抄録
This Paper attempts to analyse the social stratification in rural communities. Social stratification, needless to say, means here the differential grading of the human individuals who compose a social group, but it varies from group to group. It is because each group has its own value system by which individuals may be differentiated. Although the purpose of this article, therefore, is to consider the stratified phenomenon in a rural community as an accumulative society with many social ties for its unity and solidarity, such an analytical approach may be compelled to meet with crucial difficulties due to the fact that it has the very complex social values which form the basis of social stratification. As it is almost impossible for us to establish a general classification of standards of social value involving social superiority and inferiority, so this paper only intends to help the interpretation of the problem in question, through empirical research of a special case.
There are, in fact, such established customs as a quasi-relation (Yobosi-Oyako) in many places of The Simokita Peninsula, Aomori Prefecture. The writer will describe, therefore, the actual state of these customs in Okunai village (Buraku), Tanabe Town, Shimokita County. Considerations of these customs readily show what significance they have and what roles they play in the structure of rural village. Answers to these questions will help the approach to the analysis of rural stratification. Since stratification is, in one dominant aspect, relevant to the consequences of social unity and conflict, Yobosi, as a social relation underlying it, must be clarified in terms of those two social factors.
In this case, seen from the point of view of the social unity, the kinds of old common customs, such as kinship relation, old cooperative systems, and sense of territorial isolation, constitute the mechanism by which individuals become integrated so as to form social unit as a rural community, but, from the other point of view, political and economical conflict relations which are brought about with the process of shifting of common land ownership from a village unit to special individuals, are aspecially worthy of notice. Vocational differentiation, the gulf between rich and poor, and consequently class-tension, etc. are fundamentally relative to the characteristics of this common ownership system. Nevertheless, such opposite elements as above mentioned remain only to be a crack within a village, and do not result in its disorganization. What does Yobosi mean in this situation? By examining Yobosi in its relation to such tow aspects of the Buraku, we shall be able to throw light on the true nature of rural stratification.
