| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000)
Fiscal Year 1995: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000)
Fiscal Year 1994: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 1993: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
|
|---|
| Research Abstract |
I have done this research to analyze the regional features of the central Chugoku Mountains through investigating the actual states and distribution of folk cultures.
The research subject is an incorporating area of Shimane, Tottori, Okayama, and Hiroshima Prefecture. Even though each parts in Izumo, Houki, Bitchu, and Bingo has its own separate cultural traditions since the ancient times, we can verify the strong similarity of folk cultures over this area on the whole. We can mention lots of inter-marriages over the boundaries of prefectures. And most of villages in this area have a couple of families derived from other regions.
We can point out the Koujin worship as the most remarkable religious custom. It shows the local variation, although it spreads out all around the Chugoku Mountains. Many Koujins are worshiped as deities of the section of village communities in Hiroshima and Okayama areas, while they are deities guarding cattle in Okayama, Tottori, and Shimane.
Green manure was indispensable to manage paddy fields in the Chugoku Mountains and forests owned in common were available to provide paddy fields and cattle with grass. It is also a characteristic custom over this area to use the grass fields combined with pastures. The ownership types of pastures are divided into forests owned in common by village and privately-owned forests. The latter is the utilizing form which we can trace back to the mountains availed for tatara, that is traditional iron manufacture.
|
