The "Hill People" in Japan

Abstract

The subsistence economy of the people of the Jomon Period is thought to be mainly hunting, fishing and the collecting of plants. After the introduction of rice cultivation, the Yayoi culture appeared and developed and the wet lowlands, foothills and valley bottoms were converted into paddy fields. But hills and plateaus which lacked irrigation convenience were left as living space for natives engaged in hunting and slash-and-burn agriculture and were not absorbed into the rice-cultivating zone. Slash-and-burn agriculture developed from plant collecting, as a livelihood, and this gradually changed into stable upland-field agriculture as the number of wild animals decreased. The reason why hunting. guns are found more numerously even today among People with slash-and-burn agriculture seems due to the survival of a tradition of hunting in olden times. Also there were migratory people in the hilly regions known as matagi or sanka. Who were engaged in hunting wild animals and fishing in streams. Some among the matagi used to catch fish in streams, but they were not able to make a living by hunting or fishing alone. In order to gain subsidiary income, they would sometimes engrage in wood-working as well as the production of bamboo-wares and even dugouts. The characteristics of the hill people in relation to the hunting and fishing stage were maintained through cut the years until recent times; notably, the custom of eating meat. They were intrepid fighters and took part in the battles in the plains areas and through this process not a few migrated and settled in the plains. The warrior class may have originated from these people who lived in the hills and plateaus and the custom of decapitation in Japanese battles may have been a survival of the hunting life. Some fierce hill natives in struggled against the newly emergent feudal lords in the plains and were almost annihilated in the beginning of the late feudal period which was accompanied by great social change (i. e. the Period of Warring States). After wards many hill peoplc lost their high spirit and were pacified. Among the hill dwellers, the kijiya, wood-workers, adopted a migratory life, and their emergence seems to be more recent than that of the hunters. Most of the hill dwellers who have legends of their ancestors being refugees were originally plains dwellers. Their settlement in the hills is recent, and nowadays they cultivate paddy as well as upland-fields.