抄録
‘Mura’ is the basic community for the cooperation of small farmers in Japanese rural society. Taking notice of autonomous character of this community, Japanese rural sociologist call it ‘natural village’. Are there natural villages in other Asian societies？
As for Java in Indonesia, two famous anthropologists, C. Geertz and C.Nakane pointed that personal ties among Javanese villagers are very weak, and that there are no any organaized forms or institution in villagers’ lives. Nakane insisted that the units of society are individuals, and that even family has no concrete form. I discovered there are tightly organized family and natural- village-like mura. The two anthropologists made a mistake in this regard .
In Japanese main land , ‘Ie’(the compound family institution) is a unit of Mura. The formal member of Mura is Ie, not individual. Mura impose taxes and work forces necessary for the joint activities to each Ie . In Okinawa , in contrast to the main land, Mura imposes them to each individual. Mura reject the selfish egoism of Ie as group, and Mura seizes each individual directly here.
In China, before revolution, the cooperative activities were very weak. By law, nowadays, it is a self governing body, but, the orders and controls of government are very strong. I hope Chinese Mura would grow the ability of self governing and cooperation from the grass roots lives of farmers.
As for Japanese Mura, in contrast to the weighty Ie theory which emphasizes the Ie relations to study Mura. I have insisted the importance of joint activities of the Mura organization as unity.
