The Migration Process and its Features in the Hachijou Island from the Beginning of the Meiji Period to the World War II

Abstract

Most of the Japanese Islands have experienced intensive rural exodus caused by the rapid economic growth since 1960s. The excellent papers on these migration processes have been published. Comparing with the migration processes since 1960s, those before the World War II had distinctive features in each island. Their studies have no sufficiently advanced because of the difficulties to follow the statistical data. This article aims to analyze the features of migration process in the Hachijou-jima (Hachijou Island) mainly from the beginning of the Meiji period to the World War II.
The Hachjiou-jima has been historically known as a jail island. The exodus from the island was strictly prohibited in the Edo period, but the agricultural emigration to Mainland villages was allowed in 1777. The economic activities in the Hachijou-jima had based on the traditional sifting cultivation and the commercial production of Kihachi-jou (silky weaving), but the scarcity of economic resources and the agricultural low productivities had historically brought about the overpopulation. This economic structure had not been transformed in the Meiji period. But with the beginning of the colonization of Ogasawara Islands to develop the sugarcane industries, this island had experienced the intensive outmigration since 1890s. The migration process in this first stage has the characteristics as follows :
(1) The emigrants were not from the peasants of lower classes. They kept the ownership of their agricultural lands and sometimes enlarged it by the purchase even after moving to Ogasawara Islands (Fig. 1 and 2).
(2) They usually migrated with all family members and their family heads were from younger age-group (Table 3).
(3) The migration flows to Tokyo or the neighbouring islands were not significant.
The success stories of migrants in this first stage accelerated the spacial mobilities of islanders. The migrantion flows expanded to Hokkaido, Minamidaito-jima and the Japanese colonies such as Korea, Taiwan and their neighbouring islands. The economic acitivities in the Taisho period were mainly the dairy farming and charcoal making, but they severely suffered from the economic damages after the Great Depression. With the territorial expansion policy in this period, the migration flows of Hachijou islanders also expanded to Japanese colonies such as Mariana, Carolin and Marshall Islands. The features of migration process in the second stage were those as follows :
(1) Migrants engaged in sugarcane industries as tenants.
(2) They were from the peasants of lower classes.
(3) Many of them had experienced the migration to Ogasawara or Minamidaito-jima Islands, or had the relatives in these islands (Fig. 3).
These migration process came to the end with the opening of the World War II.