近代村落成体前における入会林野の解体 (その1)

Abstract

The writer (Oguri) covered, in the previous reports, the dissolution of common forest after the Meiji Restoration, especially after the reorganization of towns and villages. Dissolution, however, did not always start after the Restoration or under the new village system. In the late Shogunate Era, increases of population required development of new fields for food. Those newly developed fields were formerly forests, grasslands or shallow waters. And reclaimed forests and grasslands belonged, in many cases, to common forests. But reclamation of common forests brought on grass fertilizer shortages. Therefore, resistance to reclamation often occured among people of villages concerned. Popularization of fish and mixed fertilizer in the late Shogunate Era could have relieved fertilizer shortages. But farmers who use them must purchase them in cash. They were generally poor and fish or mixed fertilizer were often expensive for them. Therefore, reclamation of common forests was pushed under the balance between food demand and farmers' economic power.Yugi and Tadao, located in the Tama Hills in the western suburbs of Tokyo, consist of 17 buraku which were old villages in the Shogunate Era. Large parts of forest area in the late Shogunate were under private ownership while common forests were distributed in a small scale. Farmers used rice-bran and ash for fertilizer besides grass from common forests.When the common forest which belonged to 3 buraku was partly reclaimed in 1779, two of them did not join in the reclamation in order to keep their fertilizer source, one buraku alone which held another common forest in Sagamino terrace reclaimed forest area adjoing the buraku. At that time the rejection of reclamation was expressed in the opinion of all farmers of the two villages. Although reclamation owing to population pressure had to be pushed, the significance of common forest as a fertilizer source did not change. In the late Shogunate Era, however, the significance was rather different. When some other buraku reclamed their communal forest within their buraku area in 1856, some farmers did not agree with it. Their excuse for rejection did not originate from lossing a fertilizer source, but from much expense and overload to them to carry on; they were afraid of labour shortage for old fields, then, in general, they were poor.As above mentioned, farmers used rice-bran and ash as fertilizer, but when those fertilizer were not sufficient, they had to depend upon fish fertilizer, although they wanted the larger food supply which could be obtained from developed fields. In short, the key of reclamation was dependent upon economic power of farmers, not solely upon demand and supply of grass for fertilizer.Hilly lands like Tama Hills were almost completely reclaimed before the Restoration and only narrow stripes of common forest remain on the top of hills.