人文地理
Online ISSN : 1883-4086
Print ISSN : 0018-7216
ISSN-L : 0018-7216
村落空間の分類体系とその統合的検討
長野県下諏訪町萩倉を事例として
今里 悟之
著者情報
ジャーナル フリー

1999 年 51 巻 5 号 p. 433-456

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Over the last few decades, theories of the spatial structure of Japanese villages have been the subject of controversy in human geography, folklore, cultural anthropology, history and architecture. The author identifies an important unresolved question concerning these theories. Although many scholars have profoundly discussed each of the categories of space such as land use zones, folk-taxonomy, 'place', social space, and symbolic space, the interrelationships among these categories and the synthesis of them have not been sufficiently examined.
With this in mind, this article discusses each of the categories of space for a case study area, an agricultural and forestry village-Hagikura-in Central Japan, to reveal the interrelationships among all spatial categories by introducing a semiotic theory. The author examines the historical changes of space since the mid-Edo era, when Hagikura was settled. To pursue these aims, various methods and materials are used: interviews, landscape observation, participant observation, the analysis of land ledgers, cadastral maps, tax ledgers, local topographies, historical documents and geographical statistics.
Hagikura was a shinden settlement which stands on a river terrace near Lake Suwa in Nagano Prefecture, and is now a mixed-settlement in which newcomers from Shimosuwa Town have settled since the era of rapid growth in the Japanese economy. The subsistence farming economy of Hagikura is based on paddy, mulberry and vegetables, sericulture and forestry. In addition, people have been engaged in filature in the Meiji era, agar production in the Taisyo era and dairy farming and flower cultivation in the 1960s. Recently, almost all farmers have become factory or office workers, commuting to the towns along Lake Suwa.
The findings of this article can be summarised as follows. The folk-taxonomy of space, which is deduced by an investigation of place names and folk categories of landscape, is composed of five levels: land use zone, subdivision of the zone, koaza (small place name), block name, and strip name. In the residential area, there is another classification system of social space composed of four levels: dual organization, mutual aid organization for funerals, neighborhood group, and household. In each land use zone, the shrine which guards the people working in each zone is located showing the center of meaning. As the center of the total area, the shrine of the settlement is located at the cardinal point of two axes of folk orientations which structure the village territory in concentric circles. These orientations are prescribed by the zofu-tokusui topography of fung-shui tought, whose rear is a hill and front is a river. This spatial structure with these land use zones and folk orientations is found similarly in homesteads and fields owned by each household. The boundaries of each land use zone and village social space are demarcated by objects such as stone statues and isolated trees, and through varied ritual behaviors. The social space of the village community which corresponds to the village territory is divided into nested boxes according to the social group system. All of the boundaries of the village are folk, social, mental, or symbolical, and the outer boundary of the forestry zone is, at the same time, a geographical or administrative one.
The social structure of the village social space is composed of three groups-'natives', oldcomers and newcomers. The natives who settled in the Edo era and consist of nine kinship groups were former landowners or independent farmers. The oldcomers who settled in the Meiji era as filature or farming workers were tenants of native landowners in the Taisyo and early Showa eras. The newcomers are factory or office workers who have settled in new housing estates since the rapid growth of the Japanese economy. The main native families occupied the cultivated fields near the residential area.

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