Historical Geography on the Land Reclaimed under Contract by Merchants

Abstract

Covering the lowest part where there used to be Shinkaiike Pond, of Kawachi Province (a part of Osaka Prefecture), the so-called Konoikereclaimed land, as spacious as 180-chobu or 450 acres, was put into shape in 1707 (the 4th year of Hoyei) by Konoike, one of the wealthiest merchants in Osaka.According to the old documents and maps in possession of the Konoike Family, the reclaimed land was divided by irrigation canals into 38 blocks, for instance, Naka-1, Naka-2, etc., each block being sub-divided into 3-7 units (A, B, C-D, E, F, G), and each unit being further divided into a number of strips such as No.1, No.2 etc. So a strip of land was identified, for instance, by such code number as “Naka 8-A-3”.At the time when the land was leased for the first time, it was not uncommon that a strip was in such an odd size as 3-ken by 60-ken, or 5.5m by 110m. Frequent changes, however, took place in land allotment.In order to investigate the cause of such frequent changes, the writer analized the nature of the tenants, the land assignment to them and the system governing the latter, and reached a conclusion that the management by the Konoike Family had the aspect of capitalistic enterprise based on the feudal farming community of modern times, that the land allotment corresponded to the social and economic structure of management, and that the frequent alternation of land allotment was conducted chiefly by the tenants themselves for convenience' sake.