A re-examination of studies of the mountain area in pre-modern Japan, with special reference to cultural, political and economic viewpoints

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the history of the mountain area in Japan with special reference to differing viewpoints expressed by historians and other scholars such as folklorists, geographers or ethnologists. This difference of viewpoint between historians and other disciplines is notable. The former has mainly concentrated on economic development and the formation of political systems, while the latter have been concerned with systems and the processes of cultural decline. These two approaches are in contrast with each other, but have the potential to complement each other. Consequently, the author surveyed researches on cultural, political and economic points of view to explore more comprehensive schema. First, some folklorists emphasize that medieval wariors retreated into the mountain area after defeat. Some historians have studied the governmental forestry system in ancient times, and reclamations expanding toward mountain areas in medieval times. Results of these researches suggest that we must pay more careful attention to the dynamic process of the immigration from low lands to the mountain area and to their relation with the political and economic context. Secondly, recent historical and historico-geographical studies have recognized the importance of dry field and shifting cultivation in the alluvial plain from ancient to medieval times. We can, consequently, presume that the subsistence economies without paddy had developed both in the mountain area and in the plain, but that in early modern times the cultural characteristics in the mountain area presented a clear contrast with the culture concentrating on rice cultivation in the plain. These points lead us to the question how did non-paddy cultures survive at a time when the strong tendency was to concentrate on rice cultivation in Japan? In other words, what was the relationship between the Japanese political and economic system and the people in the mountain area prior to early modern times? This paper also re-examines the works focusing on the peasant revolts in mountain areas in early seventeenth century. Some folklorists and cultural geographers have suggested that these uprisings happened in the process of mountain people being ruled by the unifying political powers based on paddy cultivation in the plains. However, these revolts were not the first contact between them. Other folklorists pointed out that the mountain people were already ruled by a centralized government in ancient times. Some historians have argued about the medieval territory as a manor or a legal unit in western Japan, and pointed out that the medieval political power had a reason to keep estates in the mountain area to supplement rice production with various products of dry field cultivation, shifting cultivation, hunting and gathering. This way of control contrasts with the early modern political system which demanded timber and charcoal from mountain villages.