On the Adjudication of Dissapperance in the Aki Clan-government

Abstract

In the Edo period, clan-governments forbade their residents to remove at will. The residents were obliged to carry a passport with them when they went for work to another feudal domain, or on a peddling tour, or just on a tour, even within their own place. To quit their place of residence without, permission was, therefore, a punishable offence with a penalty of adjudication of disappearance, and consequently lapse of the vested rights. The residents were then forbidden to return to their former place of residence, and having no legitimate passport, they were unable to live straight.Since full studies have been made by many scholars on the general subject of the legislation of this period, the purpose here is to consider particular cases of disappearance with respect to the legislation on the basis of the historical materials extant in Hiro, a village in the former Aki feudal domain.In the Aki district as well as in others, families, when they had a missing person among themselves, had a duty to search for him for 180 days. In case they were unable to find him out within the given period, they were obliged to request the authorities to give the adjudication of disappearance for the missing person. The authorities, however, did not always grant it upon request, especially in the case of his being a person under age. The purpose of this legislation was the banishment of the depraved out of the village. But, since every village banished the depraved out of it, the bad influence of this measure was necessarily reciprocal : the remarkable increase of robbery cases being one of the examples.So far as the once banished depraved repented of their past misdeeds and proved to be law-abiding people, the authorities concernd were lenient in repeoling upon their request the already issued adjudication of disappearance. For the same purpose, the authorities took advantage of every opportunity to proclaim the so-called amnesty. But those who had once been adjudicated to be a missing peason were not easily allowed to return to their home villages until after fifteen to twenty years since they had been so adjudicated.