1. The writer has found it very effective to have a dynamic understanding of rulal land in order to make an intensive survey of the utilization and ownership of each cultivated piece of field, on the basis of the hamlet (koaza) which is the smallest, unit of settlement. Land use map, thus prepared, shows future possibility or its maximum use as well as every detail and category of land. 2. In order to study the process of regional changes in the rural area, the study must be carried out keeping the changes in Japanese capitalism and land ownership in mind. 3. In order to understand the present rural communities, it is necessary to focus attention on such an invisible reformation (historically and socially), as the revision of land tax at the beginning of the Meiji Era (which was not studied much in the field of geography) and the Land Reform which became the starting point of the agriculture after Warld War II. 4. As for the changes in land utilization, it is noteworthy that the land owners converted the cultivation of indigo to rice growing and later on to sericulture. Indigo was the main crop in the thirties of the Meiji Ers, and radically declined. After the agricultural crisis in the early Showa, vegetable and dairy cows were introduced and nowadays mixed farming has been organized. e. g. growing rice as a main crop, raising vegetable and keeping milk cows. 5. Concerning the changes in land ownership, the land transfer during the first decade of the Meiji Era resulted in the decrease of the owners who had less than 1.5 cho (1.5ha) of land and also in increase in the land accumulation by the land owners. Owing to the Land Reform, 37% of the cultivated land was liberated and the semi-feudalistic relationship between the land owners and the peasants was abolished and the middle class land owner cultivators have increased considerably in number.