Abstract
In Japan, in the late 16th and the early 17th centuries, many castle towns were newly constructed as political, economic and military centers of feudal territories under city plannings. Sendai was such a case. Exemplified from the case of Sendai, the author intends to analyze the changes in samurai quarters which occupied extensive area in the castle town.
For the analyzing, he compared the two maps in the second half of the 17th century. The size of residential lots generally diminishes in accordance with the distance from the castle. According to the older map, however, there was mixed residential sites of different classes of samurai on the periphery.
The remarkable changes were at the residential areas near the castle and on the periphery. On the periphery, the sites of large houses were subdivided into small units, and upper-class samurai moved to the houses of larger sites located near the castle. At the same time, the lower-class samurai moved further outward, accompanied with the expansion of built-up area. At the residential areas near the castle, a shortage of large houses for the upper-class samurai was brought about. The sites of larger houses were subdivided into the sites of medium size, and small sites were combined to larger sites.
As the result, the house of upper-class samurai were concentrated to the areas near the castle, and the periphery exclusively became the residential areas of lower-class. Thus, the zoning of samurai quarters became clear in the late 17th century when the expansion of castle town stagnated.
