近世村落社会の共同性

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate the structure and characteristics of the rural Goningumi Association at the Kamishiojiri Village of Ueda in the late Tokugawa Era. Goningumi was the system of neighborhood association at village and town in the Baku-han Regime. It is said that this association had the functions of mutual aid, joint responsibility and commandment transmission however the feature and structure of it was historically not so obvious. In this article we analyzed and considered this system by using the Shumon-Aratame-Cho Data Base and administrative documents of the Kamishiojiri Village. The village ruling system of the Ueda district was established by the Tadachika Matsudaira( the lord of Ueda Han) at the early decades of eighteenth century. He made many ruling system of his territory and arranged the Goningumi system of the villages including the Kamishiojiri’s one. In this time the Goningumi system of this village consisted of 133 member houses ( population of 655 ), 36 Kumi units and 7 groups. The arrangement principle was the Dozoku ( lineage group of Ie). From the eighteenth century to the end of nineteenth century, Ueda district was famous for the silk worm eggs producing area. The peasant families engaged in the silk worm nourishing and trading business of their eggs. Their household and economy had changed gradually to the market oriented ones. Under such historical conditions the organization of peasants’ family had changed and the Goningumi system had become not to work so well. In 1832 Tadamasu Matsudaira, the new lord of Ueda Han, did the reformation of the ruling system and restructured the Goningumi system of all villages. In the Kamishiojiri the village officers reorganized this system according to the principle of inhabitant. This new Goningumi system consisted of 181 member houses and 33 Kumi units and the leader of Goningumi became the member of Yoriai(village meeting). This meeting became to have the actual policy making function in the village. The organizations of the peasant families like the Dozoku or the Ie-Rengo diverged and diluted in the end of Tokugawa Era. Then the administrative Mura (village) had become the agent of the peasants’ communality.