The aim of this paper is, based on field research in a Malay village in the Malay Peninsula, to analyze what constitutes leadership among Malays in a village context. In the situation that political conflicts or changes at the national level seem to dissolve village unity, the fact that there is still a strong village leadership which extends beyond political factions makes us believe some "power" must be at work besides political and economic power. But unfortunately, up to now, most studies of Malay leadership have been done within the sociostructural/functional paradigm, therefore, the nature of this "power" remains to be clarified. The present study thus also intends to begin to make up for the insuficiency of the former studies of Malay leadership. In section 2, the background of Malay political conditions is described. After the so called "UMNO crisis" of April, 1987, political conflicts between UMNO and PAS46 intensified, especially in the Malay state of Kelantan. The UMNO dominated State Government gives local administrative posts, such as district officer, village head, and so on, to their supporters, and UMNO keeps up its influence on local-level decision-making by controlling local authorities at various levels of administration. The most prominent example of their control is seen in the village committee, through which many kinds of development programs are realized. All committees are usually monopolized by UMNO royal supporters and they can and often do make decisions to their own satisfaction. In these situations, most villages in Kelantan have split into two political factions, with the political haves and havenots in conflict with each other. Section 3 describes a Penghulu, the head of a mukim, the lowest unit of administration, in the area where field research was conducted. In spite of the situation mentioned above, the Penghulu of this mukim (who is also an UMNO Iocal leader), is supported by almost all the villagers, from both the UMNO and the anti-UMNO side. To elucidate the enigma of his leadership which functions beyond village politics, I try to describe him as concretely as possible. This is done in three respects: 1. his lineage and his family; 2. his relationship with his co-villagers; and 3. personal factors. 1. He and his wife are grandchildren of village founders. He is successful at "semangat silat (the spiritual power of silat Malay martial arts)", 2. His private relations are with relatives and friends, both of which are overlapping. They have continued since his childhood. Official relations are the ones which he keeps as both a Penghulu and a local UMNO Ieader. He can mediate between village and administrative/political center, and can control village politics if he wants to. 3.

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Many scholars have been studying village Bangladesh as a "peasant socrety", particularly m terms of landholding and the rights related to land. This has seemingly been caused by the fact that Bangladesh is demographically defined as an agricultural country. On the other hand, however, some scholars have mentioned the existence of non-farm work and workers In rural areas, from the relatively early years of anthropological or sociological studies in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, thls line of study has not been pursued in detail. It is thus necessary to reexamine the situation in rural Bangladesh. Village K (about 100 km east of the capital, Dhaka) is situated in the midst of the flood plain. This village has sometimes been affected by the flash flood of the Gumti, a branch of the Meghna. Though this village itself floats on a sea of paddy fields, the bazaar is not so far (about 2 km) from the village. For analytical purposes, I will use some local terms, i.e. Paribar (slmllar to "household") as an economic unit and Kani (=0.3 acre) as a unit of land. At the same time, I will classify the 121 Paribars studied into eight groups according to landholding sizes and types of management. Groups no. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 in Table 4 can be hierarchically codlfied, while groups 6, 7, and 8 cannot. Concerning landholding (effective or functional, not nominal), some remarkable features have been found. i) Nearly 70% of all the Paribars (groups no. 4-〜8 in Table 4) cannot maintain themselves by the products of their farming. They can only prepare, at best, half of the necessary quantity of food by their own farming. ii) Over 60% of all Paribars (groups no.1, 2, 5, 6, and 7), more or less, participate in nonfarm work. If we include agricultural wage labor (group no. 8) in this category, the percentage becomes higher. iii) Even groups l, 2, and 3 (about 30% of all the Paribars) have relatively small areas of land, their average being 5.14 Kani (about 1.5 acres), though they have some selfsufficient or surplus amount of land. In my oplnion, it is not appropriate to express this situation as simply "polarized", althcugh I have not touched upon this point in detail in this paper.

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This paper aims at an interpretation of the meaning of ancestor worship of wives' parents in the ihai-wake custom frorn the viewpoints of the wives' natal family and the marital family. The analysis is based on data collected In the Saku area of Nagano Prefecture in 1988 and 1989. lhai-wake literally means the distribution of the ihai (ancestral tablet). In this custom, after a funeral ends ancestral tablets which symbolize the deceased are distributed to all his/her married children. The children put the tablet on their marital family's alter (butsudan) and worship their deceased parent. Worship of the wife's parents by the marital family continues even after the wife dies. Observing ihai-wake leads to bilateral ancestor worship though matrilateral ancestors are limited to wives' parents. Why are the deceased, who are neither members of the ie (family) nor of the agntically organized group of the ie (kuruwa), worshipped as ancestors? Interpretating the meaning of this custom will provide us a key to rethinking an ideological aspect of ie. This paper analyzes ihai-wake by the following procedure: In secton I, the theoretical framework of this custom is shown. Next, in section II an outline of this custom Is glven, section III reports how the wives' parents are worshipped in the marital family. Finally, section IV explains the ideological basis of the ihai-wake custom by analyzing both the process of the custom and the wlves' parents' status as ancestors of the marital family.

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In standard Japanese, the kin terms oji and oba mean uncle and aunt. However, in some dialects In the northern part of Japan, the terms may mean the second or following son and daughter of a househead instead of uncle and aunt. Although this anomalous usage of Japanese kinship terms in some dialects has been mentioned several times in the academic field of folklore or dialectology, it has neither been fully described nor analyzed in the field of Japanese kinship terminology because the terms are not consldered kinship terms in the strlct sense of the word; while the reference point of kinship terms is ego, the reference point of oji and oba terms in this anomalous usage is considered to be not ego. Recently, some soclolinguists have attempted to describe and analyze the whole set of kinship terms of particular dialects including the deviant usage of oji and oba. One sociolinguist concluded that the distinctive feature of this anomalous oji and oba usage is not relative age as in standard Japanese but ranking. Ranking is a criterion by which, for instance, the eldest brother (son) or sister (daughter) is differentiated from the other members of a sibling (child) set. Accordingly, kinship terms such as oji and oba have come to be called ranking-type kinship terms by some scholars.

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