| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
Fiscal Year 1989: ¥300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 1988: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 1987: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Purpose: This study is to restore the network of ancient postal roads in Japan, for a fundamental method to understand regional structure of Japan under the establishment of Ritsu-ryo ( the ancient law ).
Method: 1. That is to find lineaments or long liner strips of arable land in straight line on air photographs, supposed tracks of ancient roads. Sometimes we can recognize aoil-sites of side ditches of them. 2. That is to find long liner strips of arable lands by straight ministrative boundary in cadaster maps. 3. We can sometimes measure width of lost roads on large scale maps of 1:2,500 or 1:5,000 for example, as surplus length of sections in square grid pattern of Jori-field.
Conclusion: I recognized sites of ancient roads about all round of the country, even on the northern frontier at that times, in Iwate Prefecture for example. Some of them were excavated and recognized as certain remains of ancient straight roads graveled or non-graveled. Generally, as a result of these excavatio
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ns, roads of trank lines built in 8th century were by 12 meters in breadth between both side ditches, branch lines were 6 meters, and trank lines in 9th century were 6 meters too. And so, there were considerable changes of roads between 8th and 9th century.
Consequently, postal stations in the Code Engishiki enacted in 10th century that has been the most fundamental material to restore the network of ancient postal roads in Japan, are not so fundamental but just one at that times. So we must remark excavated lettered materials such as mokkan ( documents lettered on wooden plates ), urushi-gami ( lacquered papers ) and bokusyo-doki ( lettered earthenware ). And we know some excavated lettered materials in which wrote names of unknown postal stations. Now we know that there were some resemblances between Roman roads and Japanese ancient postal roads in shapes of road lines, so that, we must recognize ancient Japan not as a singular organization but an universal one historically. Our studies on road systems in ancient Japan will be a standard to study of ancient roads in Asian countries, especially in China from where Japanese ancient road systems were introduced. Less
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