Abstract
This paper examined the relationship between a household fee ranking system and the clans’ social order in a Japanese rural community in Suwa Basin in Nagano Prefecture. The author investigated this relationship by using the neighborhood association’s annual financial reports and proceedings from 1905 to 1965.
In this village, a household fee ranking system was used from the 1910s to the beginning of the 1960s that effectively demonstrated not only the prestige of upper class households but also showed the social order in nine clans. During the prewar period, the ranking system based on the households’ income and land ownership matched the traditional order of head and branch relations within each clan. However, during the postwar period, the political status of households also became important in the ranking system. In addition, agricultural land reform changed the economic status of households. Within some clans, the traditional social order observed in the household fee greatly changed.
During the high economic growth period (1955-1973), this ranking system was abolished under a thought of social equality and economic reversal among head households of the old upper class, non-farming former middle and lower classes, and inflow households to new residential areas.
