The Political Structure of a Japanese Village

Abstract

The basic unit for economic and social activities in rural Japan is the buraku, a cluster of houses, surrounding rice fields, and, very often, a small acreage of forest land. Although the buraku has had no legal status, since the war, it remains as the focus of loyalty and in-group feeling beyond the level of the household. It is within the buraku that the Japanese farmers cooperate with each other to meet and to solve their immediate problem.2 The lowest level of formal government in the farming countryside is the mura or son (village).3 It is at this point of contact that the Japanese farmer as a buraku inhabitant meets government in the actual administration of law. The Japanese farmer regards village administration in two ways. On the one hand, it provides him with formal machinery for the solution of the immediate and personal problems he faces in his community. To this extent, the in-group feeling extends to the village in which his buraku is located; it rarely extends beyond to the gun, ken, or national level. The political horizon of the typical farmer ends at his village's borders. On the other hand, the village administration represents the burden of ken and national government. Here, the farmer is faced with the consequence of problems that are not immediately his, problems which he does not understand, and at times does not even desire to understand, and