集落景観構成要素としての茅葺き屋根の保全に関する研究

Abstract

The drastic decrease of thatched roofs means fundamental changes in the traditional rural landscape and serious reduction of its visual amenities. This paper intends to provide the necessary information for protecting and maintaining thatched roofs. The combined field and questionaire survey was carried out in Miyama cho (Kyoto pref.) in 1986, where we can still find many thatched roofs. Ten settlements (463 households) were chosen from 57 settlements (about 1800 households) as samplings.Though thatched roofs accounted for 74 percent of the total samplings in the 1945's, the figure has declined by 24 percent in 1986, that is, many of them have changed into galvanized iron or tiled roofs. This is partly because of the difficulty of maintaining the traditional custom to prepare and store a prodigious amount of eularia (Miscanthus sinensis) for rethatching.On the other hand, however, many people living under thatched roof say that they are reluctant to change the present roof form in the future in spite of high maintenance cost on the ground of many merits which thatched roof offers in the living. Skillful thatchers are also reducing. Now in this district there are only four thatchers and besides they have no successor.Consequently, what are now most necessary for conservation of thatched roofs as a vital feature of the traditional village landscape are as follows:1) Transmission of thaching techniqes.2) Supply of material and manpower, in receiving a new overcoat of thatch.3) Financial assistance for materializing these policies.4) Management of eularia grassland.