Abstract
Nakanomata, Joetsu City in Niigata Prefecture and Futagamijima, Nakajima-machi in Ehime Prefecture are both villages suffering from decrease of population. The former is a mountain village, while the latter is a fishing village with 80 houses and 150 houses respectively. The young people in both villages have in recent years moved out of the villages one after another and the people there are trying hard to find out the way to take to cope with the problem in the future. Both of them have carried on precious historical materials such as : space configuration of village, plans and structure of private houses, history of the village and customs of people. Precise investigation and analysis of these materials will be helpful for the understanding of historic value of the villages and for prevention of decrease of population. There are about 60 houses with thatched roofs called “Kuzuya” in Nakanomata. The oldest of them was built in 1785. The plane plans are almost the same with ‘chanoma’ (family room) of 3ken × 3ken or 2.5ken × 3ken (1 ken is about 2 yards) as the center. On the other hand, in Futagamijima there are 7 houses which were built in Edo period. The feature of houses in Futagamijima is the arrangement which may be called middle garden form, the main house and ‘heya’ are located surrounding the middle garden called “hinora”. Both villages have only one shrine in the village. They send ‘mikoshi’ (a portable shrine) at the time of festivals. The passages of the procession of mikoshi are somewhat different in the two villages: one round tour around the village in Nakanomata and one round trip go and return along the seaside road in Futagamijima. Both passages well illustrate the feature of space configuration of the villages. The houses are located here and there in Nakanomata and the roads run around those houses, while in Futagamijima, the houses concentrate on the mountain side of the seaside road. There is a custom called “egae” in which they exchange houses in Nakanomata. The custom in Futagamijima is to worship various gods in the houses. Both customs are very peculiar to the villages and we are studying them in terms of history of the villages. The survey is still underway, and we plan to continue with the survey and investigation comparing the two villages.
