This article focuses on a middle class of peasants who formed voluntary collectives to manage water works in regions marked by interspersed land proprietorship, in order to examine the family conscientiousness of groups that transcended the normal realm of control exercised by individual feudal lords. In attempting to clarify the character of this middle class, the author emphasizes the authority wielded by this class in regional society from the two aspects of its members’efforts to gain that authority and the situation involving the feudal lords who bestowed that authority upon them.
By studying the family consciousness of groups formed by individuals with ties to different feudal lords, a topic that has not been given the attention it deserves in the research to date, the author looks at how that consciousness was formed within this middle class existing in areas and groups not subjected to the conditions and limitations of the strict codes of social status in late premodern Japan. In addition, the author draws attention to the fact that the origins of this class were “rediscovered” courtesy of the Tokugawa Bakufu’s local gazetteer compilation project conducted at the beginning of the 19th century and then utilized during the Tenpo era （1831-45） in taking control of regional irrigation.
The author begins with the office of ibugyo 井奉行, which was entrusted with the supervision of irrigation works on the Jugo Irrigation Canal （in the present day city of Sakai, Fukui Prefecture） and which was held on the Canal’s upper reaches by the Dohi Clan, a relatively newly risen family in the Maruoka Domain’s Kamikanaya Village, and on the Canal’s lower reaches by the Dairen Hikoemon-Saburozaemon Clans, whose origins dated back to medieval times, residing in Shimoban Village under fluctuating rule by such domain’s as the Fukui Han. According to the new revisions made by the Bakufu gazetteer compilation project of 1803, Bakufu authorities had taken due notice of the origins of both groups and had granted them samurai status （surnames and the right to wear swords）. These revisions encouraged the Dohi Clan to rewrite its family history.
It was also the Dohi Clan which frequently abused its office to gain prior knowledge of irrigation water releases from the Kuzuryu River on the upper reaches of the Canal. Meanwhile, Fukui Domain, in its power struggle with neighboring clans during the Tenpo era, convinced of the necessity to control the Jugo Irrigation Canal in this politically fluid region, decided to utilize the origins and status of the Dairen Clans to make them important actors in the plan. The rivalry between the Dairens and Dohis sharpened during the irrigation disputes of the Kaei era （1848-55）, as the family consciousness of both groups deepened.
The author concludes that family consciousness was frequently expressed by the two groups: the Dairen Clans coming to possess a family history and tradition recognized even by feudal lords and thus being employed by Fukui Domain in its effort to amass local control of the region; the Dohi Clan gaining absolute dominance of irrigation in the Canal’s upper reaches based on its sense of indigenous authority.

View full abstract

This article examines the process of entry of the Japanese Imperial Army Medical Department into inter-imperialist relations through the kind of military base medical treatment and hygiene that were being developed in the West, focusing on military medical statistics.
During the latter half of the 19th century, army medical departments of Western countries were successfully reforming hygiene through gathering medical statistical data and internationalizing it in order to achieve even better results. Due to differences in military health systems and statistical collection methods of the various countries, internationalization became extremely difficult to achieve, but the army health departments of Europe and the United States pursued the project in a coordinated manner. Soon similar interest was generated in East Asia after the Northern Qing Incident of 1900 led to Britain, the U.S., Italy and France attempting to incorporate the Japanese Army Medical Department into the project.
The Japanese Army Medical Department, which had already been compiling statistics since 1875, was facing a military mortality rate higher than that of the general population. To overcome this problem, military doctors were dispatched to Germany in the hope of revamping its statistical collection methods and exchanging data with the army medical departments of the West. This enabled the Japanese to compare the mortality rates of each country's army, adopt their barracks protocols and reduce the Imperial Army’s typhoid mortality rate. The Japanese actively disseminated the statistical data reflecting these results, drawing interest from their Western counterparts, which eventually led to the Japanese joining the international medical statistics project.
The data provided by the army medical departments of the West was utilized in Japan’s colonial expansion in Taiwan, leading in turn to the adoption of architectural sanitation in British India and successful malaria prevention experiments. Military medical statistics also led to the establishment of ties with the West in the field of tropical sanitation.
From the end of the 19th century through the early 20th century, the Japanese Army acquired a new academic “language” through military medical statistics, enabling it to participate in inter-imperialist relations in numerous ways as a result.

View full abstract