The form and size of the patch may be investigated from these two standpoints, agricultural geography and settlement. The writer elucidated these problems by means of many Japanese archives. ancient literary works and cadastral mans.
As for the arable land, agricultural geography deals with several conditions requisite to the patch.
1) Conditions of Agricultural Management : In Japan, the average size of a patch is about 0.15 acres and each farmer with his family manages 16 patches. But this number changes according to the regions. In Nara prefecture where the most ancient culture of our country has been inherited, a patch has the average area of 0.13 acres for the paddy field and 0.06 acres for the other. Generally speaking, on the plain where the paddy field is managed on a larger scale, the patch is large but on the mountain small. But this proportion can't be applied to the other field, the variation of whose area is greater.
2) Conditions of Labour and Technique. : The fundamental size of a patch in the Japanese rice-field is 1
tan (0.295 acres) and is based on the
Jori-system. It is said that this size depends on the cultivating power of an adult man a day. But this is by no means clear. A patch has a narrow and long rectangular form, owing partly to the introduction of the plough driven by cattle or horse. The most important factor in the older times must, however, have been irrigation for the paddy field. It goes without saying that the size and form vary with kinds of crops.
3) Conditions of Land Form. : A patch varies with such a land form as islands, coastal plains, basins, fans, plateaus etc. The writer verified this fact consulting many ancient archives and literary works.
4) Fixation of Patch and Equilibrium among its Factors. Generally speaking, the patch is determined by natural and cultural conditions, and can maintain the initial for : m and size comparatively for a long time. There is some equilibrium among many of its factors. But the equilibrium is broken sometimes by soil erosion or by technical, agricultural and social revolutions. According to the historical evidences in Japan, however, there had not been so great a change of the patch as the European enclosure since the Taika Reformation up to the Meizi Restoration. And may this not account in some way for the retardation of Japanese agriculture and society ?
By the settlement geography of field can be made the researches about the correspondence or correlation between the forms of settlement and arable land. In Europe, the aggregated villages in the country have the field of narrow and long strip, while the dispersed farms block-field. The contrast between these two types, therefore, is very clear. And before the differentiation of them there was “
esch” or “
gagnerie” (cooperative field) in some parts of the villages' field. In addition to these facts, the two-field system presented a proper form of their own.
Strassendorf in slave land had also a special form. And thus the European villages and farms show the correspondence between the forms of settlement and field.
On the contrary, this relation is not so clear in Japan. It may generally be observed that in the field of the Joni-system there is the lattice-form of village. But in the Sanuki plain with the Joni-system of northern Shikoku the settlement is dispersed. And the reclamated coastal plain of southwestern Japan has the dispersed farm and paddy field divided in a regular manner. The linear village in Musashino takes such a form as European
Waldhufendorf.
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