Abstract
Prom the view-point of the economic regional constitution during the feudal days, the upper region of the Shokawa Valley may be divided into two parts as follows:
(1) One is Shokawa, in which the self-supporting of food was generally possible in normal years, because rice was grown in almost all villages and “Japanese millet” was produced in plenty by shifting cultivation.
(2) The other is Shirakawa, in which the farmers could not raise enough food to feed them, and so had to rely upon the production of silk, “Ensho” (raw material of gunpowder), bark of paper-mulberry, etc. to buy rice from the Toyama Plain with a certain portion of other necessaries of life. The former was, socially as well as economically, connected with its southern neighbouring region, and the latter with its northern, but both with Takayama, too.
