In order to edit this special issue on "People and Mountains" the editors held a discussion meeting on the subject with the writers and a few other members on November 10, 1957, in Nagoya City. Those who attended were IKEDA Genta, IWATA Keiji, ONUKI Yoshio, CHIBA Tokuji, TUBAKI Kozi, TOMOEDA Hiroyasu, NAKAMURA Takao, MIYAMOTO Tsuneichi, and the editorial staff; KAWAKITA Jiro (chairman), SUZUKI Jiro, TAKAYAMA Ryuzo, and the recorder NAGATA Kazuko. The purpose of the attenders was to discuss freely any topic concerning the subject. The record of this free discussion was summarized by the editorial board. The main problems presented at the meeting were as follows: 1 Whether "hill people" really existed in ancient Japan? 2. The significance of the mountain ethnologically. 3. Ethnic differentiation between the inhabitants of the hills and the plains. 4. Patterns of intercourse between the people of the hills and the plains. 5. Why were temples sometimes built on hilltops? 6. Hills and rice cultivation. 7. Did mountain people make dugouts or not in ancient Japan? 8. Mode of communication in the hilly areas.

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The subsistence economy of the people of the Jomon Period is thought to be mainly hunting, fishing and the collecting of plants. After the introduction of rice cultivation, the Yayoi culture appeared and developed and the wet lowlands, foothills and valley bottoms were converted into paddy fields. But hills and plateaus which lacked irrigation convenience were left as living space for natives engaged in hunting and slash-and-burn agriculture and were not absorbed into the rice-cultivating zone. Slash-and-burn agriculture developed from plant collecting, as a livelihood, and this gradually changed into stable upland-field agriculture as the number of wild animals decreased. The reason why hunting. guns are found more numerously even today among People with slash-and-burn agriculture seems due to the survival of a tradition of hunting in olden times. Also there were migratory people in the hilly regions known as matagi or sanka. Who were engaged in hunting wild animals and fishing in streams. Some among the matagi used to catch fish in streams, but they were not able to make a living by hunting or fishing alone. In order to gain subsidiary income, they would sometimes engrage in wood-working as well as the production of bamboo-wares and even dugouts. The characteristics of the hill people in relation to the hunting and fishing stage were maintained through cut the years until recent times; notably, the custom of eating meat. They were intrepid fighters and took part in the battles in the plains areas and through this process not a few migrated and settled in the plains. The warrior class may have originated from these people who lived in the hills and plateaus and the custom of decapitation in Japanese battles may have been a survival of the hunting life. Some fierce hill natives in struggled against the newly emergent feudal lords in the plains and were almost annihilated in the beginning of the late feudal period which was accompanied by great social change (i. e. the Period of Warring States). After wards many hill peoplc lost their high spirit and were pacified. Among the hill dwellers, the kijiya, wood-workers, adopted a migratory life, and their emergence seems to be more recent than that of the hunters. Most of the hill dwellers who have legends of their ancestors being refugees were originally plains dwellers. Their settlement in the hills is recent, and nowadays they cultivate paddy as well as upland-fields.

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The purpose of this article is to investigate changes in the intermarriage spheres of the inhabitants of four villages of hilly districts, throughout the past hundred years or so, with relation to the expansion of the spheres of their village life. In addition to this the writer tries to trace the tradition of old marriage customs in those villages, such as the institution of common houses for young men and women and an old form of marriage in which the husband nightly visits the wife dwelling in her parents home.

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This artcle is mainly concerned with a historical approach to the divinity of, or beliefs concerning the mountain in Japan. In Japanese myths, the basic ideas of the Japanese have to do with the mountain: the lineal right much of the Japanese chiefdom, for instance, was concerned with some characteristics surrounding the mountain, while those relating to the ocean were subordinately helpful in maintaining the chieftainship. There are such examples as Kannabi-Yama and Mimoro-Yama (yama means mountain) as forms of primitive shrines. The forest-clad places in these hills were thought to be shrines. The deity Yama-guchi-gami, who was enshrined at the entrance to a hill, was a conspicuous god ever since the cultural stage of wet-paddy cultivation. This god has the same nature as Mikumarino-kami, (watar-dividing god) and manifests the personality of the god of the mountain as well as of water. Based on this idea, the mountain was the god to whom people prayed for rain, and became the place of such petition as well. Also the famous high mountains (meizan) were thought to be the world of purity or the land of gods and saints which transcended the secular world and among other things became a place of ascetic inquiry for Buddhists. Lastly I discuss the so-called Yama-no-kami (mountain god) who was discovered by modern Japanese folklorists who have studied survivals, of folk tradition since mediaeval times. Among the various attributes of Yama-no-kami, his original form, the place and form of the festival and other characteristics such as his amorous character were given consideration in the light of Japanese history. In conclusion, by cross-reference, the belief in Yama-no-kami in recent times can be connected in many respects with the divinity of the mountain in ancient times.

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Kijiya are the traditional craftsmen who make wooden vessels and utensils with the lathe. Formerly, they erected working-huts in the mountains, and led a nomadic life looking for big trees suitable for making their products. They produced wooden cups, bowls, small plates for ritual use, small round tables, and other artifacts. (Fig 1〜5) Since the Edo Period, these items have been massproduced. Because of the insecurity of mountain life, some chose to become peasants, others remained wood turners subsidiary to wholesale dealers. The author supposes, that the life of the Kijiya is reflected in certain features of their technology.

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Matagj is the traditional hunters group in the North-East region of Japan. The original home of Matagi is said to be either Akita or Dewa District. They live in a moutainous region, practise special rituals and observe certain taboos and hunting traits. In the past they wandered seeking game from mountain forest to mountain forest all over the eastern half of Japan. As professional hunters they hunted almost every kind of wild animal and bird in the mountains, sometimes even fishing in the rivulets. But their best game was bear, and the next was antelope. As people of the mountain they worshipped the mountain god (Yamanokami) and observed some rituals and kept taboos when they went hunting. While hunting, ordinary daily words were strictly prohibited and special terms (Yamakotoba; mountain words) were used. Etigo, a distrct neighboring Dewa, in about 300 kms from the center of Matagi country. The Etigo Matagi are not professionals, but have special hunting rituals, taboos and other customs. Now they hunt only bears, but formerly sometimes antelopes. No other game was traditionaly hunted. Recently the observation of old traditional rituals, taboos and hunting traits has gradually gone out of fashion and only a few have survived. From my recent research, I was able to reconstruct the total process of the old rituals and determind two rules concerning their preservation. 1) the more dangerous the hunting course, the more traditional the hunting methods. 2) the remoter the Matagi village, the better preserved the old traditions. I could find no direct relations between the Matagi rituals and the bear festival of the Ainos (Iomante). Behind the habit of using special words while hunting, there may be something common in the way of thinking between the Matagi and the peoples of Siberia.

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A number of Japanese Bears (Ursus thibetanus Japonicus) inhabit the forests of the Japanese Islands except Hokkaido and bear hunting is a very profitable sport, though dangerous, in this country. This mammal is very scarce in Shikoku and Kyushu islands, although the main island has a considerable number in the central and northern mountainous districts. A funeral ceremony for hunted bears was held in the following manner on the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku: the bear had to be moved to a place other than the valley where it was shot. It was then blind-folded and the hunter after making some incantations either cut off the bear's head and divided it into two pieces, or pushed an angular-shaped hard rock into its mouth, and then buried the head in the ground with burned soya beans. The hunter then called on the bear to "bring evil upon me, if the burned beans sprout or the cut head crushed the rock with his teeth". At the end of this ceremony a stone was put on the mound as a tomb marker. All of these ceremonies imply avoidance of vengeance by the bear. Today the larger part of Honshu has no such ceremonies as those on Kyushu or Shikoku, but there is something resembling a human funeral ritual for a hunted bear. For instance, in the northern part of Honshu, the human corpse must be dressed in a Kimono worn topside down, at the funeral ceremony. Similarly the hunters after skinning the bear on the snow, turns its skin headside down. Then the leader of the hunters makes some Buddhist incantation. An old legend in central Honshu says that it will become stormy if a bear is killed in the mountains in winter time, This tradition means that there is some fear relating to the death of a bear in the mountain villages of Honshu. It was discovered by the author the same crushed of ceremonies as these on Kyushu and Shikoku were held in a famous hunting village of Niigata Prefecture till the end of the Tokugawa era. So it may be fittingly concluded that this type of funeral ceremony for the bear was held all over Japan in ancient times. However, the old traditional ceremony for a hunted bear was not preserved in the central and northern parts of the Honshu Island where some hunting villages turned to dealing Commercially in bear galls and skins.

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The Ainu, the aborigines of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, were originally a fishing and hunting tribe though they have been much civilized under the influence of Japanese settlement which was started at about 1869. Before that time deer and salmon were plentiful and sustained some 30.000 Ainu for several thousand years. The fishing of the Ainu was done mostly along inland rivers, where the salmon coming up for spawning were caught. Before the development of Hokkaido there were virgin forests with thick undergrowth everywhere and there almost no trails except those made bydeer.Therefore, transportation was done mainly by river. Even tiny rivulets in the mountains had proper Ainu names according to their geographical or biological characteristics. Mountains were also named by the Ainu for their convenience. Since the Ainu had no written language the names of rivers and mountains were written recently in Japanese following Ainu pronunciation terminology. In old times there were no shotguns among the Ainu and deer were caught with poisoned arrows. However, when necessary a great number of deer were driven to bay on top of a mountain cliff and forced to jump to their death by well trained dogs. Salmon fishing was done by means of primitive fish-nets or harpoons. As the abundance of salmon was closely related to the welfare of the Ainu, they performed a ceremony praying for a rich catch. The river was cleaned at the beginning of the season and young women were prohibited from fording or even approaching it. Making noises in the home was restrained. The mountains afforded many kinds of edible plants which were useful as subsidiary articles of diet and as medicinal herbs. They prepared starch from the tubers of Lilliaceae plants. Collecting the roots of Aconitum-grass in the mountains was very important for the Ainu as a source of poison for their arrows. When they went hunting in the mountains they carried no bivouacing equipments. They made temporary huts wherever they were by utilizing twigs and leaves in the area. Sometimes a boat was made of tree-bark for transitory use land oftentimes a canoe was used for distant travel. They walked usually barefoot, but in the mountain they used sandals of vinefibres. In winter they kept their feet warm with boots made of salmon or deerskin. Knowledge concerning the hibernating sites of bears was inherited from generation to generation. They hunted bear not only for meat and skins but also for god-service. No bear was killed unless the traditional ceremony was performed. The bear was the god of the mountain for the Ainu and provided bountiful game.

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This is a comprehensive sketch based on my field research on culture change as it relates to the hilly milieu of the Magars south of the Annapurna mountains of Nepal. The Magars are a semi-tribal, semi-civilized people. They received considerable impact of modernization within recent centuries. The impact reached them, not only through direct contact with the Western world, but also more forcefully through indirect contact with the adjacent high cultures, especially Hindu culture. Culture change is proceeding through constant adjustment and readjustment to their habitat. So far as I was able to presume, the earliest stage of subsistence was a combination of bow and arrow hunting, wild honey collection and slash-and-burn agriculture. The Magars dwelt in bamboo huts or tarpu. They were semisedentary and their sphere of movement was very restricted, being limited to a walking radius of a few days. The staple crops were perhaps African millet (Eleusine coracana), buckwheat, taro, Dioscorea spp., Amaranthus caudatus, and to some extent rice. The second stage was characterized by pasturage, upland field cultivation and hunting. Barley, wheat and maize were added, and twice-cropping within a year was realized. Cattle, buffalos, sheep and **oats were depastured in the jangal (forest) and bhugyen (alpine grassland). The combination of cultivation and animal husbahdry were closely interrelated. Thus, for instance, they would build a network-like series of terraced fields, which they would cultivate with a pair of oxen. Just before sowing, they would drive their animals down and corral them on the to-be-cultivated fields. They erected huts called goth on their respective fields and tethered their milk animals overnight on the fields in order to secure more dung. To further this method of manuring, they adopted the three-fields system as in the Western Europe before the Industrial Revolution: each quarter-field (pahal, or phat) was surrounded by piled stone walls to prevent devastation of crops by the depastured animals in the adjacent phat. This mode of cultivation encouraged communal regulation on depasturing and crop rotation. Housing in this second stage was of two kinds: one was the goth for the purpose of pasturing. The other was a permanent house thatched with a kind of grass khar. The third stage appeared only recently, supposedly within the past few score years.

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This paper treats the emulation of plains culture by such hill people as the Thakalis in the Nepal Himalayas and the Karens in the hill tracts of Thailand. The rapid emulation of plains or Hindu culture would appear to be caused by the fact that the Thakalis engage in trade with southern Nepal, while the native peoples of both the Panchgaon and Baragaon areas (just upstream from the Thakali homegroud) are largely pursuing agriculture, pastoralism and small-scale trading. Within the Thakali community, economic status, sex, and age are strong factors determinig the degree of Hinduization. Whatever the distinctions, it is obvious that the dominant trend in this area is from Buddhism to Hinduization. This process is likely to be accelerated by the fact that contact with Tibetans has recently been drastically reduced due to the current political developments in the Himalayan areas. So far as the Karens are concerned, no dramatic plains emulation or Buddhistization has been observed in contrast to the Thakalis-The author tries to clarify the process of Buddhistization in changing family cults. Since pig sacrifice as a part of the family cult is hindering the Buddhistization, the secularization and termination of their cults facilitate Buddhistization. Either individual or family is the basis of this culture change unlike that of the Thakalis. In any event, one of the remarkable differences in plains emulation among hill people can be found even in these two cases that depend on varieties of pertinent societies and cultures. Consequently, more detailed numerous comparative studies are required to comprehend the sociological meaning of plains emulation taking place among hill people.

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