Cultivation and Field Form on Three Japanese Islands

Abstract

VERYWHERE cultivation permanently affects the land, but even in a small culture area the effects are by no means uniform. The major elements that characterize a field are size, shape, slope, and tillage pattern. Size and shape may reflect a survey system, slope the terrain, and tillage pattern the crops grown. In addition, each plant variety has special needs -as evidenced, for example, by seed packet planting instructions-and these needs can be fulfilled by many means. Ridges, furrows, banks, ditches, hollows, hills, mounds, and flat surfaces created for the plants can be combined in an infinite variety of ways, making each tilled field unique. The cultivation pattern woven into the fabric of the field not only identifies it but summarizes its past, present, and indeed its future agricultural history. Broad differences are recognized throughout the world; a cultivated paddy field of Asia is clearly unlike a European arable field. But differences are often as great in a local region as they are in the wider context. Local differences in advanced Western nations may have become blurred, for experimental stations foster standardized cultivation practices, but regional cropping and livestock patterns are still reflected in the fields.' In more isolated societies a great diversity of fields in even a small area is apparent, and it is possible to classify fields genetically into species, genera, and families. In a semiclosed environment such as an island, distinctive field forms evolve on each part of the terrain, since the environment does have an effect, but common elements underlie the forms, and a genetic relationship can be identified. Although the physical and human environments appear to be identical on neighboring islands, there may be not only variations in form but indeed basic differences. The present study describes the field types that have been observed on three islands in the Inland Sea of Japan-Kitakishima, Mukai-jima, and Kurahashi-jima. The evolution of particular forms on Kitaki-shima (Fig. 1) has been traced, and some explanations for them are offered. However, a full investigation of the development of these field