| Research Abstract |
This year was the final one for the present research project, and the report was made. Naoiri-gun and Ohno-gun, which are the main areas investigated, were reorganised and incorporated into, respectively, Taketa City and Bungo-Ohno City on the 31st of March, and the names of the two 'guns' mentioned above have disappeared. Consequently, this research assumed additional significance : to unearth and record ancient materials, maps and place names of the cities, towns, and villages in the areas before incorporation.
In the study, I classified the characteristics of these areas into three types : (1) the plateau projected from the edge of the caldera in Aso, (2) the area marked by a ridge projected from Kuju Mountain Range and a 'sako' (small valley) on its side which was formed by the water coming from under the ground of the ridge, (3) the Ogata Basin formed by the Ogata River that runs out from Sobo Mountain System. And we set as the fields (1) Hagi Plateau, (2) Miyake in Taketa and Asaj
… More
i-machi and (3) Ogata-machi, and tried to evoke a real image of the medieval manors by the method of environmental history. As a result, I was able to obtain the following outcomes :
1. I investigated how the structure of 'myo', which is at once a unit of collection and a unit of management, should be placed in landscape theory. There are two types of 'myo' in the areas : one is a place name type and the other a kana type, and an overwhelming majority is of the former type. The latter type is confined within the Ogata Basin in Ogata manor area, and the cultivated land exists in the extensive irrigation. In comparison with it, the former type is also a unit which forms a paddy field, and its fields and farms link 'myo' together, and have a tendency to regard the 'myo' area as sharing the same plateau and the same ridge. This is seemingly derived from something irrelevant to the surface water system. It can be said to be based on the unseen parallel system of ground water under the ridge.
2. 'Magaibutsu' (in Miyasako and Zenkouji, etc), shrines and temples from the end of the Heian Era found in this area are built at the boundary between villages and mountains. Especially those who built 'Magaibutsu' and shrines were conscious of water running through the ridge and the river water, and treated them as symbols of the blessings of water and development, while 'Rokujizo-to', which can be found more in Naoiri- and Ohno-guns, tends to be built at the boundary point of the area of 'myo' whose domain was determined in the latter part of the Middle Ages.
In addition to this, for a comparative study, I dealt with some manors with maps in Tohoku, Kanto, along the Kino River, San' in and Chubu. Less
|
