Pattern of Removing Settlement and Social Structure of Abandoned Villages by Dam Building

Abstract

There were many abandoned villages in mountainous region, which had been caused by building large dams in the upper reaches of many rivers, after World War II, in Japan. In these villages, many people had to remove to other regions. The author found two types of removing. One was the type of collective removing to the same place, the other was the dispersed removing. Why had these two types occured?The object of this paper is to clarify the relation of the pattern of those removed settlements by dam building and the type of their social structure formed before their removing. So, the author selects two villages; Sei in Nara prefecture (Fig. 1, 4, No.16) and Hirono-Futatsuya in Fukui prefecture (Fig. 1, 4, No.3). Sei is the case of dispersed removing to various places and Hirono-Futatsuya is the case of the collective removing.The results obtained are as follows;1) The characteristics of social strata in Sei had not been simple. Each member in this village had been combined to two families by blood relation who had been believed to be the pioneer in this village. Therefore, two families had larger fields of cultivation and forest land. So, in the process of the negotiation of the compensation between the member of this village and the electric company which would build dam there, upper class contained two families and the other class had separately corresponded to the company. Thus, upper class had removed to the place near their abandoned village, because they had to manage their large forest land, but the other class had removed to the various places far remote to their abandoned village.2) The characteristics of social strata of Hirono-Futatsuya had been simple. Each member had some private paddy and ordinary fields, and had large common forest land which had been used for burning cultivation and producing for charcoal and fuel materials. And there were also some common paddy fields which had been cultivated by smaller managed farmers. Thus, all member of this village had nearly equal economic base and had lived in close cooperation. So, in the process of negotiation of compensation, they decided that they would removed to the same place collectively.3) Therefore, the author can find that there are close relation between the pattern of removing settlement and the type of the social strata of each village.