The Structural Character of the Village in the Ryukyu Islands

Abstract

This study was intended to clarify the character of the village in the Ryukyu Islands, covering the area from Amami Oshima in the North to the Yaeyama Islands in the South, through the analysis of the distributive pattern of the houses on the one hand and of group structures on the other within the village of this area.Findings are as follows:1) Many of the villages in the Ryukyus have maintained their existence without much disturbance ever since their initial settlement. By studying these villages, therefore, it seems possible to understand the physical and internal structures of the ancient village.2) Viewing the distributive pattern of the houses with reference to the physical structure of the village, it is especially noticeable that families of an old stock are located towards the back of the village, holding their branch-families forward and looking as if the group of old families are keeping an affectionate eye on their respective group of branch-families.3) The family established by the initial settlers, having the shrine of the deified ancestors within the house compound, is situated at the uppermost location.4) Within a village the people maintain an evaluative conception of house locations as superior or inferior. Kyuka or families of an old stock, especially the family of the initial settlers, have to enjoy superior locations, while the group of Bunke or branch-families are to be found in inferior locations.5) Each village has its Utaki, the most sacred sanctuary. This seems to be a cemetery of the village ancestors in ancient times which came to be sanctified. Those who worship an Utaki are viewed as the offspring of the same Utaki regardless of kindship. The village community (or Dorfgemeinde) came to be formed through such an idea. I suspect that these groups and their villages might have been the Maki of the ancient Japanese people.6) The administration of a village, therefore, was carried out through the worship of the ancestral god with the family, entrusted with the highest responsibility of taking care of the Utaki and serving the ancestral god, i.e. the family of the initial settlers, as the center of the whole village affairs.7) There exist many villages having Maki names. This might prove that villages in the Ryukyus had had the Maki structure up to the modern age.8) Although some of the villages today have grown to the present structure from a-single-Maki village, many of them seem to have been formed on the basis of the compound-Maki village.9) While within some of the villages developed from a compound-Maki village each Maki has its respective residential quarter, it is common that there is no such distinction.10) As to the distributive pattern of houses in the moved villages in the postwar Okinawa there is no regularity whatsoever, whether it is Kyuka or Bunke.11) This may be taken as an indication of sudden modernization of the Okinawan village today. In fact, Okinawan village communities have neglected or completely lost various village functions as well as ceremonies and festivals since the beginning of the 20th Century.