Someone insist upon that the extended family system is the starting point of constructive understanding on the rural community. But, to understand the lineal relationship of the center of extended family system (the “Honke”) and the extended families (the “Bunke”) in connection with the structure of rural community, I think it is not only the relationship of the controller and the controlled.
The sense of lineal relationship changed in political and economical conditions of age, so, we must examine the conditions for that the lineal relationship was equal to the control relationship. In this work I will treat these subjects on the rural community in modern times. The study of the rural community after Meiji period require that of the extended family system in modern rural community - the group formed by lineal relationship of the “Honke” and the “Bunke”.
I The peasantry under the feudal government system was fundamentally the “Honbyakusho” - the direct producer being liable for taxation to the landlord. The Independence of the “Bunke”, the “Nago” and the “Genin” - feudal servant belonging to large enterprise of the head of a village in middle age was the result of weakening of the individual control relationship in the village. At the same time, as the relationship was, whether it was blood relation or not, lineal relationship, the independence of the “Bunke” and the “Genin” weakened the control with the lineage. The process was that which the rural community system called as “Yakuya system” in the early modern age dissolved after middle of the age.
II The landlord in community in modern age, provided by the change, mainly managed his farmer for himself with the family and the employed labor force. The agrarian labor force was not that of the hereditary feudal servant (“Fudai Genin”) or the slave labor. As the falling peasants could not stay in the village as the tenants for the low production power, wide relationship of the landlord and the tenant was not yet formed. The expansion of the farming landlord or the farm management for himself was possible by the slave labor of the belonging peasant leased the land. For that reason, the farming landlord expanded and strengthened the extended family system. And so the relationship of the farming landlord and its belonging peasant was formed as the lineal relationship.
III But, being parasitic of farming landlord on one hand and the progress of the wage labor in agrarian labor on the other hand began to destroy the relationship. At the same time, the classifying in the process of establishment of the landlord system progressed on a certain looseness of the relations of commodities, and so the “Bunkes” were able to rise in the expansion of commodity production. And the relationship of the “Honke” and the “Bunke” was not the relationship of the control and dependent based on the landownership.
