A Re-examination of Studies of the Mountain Area in Pre-modern Japan, with Special Reference to Cultural, Political, and Economic Viewpoints

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. A good place to start is to inquire into the genetical approach to mountainous area culture by folklorists, ethnologists and cultural geographers. Some have advanced the hypothesis that subsistence economies such as shifting cultivation, hunting and gathering, which still remain in modern mountain villages, date back to the Jomon period, that is to say, before the time when paddy cultivation developed in Japan. Assuming this hypothesis to be true, it can be said that the mountain people are successors of the Jomon culture, which is supposed to be the base of all Japanese culture. This opinion begs the question how and when the non-paddy cultural system has been carried into modern mountain villages. It is necessary to discuss this on two points. Is the modern inhabitant of the mountain area, who is isolated from the alluvial plain, a descendant of Jomon people? Has the non-paddy cultural system survived only in mountain areas since ancient times? First, some folklorists emphasize that medieval warriors retreated into the mountain area afther 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