2014 年 21 巻 1 号 p. 26-36
This paper examined the relationship within a Japanese village on Hirado Island in Nagasaki Prefecture between the frequency of managerial elections to a Christian lay assembly as the critical social status and the following class factors: the frequency of such elections in a neighborhood association, household economic status, and resident personal attributes. Based mainly on local village historical documents from 1930 to 2009, we used multiple regression analysis and investigated the career patterns of the heads of each household of the village’s self-government.
In this village, this study did not observe any clear correlations between elections to lay managers in the church and such social class factors as economic status, level of education, and age. In contrast, we found a correlation between management careers in the church and in the neighborhood association. We classified these career patterns into eight types, only three of which include the elections of lay managers in the church.