The Formation of Forest-land Ownership in the Upper Basin of River Totsukawa in Nara Prefecture

Abstract

In Japan, the formal possesion of forest-lands were admitted in the early term of Meiji era. These were formed through the policy of land taxation reform. Thus, national, private and common forest-lands, which were distributed with regional differences, were admitted.In Nara Prefecuture, most of forest-lands were admitted as the possesion of private and common people villagers. This was due to the development of forestry in Yoshino mountaneous region in the latter term of previous era, Edo era, in which most of forest-lands had been privately utilized for siviculture and shifting cultivation by farmers.The object of this paper is to clarify the process and factors of the formation of private and common forest-lands in this advanced region in forest-land use.So, small territory belong to Shinohara village which was located in Yoshino mountaneous region, shown in dots in Fig.1, was chosen for this study.The results obtained are as follows;1. The origin of this village was settled by the group of Kijiya who had special technique to make wooden bowl and ladle and was wandering to seek its material. So, the forest-lands in this territory were important for themselves.2. In the early term of Edo era, forest-lands were mainly utilized for the shifting cultivation, which was located outside the settlement shown in Fig.3. It is shown by the land register made in 1769, in which a little differences among the scale of possesion by landowners are admitted shown in Fig.2.3. In the latter term of Edo era, inhabitant had increased and small landowners had been added, according to the land register made in 1843, shown in Fig.6. But, on the contrary, large landowners who had mainly concentrated the fields of shifting cultivation had appeared like No.1 shown in Fig.6. The fields owned by large landowners had been tenanted by small landowners to use shifting cultivation. Why had they concentrated the shifting cultivation which had managed extensively?4. In next Meiji era, modern some land registers had been made newly. According to these land registers, it is understand that the most of the fields of shifting cultvation in Edo era had been changed into the artificial forest-lands based on the increase of timber market price. Thus, large landowners had concentrated these forest-lands from the latter term of Edo era.5. So, through the land taxation reform carried by Meiji government, these forest-lands utilized for silviculture or shifting cultivation had been admitted as private or common holdings. At that time, the other unutilized forest-lands which located far away from these forest-lands had mainly divided into adequate possesion among larger landowners, as private or common holdings, from 1879 to 1885. This was as well perhaps due to the reason why many small landowners could not pay the taxation which was added newly by the increase of the possesion of forest-lands.6. Thus, some larger and many smaller forest landowners had been resulted in this village in the early term of Meiji era.