犬追物を演出した河原ノ者たち : 犬の馬場の背景

抄録

Inu-Oumono 犬追物, the sport of shooting dogs with bow and arrow, was a popular martial art during the Middle Ages in Japan. Its popularity among not only the warrior elite of the shogunate and provincial magistrates (Shugo 守護) but also ordinary samurai during the Muromachi period is attested to by the large number of place names, Inu-no-Baba (the gaming field for the sport), that still exist in Japan. today. Inu-oumono has been mainly studied as a traditional custom among the samurai class but in this paper the author discusses it as a social phenomenon, dealing in particular with the role played by groups of social infe- riors, kawara-no-mono 河原ノ者, who were diseriminated against, in staging inu-oumono events. The task given to kawara-no-mono groups was to supply on the average 200-300 (sometimes as many as a thousand) target dogs for each event, manage the dogs during the game, then dispose of the wounded animals afterwards. They became involved in the sport due to the fact that the samurai promoters could not supply such large amounts of dogs on their own at such short notice. So they turned to kawara-no-mono who worked keeping streets clean and safe, which included capturing stray dogs. During the events, kawara-no-mono were put in charge of surrounding and freezing dogs that jumped out of the roped-off target circle running wild all over the 70 × 70-meter field. Despite that fact that the bamboo sticks that they carried marked them as inferior "dog-catchers" kawara-no-mono were well-paid for 'their services : in one case 350 kan 貫 (equivalent to about 50 million yen today). This was ample recognition of the hard work required to catch and keep enough dogs for muoumono events that could attract as many as ten thousand spectators and make large profits for the samurai who held them.