抄録
“Multihousehold compound” is the concept presented by Koichi Mizuno on the basis of his survey as the core structure of the social system of the village. It is a kin grouping composed of two or more households of parents' and their married daughters' families, and its structural features are their living together in a compound, joint farming, and close cooperation in daily life. This type of group appears as a phase of the family developmental cycle, which is characterized by uxorilocal residence and an inheritance pattern which emphasizes female devisees.
Having surveyed the village for six months in 1981, we have found that some of the points made by Mizuno are misleading: (1) the compound is not intrinsically related to such a grouping; (2) the native concept of sum, which is not mentioned at all by Mizuno, is used by the villagers to represent close kin relationships; (3) close kin in this category are strongly expected to help each other in various aspects of daily life; (4) the parent-daughter cooperative relationship is basically one of the cooperative relationships among sum and is closely related to the uxorilocal residence rule; (5) although the parent-daughter relationship is the salient feature of the cooperative system, the system is not restricted only to that relationship; (6) the close kin relationship is intrinsically dyadic with flexible bilateral features; and (7) the pattern of inheritance reflects this relationship.
