Hawks in an area in the Shinsyu-Ina District during the Edo period

Abstract

Large amount of timber was harvested from a forest area in central Japan for about 150 years starting from the 1600s. The area was under the direct control of the Tokugawa Shogunate throughout the Edo period (1600-1868). The Shogunate sometimes requested from a village to capture young goshawks and/or sparrow hawks to be used for hawking. People in the village could sometimes offer young birds, but other times not. The description about them in the old documents shows the degree of distribution of hawks in those days. This paper deals with the information about hawks between the 17th and 19th Century in a mountain site of central Japan, and also looks at the behavior of people toward request of hawks. This research is based on old documents that were written by the successive village officials during this period.