The region of Shirakawa-Go is famous for its particular system of kinship and household structure, known in Japanese as daikazokuseido (the Large-scale household system). Shirakawa-Go is the name of the Edo era feudal administrative territory comprising present day Shirakawa and Shokawa villages in the Hida region of modern day Gifu prefecture. The large-scale households (daikazoku) of Shirakawa-Go have a long and rich history. The exact origins of this system are unclear. It is surmised that they began sometime in the eighteenth century and grew gradually, reaching a peak of development in the early twentieth century. The most intensive concentration of these households was in the Nakagiri area, in the southern part of present day Shirakawa Village.
　　　At the time of peak development, the average membership per household in Shirakawa-Go was roughly thirty members. The largest the Toyama household, had forty-eight members. This essay will analyse the particular structures of labour of the Toyama household, for the period 1853 to 1891.
　　　These particular structures of labour are a system in which the productive labour of household members alternated between the collective efforts of all for the entire household, and small scale production by individuals for personal income. The latter is known as shingai labour (the literal translation of shingai means “new development” ). The main theme of this essay is the concepts and practice of this shingai labour.

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　　　A huge amount of studies about agricultural and fishing villages on Okinawa islands have been done in the area of Japanese cultural anthropology and folklore. However the main subjects of these studies were the religious festivals and the kinship in relation to this topic. Therefore there were not many studies, which had approached a structure of a village as a village itself, such as in the perspective of cooperative working group or administrative system. In this study we will analyze a structure of village and “logic of shima” through an acceptance of outsider which is Kubura hamlet in this case. As Kubura hamlet was a branch village of Itoman fishermen, it had been newly formed as a hamlet different from other hamlets in the origin. We will study a structure of village and “shima” in the case of Kubura hamlet, Yonaguni island in Okinawa.
　　　The result is as follows. Kubura hamlet had been embedded into Yonaguni Island through sharing cooperative work and “Machiri” festival in Yonaguni Island. However, nowadays Kubura forms a village as an organization of public hall, which is rot a cooperative group but holds a festival. Therefore Kubura village is a festival organization as an internal structure of village. However, Kubura village does not consist in a unit of administrative system, since a village headman does not have roles to convey administrative information to villagers.

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　　　This paper is an empirical study focusing on the relations between the expansion of Township-Village Cadre and the resulting peasants’ burden during China’s transition period. Since 1978, China has experienced reforms from a socialist planned towards a free market economy. In an attempt to acquire wealth and accomplish personal interest within peasant society, the Township-Village Cadre use all means of the new free market economy to their advantage. The author terms the growing scales and numbers of Township-Village Cadre as external expansion and their attempt to accumulate more wealth as internal expansion. The cost of this dual dimensional expansion further loads the burden of local peasants directly and indirectly.
　　　In “T” Township, the expenditure of administrative expenses is increasing alongside the growth in the numbers of Township-Village cadre. According to some statistics at the township level from 1984 to 1995, expenditure increased 14.3 times, far exceeding the rate of increase in peasant income during the same period. Moreover, unofficially, the direct plunder of huge sums of money incurred from peasants takes a significant portion of the income. Thus, the Township-Village Cadre in transitional Chinese village regions, are actually enforcing the state’s plundering policies through their corrupt conduct.

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　　　First this paper aims at describing the features of the households in a rural community of a mountain region, especially their farming, occupations, and inheritance. Secondly it examines who supports the elderly households there consisting of only an old couple or one old single person living alone. I found that (1) those elderly households are helped not by their neighbors, but by their children living apart; and (2) they want to keep staying there. According to the theory of “ie” and “mura”, the households in such rural communities support each other equally, as long as they need someone’s help for living. Equal support means that the households, which are helped by other households in the community, are supposed to give the same help back to them. The elderly households can’t afford such help, because they have no young person in their households. Thus, the elderly households mentioned in this research aren’t supported by the other households with younger members, and don’t want to be helped by them without equality. But the community in which the elderly households have been living for many years is important for the elderly households to keep living, because the intimate neighborhood there keep them from loneliness；and it makes the elderly households feel safe that the community can provide emergency measures for them.

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　　　Various aspects of change in social institutions of traditional societies have been well documented in the literature. The persistence of these institutions is often mentioned in sociological reports, but is seldom reconstructed in theoretical terms.
　　　Using social system theory as a basis, we can derive the following three propositions: first, as long as a social group maintains social relations with other social groups within a social system, the social group in question will survive. Second, if economic or non-economic social relations are maintained, then the social group will persist. Finally, if both economic and non-economic social relations are lost, the social group will disintegrate, as it will no longer satisfy functional requisites.
　　　We studied a Dozoku in a farming community in Akita Prefecture. The data show that economic relations traditionally supported within the Dozoku have disappeared, but social relations in other categories have survived. From these results we conclude that the Dozoku continues to survive.

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