Geographical Approach to the ‘Gôri-sei’ or System of Local Administrative Division in the Nara Era, Ancient Japan

Abstract

‘Gôri -Sei’ is a system of local administrative division, enforced from 715 to 739-40 in the Nara era, and it consisted of two administrative divisions: ‘Gô’ and ‘Ri’. Up to the present only historians had pursued after this system on their historical methods. So in this paper I tried to scrutinize it on a geographical method in making reference to following primary historical materials: ‘Daizei-Sinkyû-Rekimei-Ch ‘in Izumo Province’, ‘Daizei-Oi-Shibonin-Chô in Bicchû Province’ (both in A.D. 739), ‘Izumo-no-Kuni-Fudoki’ (in A.D. 733), etc. Scrutiny is carried out in the below mentioned process: 1. Presumption of the Gô-areas in consulting documents, present names of places, etc. 2. Presumption of the unities of Lebensräume at that time in each Gô-areas in availing of materials such as documents, present names of places, topography, river systems, irrigation spheres of each river, remains in the Kofun era, sites of the ‘Shiki-Nai-Sha’, etc. 3. Comparison between the unities of Lebensraume and Ris in each Gô-areas. Treating more than twenty cases on such method, I can clear up the four points. 1. In nearly all Gô-areas, several unities of Lebensräume are classified into two or three grades for their scales. 2. Unities of Lebensraume with nearly same scale to Gô-areas are recognized in a certain cases (Type A). On the other hand, there are not a few cases, where each unity of Lebensraum corresponds to the approximately same scale of a Ri (Type B). 3. In the case of Type B, especially when the name of place similar to the name of Ri is found in the unity of Lebensraum with approximately same scale to that Ri, (Type B′), there is a fair possibility that the Ri was organized basing on the unity of Lebensraum. Yet even in such cases of Type B and Type B′, I can hardly suppose that the Ri was always organized basing on the unity of Lebensraum. © 1972, The Human Geographical Society of Japan. All rights reserved.