The purpose of this article is to document the changing process of the yakihata (shifting cultivation) villages from the early Edo Period to the present. The study area, Shirakawa-Go, is located in the northwest of Gifu Prefecture. There were 23 villages in Shirakawa-Go and all of them included many yakihata fields. The author discovered and studied some historical documents concerning yakihata in the Shirakawa village office. They are Genroku (1694) and An-ei (1774) Era kenchi-cho (cadasters in Edo Era), Kyoho (1720s) and Tempo (1830s) Era mountain drawings and Meiji Era cadasters (1888). The author examined the distribution of yakihata in every koaza (sub-division of village) from the Genroku Era onward, and the form and location of each unit of yakihata fields in the late Meiji Era when the greatest expansion of yakihata occurred. Also investigated were the historical changes of landownership of yakihata. The main results are summarized as follows:
It has been believed in previous studies that yakihata had decreased with the passage of time. But the present study shows the opposite. That is to say, yakihata had rather increased from the early Edo Period to the late Meiji Era. Only after the late Meiji Era did they begin to decrease, becoming extinct in a fairly short time.
The main location of yakihata moved from around the residential sections to land farther away, and also from gentle slopes to steeper slopes. As for the changing process of the agricultural land use, it has been hypothesized that the general tendency is that yakihata were transformed to paddy field. However, this tendency was not proven clearly in this study. Almost all the yakihata fields had turned into forest or wasteland, not to paddy fields.
There were 630 units of yakihata fields in Shirakawa-Go in the late Meiji Era. The mean area of a unit was about 1ha. The typical yakihata fields were cleared at 700-1, 000m elevation, within a distance of 1-2km from the farmer's houses, and on the easterly slopes of the mountains with a gradient of 20-30 degrees.
Next, in relation to the changes in landownership, the following findings were made: In the Genroku Era, some villages consisted only of honbyakusho (independent farmers), and others of honbyakusho and kakae (subordinate farmers). There was not a great difference in the landholdings among honbyakusho in each village. On the other hand, kakae owned less land than honbyakusho. However, during the latter half of Edo Period, both types of farmers were engaged in developing new land, especially of new yakihata fields. So, by the An-ei Era, the kakae came to own a considrable area of land and became independent of the honbyakusho. And at about the same time, many village-owned yakihata fields were cleared, and in these common yakihata fields, any farmer in the village was entitled to utilization at any time for their own profit. So we could not End the typical differentiation of social strata among farmers in the study area.
Shirakawa-Go was characterized by its low agriculutural productivity in the Edo Period and Meiji Era. However, the population there grew during the same period of time. It can thus be inferred that the large area of yakihata fields cultivated in those days played an important role in supporting the growth of population.

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Many villages in the Kinki region have miyaza (ritual organizations or parish guilds) which play a significant role in festivals for village shrines (ujigami). Some miyaza organizations consist of a few ritual groups which are sometimes called za. At least two of such za are often referred to as ‘right’ and ‘left’. For example, they have names relevant to space classified in that way, and take seats apart on both the right and left sides at festivals.
The study of miyaza has been made by many scholars from various perspectives and disciplines. In this paper I would like to present a new point of view by treating the miyiza as a vehicle by which the symbolic spatial order is represented. But the symbolic spatial order is also closely concerned with the ordinary social relations. In order to understand the structure of symbolic space in a village, I set up four relationships on co-ordinates sectioned by cultural-social and sacred-profane axes (Fig. 2).
1) ritual order of space……ritual organization
2) mundane order of space……mundane social relations
3) ritual organization……mundane social relations
4) ritual order of space……mundane order of space
I will examine the four relationships above in the village of Miyajiri, Omi, because the structure of symbolic space lies behind the ritual and mundane orders of space (as in the four categories above).
Miyajiri is a small village located to the south of Lake Biwa. During the pre-war days, the village economy was dependent on tea growing and sale of timber (mainly for firewood). Two settlements, Nojiri and Okei, compose the village of Miyajiri. Nojiri lies one km. above Okei along the Otani River.
The ritual organization of Miyajiri is divided into three groups, Daiza, Wadaza and Okeza. Male members of Nojiri settlement belong to the first two groups (Daiza and Wadaza), while those of Okei to Okeza. Each za has five miyadoshiyori or shrine elders, who are responsible for the management of village shrine festivals. For the annual festival, each za provides a toya or shrine servant, who prepares offering rice cakes (goku), asisted by some of the shrine elders.
My field observation goes into: 1) the seat arrangements for miyadoshiyori, toya and other participants and ritual procedures at the annual festival; 2) communal obligations and the location of hon-ke (head families) and bun-ke (branch families); 3) the distribution of marital relations and village politics; and 4) two principles of spatial classification (the right: left rule for ritual setting and the above: below rule for everyday occasions).
Results derived from the observation above indicate that the symbolic space in Miyajiri is ordered by the two binary classifications of space based upon the right: left and the above: below principles, and that the priority of the right and above should be remarked. It seems, however, that social process and oral traditions imply the legitimacy of the left and below and maintain the balance between the above and the below as well as the right and the left.
The symbolic space in Miyajiri is equipped with a structure that always needs relativization and equilibrium. It is a structure for the exchange of predominance and equality.

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