Abstract
I This village is a small farming community with no puddy fields to cultivate, lying just at the top of the alluvial fan of the River Tenryu, which rises in the central mountainous region of Japan proper and pours itself into the Pacific Ocean. It was in the latter part of 1880 that a new religion called “Maruyama-kyo” began to spread in the northern part of the village. The religion had deeply been influenced by the democratic movement.
The inhabitants in the northern part of the village did much to the prosperity of their own area by organizing au industrial association; it was indeed in the period from 1920 to 1935. As for the southern dwellers, they took part neither in the religious movement prompted by the democratic activities, nor in their fellow villagers efforts to develop village economy. The reason why one community was active in the two movements while the other passive may well be explained by the fact that their regional structures were quite different from each other. One of the most striking contrasts between the two areas was that is the northern part they suffered, from generation to generation, from calamities far oftener than the southerners. In other words, the northern part had the structure that the tilling people were subject all the year round to various kinds of calamities (floods, droughts and frost damages to young mulberry leaves).
The result was that their productive power was lingering on the lower level, and that the exploiting land-owner system remained in premature state; while the southerners had relatively high productive power which, as a natural turn of things, developed the solid land-owner system which connected with commercial and usury profits.
Therefore, whenever there appeard any social reform movements in this village, almost always the self-supporting farmers living in the northern region took the lead. It may safely be said that, in the slowly changing process of the mode of agricultural production, the regional structure has a close connection with the geographical conditions (this assertion would not be right if there should occur a revolutionary change in society).
II
In the creed of “Maruyama-kyo” there was a fanatic, heretical nature that, if a man shoul offer his arable land to the god, he would be awarded with a divine favor. But on the other hand, “Maruvama-Kyo” had so fanatical a doctrine as to deny the things of the time that, 30 years afterwards, their young descendants inherited their ancestors' fanaticism and accomplished a feat of organizing an industrial association. It may not be the case with “Maruyama-kyo” only, but most of the religions in this country hab and have a peculier character to let the believers play the role of denying the social situations at that time.
In this case, we cannot testify the direct influence of religious ethics toward the economic spirit as M. Weber makes it clear in his famous work.
The conclusion is that the situation mentioned above is closely connected with the development of Japanese capitalism which did not encourage the growth of the middle class, though it can easily be examined in the modern English history.
