Structure of the Ryukyuan Rural Community

Abstract

Except for two cities, Shuri and Naha, and other small towns, Nago, Kadena, Yonabaru, etc., there were about 570 villages in Okinawa at the end of the War. Most of them are agricultural villages and only two or three also engage in fishing. Each village consists of several kinship groups. The average number of houses is seventy to eighty, but the range is from less than twenty to two hundred. Besides these villages, there are so-called yadori, or smaller plantations where town people came to seek arable land. These yadori villages are extensive in area, because immigrants build their houses near the cultivated land. On the other hand, ordinary villages are small in area, the houses clustered in one place. The typical agricultural village was formed first by a kinship group who came to seek water and land and settled at the southern slope of a low hill. Then they came nearer to the cultivated area. The number of houses increased due to intercourse with other kinship groups or by adding newcomers from other districts. In this way the present village, as both a kinship and local group, came into existence. Until 1899-1903, when the Land Reform Law was enacted, land was owned communally by the village, which divided the land among peasants at regular intervals, the amount in proportion to the number of family members and their work and tax-paying capacities. It was called ji-wari (land-division). Peasants had no right to possess land, but only the right to cultivate, and taxes were imposed upon a village as a whole, not upon individuals. Every village community was knit together by both kinship and economic ties. There were many institutions, customs and ceremonies for the maintenance of public peace and order, and for public health, production and tax-payment. The so-called nai-ho (inside law), which treats important matters of concern to the village, were decided at the village assembly and strictly observed as the official law of the community.