Settlement Form and Rural Community

Abstract

In shognate of Japan there existed rural communities in which farmers were connected strongly. It has been generally considered that each community consisted of a nucleated settlement (which is regarded as the dominant settlement type in Japan), and that at the same time each community made up a hanseison or a rural administrative commune in shognate.But in this article, the author revised such a general image of rural community through the extensive survey. He threw light upon following facts:(1) Dispersed settlements, hamlets and lockere Haufendorfer are distributed in some extend in Japan. (Fig. 2)(2) The scale of hanseison considerably varied regionally. (Tab. 1)(3) In the area where dispersed settlements, hamlets and lockere Haufendorfer dominate, the scale of hanseison was too large or too small comparing with the average scale in all Japan.And then the author practiced an intensive field survey in Sanuki province (now Kagawa prefecture) which was choiced as a sample area. He came to the following conclusion through this survey:(1) In the dispersed settlement area, the cultivated fields of each farmer were concentrated around the each farmstead, and therefore farmers cultivated their fields more independently from other's than the farmers in the nucleated settlement area. Furthermore co-operations of farmers were done in the different units according to the purpose of co-operations, for example, irrigation, land tax paying, village festival and so on. Consequently the rural community did not distinctly exist there.(2) In the nucleated settlement area, the cultivated fields of every farmer were mixed each other, and strong co-operations of farmers were compeled especially through the irrigation and consequently through the cultivation. Accordingly the rural community was typically existant there at the each nucleated settlement as a unit.(3) In the hamlets or lockere Haufendorfer dominating area, the condition of rural community was the inter-mediate one between the community in the dispersed and that in the nucleated settlement area.