Abstract
Since 1955 the outmigration from the village to the city has been proceeding very markedly in Japan. Above all, the Shikoku Mountains is experiencing particularly speedier emigration. Its southeastern part shows a conspicuous community-type feature of the village in general. I intent to explain how the feature of the village community influences the type of outmigration and the progress of the village transformation by exemplifying Narukawa Buraku in Toyo-cho, Kochi Prefecture.
The inhabitants of the Buraku have quite extensive forests under the communal ownership and are related to each other by the head - branch family system and also by marriage, representing altogether a conspicuous feature of the village community.
Outmigration from Narukawa has been becoming very remarkable since about 1960 when charcoal making as an important side job was fast decaying. The farmers there decreased from 607 persons (112 households) in 1953 to 194 persons (76 households) in 1971. The outmigrants settled in the left bank of the Yodo River in Osaka Prefecture, where almost all of them are now engaged in such jobs as connected with ready-built houses. They are in the relation of cooperation in the correlated enterprises. The relation of cooperation makes the best use of the neighborhood relation in the home village and the relation of relatives by the head - branch family system or marriage. In the same way the departed villagers reorganize the traditional village community association called Narukawa Society in order to tighten their mental union.
A sudden outmigration from Narukawa made the village transformed rapidly. Consequently agriculture has become less intensive, and the area of cultivated fields are now only a half of the former days, changing to waste lands or forests. The remaining farmers make use of the fertile fields remaining at the central part of the village, and many of them cultivate the fields of the departed by renting. Contrary to the deso-lation of fields, the houses seems to have not gone to ruin yet, because the departed farmers ask the remaining to manage their unoccupied houses so that they can easily live in them when they return home during the Bon Festival or the New Year days.
The loan of the fields and the management of the vacant houses are practiced by either the neighborhood or the kinship relations.
In conclusion, it is possible to say that the traditional organization of village com-munity exerts a profound influence both on the type of rural outmigration and on the process of village transformation.
