抄録
In the rice-field area in Japan, we had and still have complicated irrigation systems and old customs to practise these systems, by which the organization of rural community is greatly restricted and the agricultural management is strictly controlled. The author would like to explain the situation as follow-s, taking an example of Taisho-mura, one of local villages in the Nara-pre-lecture, where long spells of drought are so customary even today.
(1) For the irrigation of ricefields this village can get its source from the neighbouring brooks, streams, springs, ponds (private or public), etc., but the irrigation water, quite separately located, can never be interchanged. The farmers cannot irrigate their fields as they wish, and must stop irrigating when they have used up the water allotted upon them.
(2) The ricefields need constant supply of a large quantity of water from June to September and as riceplants grow, they need water more and more, but August is a dry month and the lack of water happens. In this period irrigation water is strictly controlled and some powerful farmers have the right to control it by traditional customs. Even after the enactment of the post-war land reformation they preserve their eminent position over others, by keeping this right.
(3) From the beginning of June till the middle of September irrigation water may be supplied to every ricefield quite partially and unfairly by the right above-mentioned. This makes great influences to the products in the fields.
(4) The right to utilize water for irrigation, being an abstract property, is often sold quite independent of the rice field, and the price amounts to 50 to 60 per cents of that of the field itself.
(5) For lack of irrigation water, farming is carried out on a very small scale. Farmwork is chiefly concentrated only in a short period of the year. Consequently, farmers cultivating less than an acre of field must go to towns nearly to seek some jobs or must engage in some unprofittable side-jobs in the village.
