The Problems about the Movement and the Decline of the Distribution of Mulberry Fields in the Yoshino Central Basin

Abstract

The agriculture in Japan is chiefly the rice growing one.We have thought that the other crops except rice are subordinate and subsidiary, accordingly the commercial agriculture has been nothing but taken into the agricultural management as a part of multiple operation. Above all the sericulture has the typical formation.Then the sericulture was main-stay of the agricultural administration with the cultivation of rice in the first stage of this century, but after that it has declined with the variation of the economical and political circumstances in the internal and external of the state.This article deals with the problem that the mulberry fields have been changed into the paddy fields on the process of variation in the regional structure of sericulture, and investigates the relation that the sericulture and the cultivation of rice are in a body and the former is subordinate to the latter.The contents are as follows:1) In former times the center of the distribution of mulberry fields is in Awa county and the western region of Itano county on the Yoshino northern basin. However, according to the completion of Awa Irrigation System the many mulberry fields have been turned into the paddy fields for these ten years, and the area of mulberry fields is the largest on Mima in the west adjoining county. Nowadays the fields have remained collectively in the area outside the irrigated land such as the piedmont of north side of a main irrigation line, the apices of alluvial fans, old flood plain and Zennyuzi Island. We cannot see the groups of the mulberry fields on the alluvial fan.At present the fields which lie scattered on the irrigation area are the places that cannot be changed into paddy fields topographically and agronomically and by the circumstances of the farmer.2) Since the end of 19c. we have seen the change, the fields of indigo→mulberry fields→paddy fields, on the principal utilization of arable lands in the Yoshino central basin and the vicissitued has corresponded to the development of irrigation means.Formerly the regions which were confirmed droughty lands had been irrigated by mountain streams, irrigation ponds, wells, springs and pump well and paddy fields were fewer than the upland fields, but after the completion of Awa Irrigation System in 1955 the fields have increased, consequently the percentage of the paddy fields and the upland fields have reversed. The change from the upland fields to the paddy fields has progressed markedly in the area outside the irrigated land, because of the increase of underground water and irrigation water by the decrease of the farmers who utilize the old irrigation systems. Then the conversion of mulberry fields is being promoted by the injury owing to the use of agricultural chemicals in paddy fields.3) Since the inauguration of Awa Irrigation System we have attended to the increase of the rate of the mulberry fields in the alluvial lowland (including the Zennyuzi Island) contrary to the decrease of the fields on the alluvial fans.Particularly in the Zennyuzi Island the fields planted newly are increasing owing to the purchase of the right of cultivation (the island is state-owned). Nowadays on the island there is the greatest group of the mulberry fields in the Yoshino basin. With the increase of the fields in the alluvial lowland the shifts of the management in sericulture, e.g. the magnification of the scale of the mulberry fields per a farmer, the development of the saving of trouble, the increase of the quantity of the breeding in summer and the addition of the dimension in a kind of Ichinose, are in progress.4) On the analysis as to the labor of productive construction of the paddy and sericulture, the trouble is the most overweight on the sericulture, in spring and summer, and it is avoided by the apportionment of the both labor forces.