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THE FOUNDATION OF AN ADMINISTRATIVE VILLAGE “MURA” IN THE MEIJI ERA: AN EXAMPLE OF NIITA-MURA, TOCHIGI PREFECTURE

1963; Association of Japanese Geographers; Volume: 36; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4157/grj.36.280

2185-1735

Hiroshi Tanabe,

Urban and spatial planning

In order to clarify the factors which had effects on the foundation of a political region, the author analysed the incorporation of the former villages “buraku” into an administrative village “mura”, when the new act of the city-town-and-village-system was made to work in 1889, taking a village called Niita-mura as an example, which lies 17 km to the north-east of Utsunomiya city which is about 100 km to the north of Tokyo. The author has investigated and found the general conditions for the enforcement of that system by the central government, the regional factors inherited from the Edo Era (feudal days), and the new factors caused after the Meiji Restoration, all of which together had influence on the incorporation. The most important factor to promote the foundation of the new administrative villages was the advice of the central government which intended to improve the financial situation of local communities. But each “buraku” has its own characteristic way to adapt itself to the strong political advice of the central government. Some of the regional factors of Niita-mura were the process of reclamation, the feudal lords who had ruled and divided Niita-mura into three groups, the common land of some “buraku”, and the irrigation system, because of which the incorporation was most necessary. Niita-mura consists of 14 “buraku” ; Hakonomori and Uwano had been relatively newly established by the people from Ujiie, which was a rural town in this area on the west of Niita, and belonged to Utsunomiya-han (feudal territory); Kajigasawa, Fubasami and a branch village from Fubasami belonged to Kitsuregawa-han; the other 9 villages had beloned to Utsunomiya-han in the early period, and were governed by Sakura-han from 1750 to 75, and then directly ruled by the Shogunate. The northern “buraku” of Niita-mura and Ujiie-machi were concerned with the common land called Uwanohara (Upland). Some policies of the central government after the Meiji Restoration influenced on the circumscription of an administrative village, the “mura”. For the modernization of all governmental and social situation the government refined the local administrative districts in 1873 and the elementary school districts in 1872, both of which were changed several times before 1889. These new districts played a role of destroying partially or modifying the relationship between these “buraku” derived from the Edo Era. The boundary of incorporation almost coincided with the irrigation area of the Ichinohori canal and it was suitable for the rural village. But the irrigation association and other functional organizations have been founded later and the Mura area became nominal. At last it was desolved in 1954.