近代日本の「流動エリート」と郷友会ネットワーク

加越能郷友会の事例

抄録

In modernizing Japan, people from rural districts came to occupy many important positions in government officials, elite professionals and employees of private corporations in the metropolitan areas (major cities). They are called “Moving Elites.” Considering that these “Moving Elites” moved away from their hometowns to live near their workplaces, the author decided to examine the types of social networks they established in the cities where they lived with people other than their classmates at school and colleagues at work. The paper aims to determine the method of communication used by the “Moving Elites” with others in different professions in the cities where they worked and the differences in methods of communication between people in their hometowns and those in the cities where they worked. Based on this question, this thesis focuses on the “Kaetsuno Association, ” which was established by people from Ishikawa and Toyama prefectures at the beginning of the Meiji Period and was active until the beginning of World War II. This thesis uses, as the target of analysis, people who graduated from junior high schools and high schools in the Meiji Period. The characteristics of the human networks of “Moving Elites” are examined, for both members and non-members of the association. The results are as follows.
1. The people who became members of the Kaetsuno Association were graduates from imperial universities and military related schools in education, who took jobs as military officers, teachers and government officials. On the other hand, graduates of private institutions of higher education, who worked in commerce, manufacturing industries and farming, had only a peripheral relationship to the association.
2. From a generational viewpoint, there was a tendency for individuals from the newer generation who graduated from junior high schools under the old education system at the end of Meiji Period to show little interest in joining the association compared to members of older generations.
3. Although members of the association actively discussed their hometowns and the characteristics of people from their home regions, the purpose of the discussions was not to unify people from the same districts, but to reveal anxieties concerning their identities in the cities, frustrations when their opportunities for promotion at work decreased, and even their communication problems with others. It is totally impossible to conclude that the association was able to create a situation that resembled the cultural unification of “upper groups of middle class people, ” despite the fact that they were originally from rural districts. Only the aspect of the isolation of “Moving Elites” stood out in the association.