¹ Maine, Henry S., The Early History of Institutions (New York, 1875), pp. 72–73.Google Scholar

² Tokuzo, Omachi, “Kazoku” (Family), in Nihon Minzokugaku Taikei (Outline of Japanese Ethnology), III (Tokyo, 1958), p. 203.Google Scholar

³ Kizaemon, Ariga, “The Family in Japan”, Marriage and Family Living, XVI, no. 4 (1954), p. 362.Google Scholar

⁴ For representative comments by Japanese writers on this point, see Tetsundo, Tsukamoto in Nihon no Shakai (Japanese Society), Tadashi, Fukutake, ed. (Tokyo, 1957), p. 77Google Scholar and Yuzuru, Okada in Shakai Jinruigaku no Kihon Mondai (Basic Problems of Japanese Social Anthropology) (Tokyo, 1959), p. 68.Google Scholar

⁵ Befu, Harumi, “Corporate Emphasis and Patterns of Descent in the Japanese Family”, in Japanese Culture: Its Development and Characteristics, Smith, R.J. and Beardsley, R.K., eds. (Chicago, 1962), p. 38.Google Scholar

⁶ Masao, Gamo, “Shinzoku” (Kindred), in Nihon Minzokugaku Taikei, III, p. 233.Google Scholar

⁷ Okada, op. cit., p. 55.

⁸ Loc. cit.

⁹ I am indebted to Shuichi Nagata of the University of Illinois for bringing the distinction between the structural principle and organizational content of dozoku to my attention. I am also obligated to John W. Bennett of Washington University, St. Louis, for pointing to the conservative tendencies in Japan with respect to familial patterns of relationship; that analogy to familial kinship is widely used in other than family and traditional kinship contexts; and that this in consequence “tends to freeze the model around familial relations” (personal communication; see also Bennett, John W. and Despres, Leo A., “Kinship and Instrumental Activities”, American Anthropologist, 62, no., 2 (1960), especially p. 257)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Nagai, Michio, Dozoku: a Preliminary Study of the Japanese “Extended Family” Group and Its Social and Economic Functions (Based on the Researches of K. Ariga) (Columbus, Ohio, The Ohio State University Research Foundation, Japanese Social Relations, 1953), p. 6.Google Scholar

¹¹ Nakano Taku, quoted in Gamo, op. cit., p. 243.

¹² Goody, Jack, “Fission of Domestic Groups among the LoDagaba”, in The Development Cycle in Domestic Groups (New York, 1958), p. 60.Google Scholar

¹³ In his analysis of LoDagaba domestic group fission, Goody suggests that total division, or “fission”, is more difficult than partial division, or “cleavage”. “For if they are defined upon the basis of one activity, then, when the group subdivides in relation to that activity there can be no more inclusive group based upon the same criterion of eligibility. If on the other hand eligibility is based upon a general principle of association such as unilineal descent or contiguity then internal subdivision may occur at one level of the merging series and identification at the next. Instead a genealogically defined group such as a lineage subdivides by cleavage every time a birth occurs. The result is a state of segmentation, a merging series. Maximal lineages constantly subdivide throughout their entire generation depth but this genealogical subdivision only becomes significant in the context of particular activities which must be performed by a group upon one generation depth, or, as Fortes calls it, order of segmentation rather than another… But in terms of the genealogical system itself, the constituent groups will still combine at the higher orders of segmentation. Cleavage of the lineage occurs only at the minimal order, and fission only at the maximal.” Loc. cit.

¹⁴ Kitano Seiichi, quoted in Gamo, op. cit., p. 242. See also, Nagata Shuichi, “Dozoku Soshiki wo Meguru Ni-san no Gimon” (Some Questions Regarding Dozoku Organization in Japan), Shakai Jinruigaku (Social Anthropologist), 2, no. 1 (1959), p. 73.

¹⁵ Kitano in Gamo, loc. cit.

¹⁶ That pattern transfer from rule of filiation to rule of segmentation, from descent within the family to descent of lineages, is an accepted psychocultural process in social anthropology has been clearly stated by Meyer Fortes. He writes: “…lineage segmentation follows a model laid down in the parental family. It is indeed generally thought of as perpetuation, through the rule of the jural unity of the descent line of the sibling group, of the social relations that constitute the parental family.” Fortes, , “The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups”, American Anthropologist, 55, no. 1 (1955), p. 32.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Op. cit., p. 2.

¹⁸ Smith, Thomas C., The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, California, 1959), pp. 6–8, passim.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Kanji, Naito and Toshimi, Takeuchi, “Shinzoku” (Kindred), in Nihon Shakai Minzoku Jiten (Encyclopedia of Japanese Social Anthropology), II (Tokyo, 1954), p. 733.Google Scholar

²⁰ Quoted in Gamo, op. cit., p. 243.

²¹ Kizaemon, Ariga, “Dozoku”, in Nihon Shakai Minzoku Jiten, III (Tokyo, 1957), p. 1003;Google Scholar see also, Nagai, op. cit., pp. 17–19 and Kizaemon, Ariga, Kazoku Seido to Kosaku Seido (The Japanese Family System and the Tenancy System) (Tokyo, 1943), pp. 51–96.Google Scholar

²² For this important distinction between kin and status terminology I acknowledge my debt to Elman Service's article, “Kinship Terminology and Evolution”, American Anthropologist, 62, no. 5 (1960), pp. 747–763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Of course, its author bears no responsibility for this application.

²³ Kizaemon, Ariga, “Dozoku”, in Nihon Shakai Minzoku Jiten, III, p. 1002.Google Scholar

²⁴ Op. cit., p. 9.

²⁵ Quoted in Gamo, op. cit., p. 242.

²⁶ In an article which came to my attention after writing the first draft of this paper, Takeuchi Toshimi, “Dozoku to Sona Henka: Noson no Baai” (The Dozoku Group and Change: Rural Village Examples), Shakaigaku Hyoron (= The Japanese Sociological Review), 12, no. 2 (1962), postulates a developmental-type scheme of change in village dozoku which closely parallels my own. His central point is that between late medieval times and about the middle of the Tokugawa period there was a gradual changeover from descent, both consanguineal and fictive, to what he refers to as “contract” (keiyaku) between resident landowners and, usually, land-short newcomers as the basis of dozoku organization. He attributes this change to the generally parochializing effect on land tenure of the central bakufu's tax decrees. The result was to encourage the practice of marrying off surplus blood relatives outside the community and to proliferate the number of nonkin (i.e., “contractual”) bunke dependents within the immediate community as economic satellites of the honke.

²⁷ Tadashi, Fukutake, Nihon Noson Shakai no Kozo Bunseki (Structural Analysis of Japanese Village Society) (Tokyo, 1954), pp. 62–63.Google Scholar

²⁸ Okada, op. cit., p. 55.

²⁹ Sonraku Kenkyu no Seika to Kadai (Village Studies: Results and Problems) (Tokyo, 1954);Google ScholarSonraku Kyodotai-ron no Tenkai (The Development of the Theory of the Community-Group) (Tokyo, 1959);Google Scholar and Seiji Taisei to Sonraku (Political Systems and the Village) (Tokyo, 1960).Google Scholar All of these symposia appeared under the editorship of the Sonraku Shakai Kenkyukai (The Japanese Rural Society Study Association).

³⁰ Kichiji, Nakamura, Sonraku Kozo no Shiteki Bunseki (Historical Analysis of Village Structure) (Tokyo, 1956), p. 4.Google Scholar

³¹ Susuma, Isoda, ed., Sonraku Kozo no Kenkyu (Studies in Village Structure) (Tokyo, 1956), p. 171.Google Scholar

³² Johnson, Erwin H., The Stem Family and Its Extensions in Modern Japan (paper prepared for the annual meetings, American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 11 19, 1960), p. 13.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., p. 10.

³⁴ Op. cit., especially pp. 253–258.

³⁵ I have omitted a third criterion, “scope of rights and duties”, to simplify the presentation since it is less immediately relevant to my problem.

³⁶ Op. cit. pp. 123–124.

³⁷ That is, maki may be transformed into some variant of the jirui range but Gamo doubts that maki could ever evolve directly into itto without some intervening stage in which ie remain the units but their relations are less cohesive.

³⁸ Op. cit., p. 258.

³⁹ See Hori, Ichiro, “Japanese Folk-Beliefs”, American Anthropologist, 61, no. 3 (1959), p. 406;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Nakamura, op. cit., pp. 4–5; Okada, op. cit., p. 57.

⁴⁰ Nakamura, loc. cit.

⁴¹ Shirakawa in the old lumbering province of Hida is popularly regarded as having been founded as a redoubt by refugee Heike warriors after their defeat by the rival Minamoto house in the twelfth century. As a specimen of great family, Shirakawa households seem to have retained the form out of economic necessity, because the nature of the setting precluded any hope that a bunke could acquire enough land of its own to gain independence. Omachi (op. cit.) differentiates the Shirakawa type of great family, in which only the heir formally marries and has legitimate offspring but junior sons and daughters remain members of the household of their parents, from the type in which only sons remain in the parental establishment but bring in their spouses and their children are equally as legitimate as those of the heir (viz. the Hashikami case below).

⁴² See Kodama Kota, “Kinsei Hoson no Dai-kazoku Seido” (The Great Family System in the Tokugawa Period), Shiso (Thought), 302 (August, 1949), pp. 56–66; Omachi, op. cit.; and Kunio, Yanagida, “Dai-kazoku” (Great Family), in Minzokugaku Jiten (Dictionary of Japanese Ethnology) (Tokyo, 1951), pp. 336–338.Google Scholar

⁴³ Omachi, op. cit. p. 214.

⁴⁴ Op. cit., p. 337.

⁴⁵ Omachi, op. cit., pp. 216–217.

⁴⁶ Although there must of course have been considerable variance in the rates of new community formation from area to area, especially as ecological variables governed quite closely the spread of agricultural populations, it must have been a common occurrence that under the local fief organization of the Tokugawa Period, as it was in Bizen, “the growth of new communities was provided for by the recognition of branch villages (eda-mura) and if need be by the establishment of new mura” (Beardsley, op. cit., p. 49).

⁴⁷ Particularly Kiichiro, Ando, “Dozoku Ketsugo to no Bunkai to Yashikigami Sairei” (On the Extinction of Dozoku Union and the Yashikigami Rite), Shakaigaku Hyoron, 10 (1960), pp. 57–76;Google ScholarNozomu, Kawamura, “Sonraku Kozo no Kenkyu ni okeru ‘Keifu’ no Mondai” (The Problem of ‘Lineage’ in Studies of Village Structure), Shakaigaku Hyoron, 8, no. 3 (1958), pp. 109–122;Google ScholarTetsuro, Ninomiya, “Dozoku Seiritsu Hatten oyobi Hakai Katei - Hokensei to Dozokusei” (The Processes of Origin, Development and Decay of Dozoku - Feudalism and the Dozoku System), Shakaigaku Hyoron, 8, no. 4 (1958), pp. 37–58;Google Scholar and Tacheuki, op. cit.

⁴⁸ Ando, op. cit., p. 60.

⁴⁹ Op. cit., pp. 14–15.

⁵⁰ Quoted in Ariga, Kazoku Seido to Kosaku Seido, pp. 147–148.

⁵¹ Op. cit., pp. 110–111.

⁵² Op. cit., passim.

⁵³ The records of the early seventeenth century make reference to a community through its “name-holder” (na-uke-nin). Documents also speak of the nuclear ie of a community as its “kado master” (kado-yakuniri) or as its “head hearth” (yaku-kamado). See Ninomiya, op. cit., pp. 45; 48.

⁵⁴ Nagai, op. cit., pp. 14–15.

⁵⁵ Op. cit., p. 110.

⁵⁶ Op. cit., pp. 13–15.

⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 13.

⁵⁸ Ninomiya, op. cit., pp. 40–43.

⁵⁹ Commenting on data relevant to this point in seventeenth century land registers representing all major regions, Smith tells us that: “…astonishingly, they reveal that in most villages between 40 and 80 percent of all arable holders were without homesteads! Even when holders actually resident in other villages can be identified and deducted, the percentage remains astonishingly high - often over 50 percent. Holders who actually resided in a village without holding homesteads in it must have lived in dwellings belonging to other holders; there is no other possibility.” For instance, he notes that only six of thirty-three holders actually living in a Bizen village in 1609 owned their own homesteads (Smith, op. cit., p. 111).

⁶⁰ Op. cit., p. 111.

⁶¹ Ibid., pp. 1–2.

⁶² Ibid., p. 54.

⁶³ Respecting the social posture of hombyakusho, Kawamura notes significantly that those who were directly taxed appeared from the outside, as we see them in the official records, to be equals, whereas in actuality inside the community considerable differences of wealth existed among members of the same stratum. Thus tax records in fact oversimplify the internal structure and exaggerate the effect of ie to cluster as two discrete polar classes. Op. cit., p. 111.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 112.

⁶⁵ Op. cit., p. 53.

⁶⁶ Smith suggests these apportionments were far from altruistic; in fact they were made to relieve “[the honke] of the support of one of its elements at as little sacrifice of land as possible” (Op. cit., p. 39).

⁶⁷ Ibid., p. 45.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 42.

⁶⁹ Op. cit., p. 49.

⁷⁰ Loc. cit.

⁷¹ Ibid., chap. 9.

⁷² Nagai, op. cit., p. 19.

⁷³ Quoted in Ibid., p. 137.

⁷⁴ Loc. cit.

⁷⁵ Op. cit.

⁷⁶ Tetsundo, Tsukamoto and Jiro, Matsubara, “Honke no Dozoku Tosei to Sonraku Kozo: Futatsu no Mura no Chosa Jirei ni Motozuku” (Honke Power in the Dozoku and Rural Village Structure: an Analysis of Two Village Case Studies), Shakaigaku Hyoron, 5, nos. 2 and 3 (1955), pp. 47–72; 23–44.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Op. cit., p. 406.

⁷⁸ Op. cit., p. 20.

⁷⁹ The research, carried out in 1957–1959 in Yokoi Village at the northwestern edge of Okayama City, was made possible by a Fulbright research award supplemented with a grant from the American Philosophical Society.

⁸⁰ Takeuchi also remarks that in this same Chugoku District very often the only occasions on which families acknowledge their once close kabu lineage ties are the few surviving ceremonial events which the force of custom causes them to hold jointly. The genealogical connections among them, however, have been completely forgotten (Ibid., p. 20).

⁸¹ Beardsley, op. cit. pp. 264–265.

⁸² Gamo, op. cit., pp. 246–247.

⁸³ For illustration, see ibid., especially pp. 234–237, maps 1–7.