ON THE DISSOLUTION OF COMMUNAL FORESTS AND SOCALLED JOINT OWNERSHIP

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  • 入会農用林野の解体といわゆる共同体的所有について
  • ニュウカイノウヨウ リンヤ ノ カイタイ ト イワユル キョウドウタイテキ ショユウ ニ ツイテ

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Abstract

Japanese rural communites of the feudal age had owned the communal forests which adjointed to cultivated fields and from which village farmers had shared grass for fertilizer and the material for house fuel, roofing and building material. Joint ownership of communal forests in the feudal ageoriginated primarily from their landuse. Communal forests were the main source of grass for fertilizer but owing to their subordinate importance to cultivated fields themselves, they were not separated into individual ownership. Some agrarian economists will explain the joint ownership of communal forests as an important facet of the character of the community, and will maintain that the remnant of them to be found still in many modern communities. It is true that this ownership played a characteristic rolls in the feudal community. However, significance of the ownership originated partly from “gemeinschaftliche.” structure of the community.<br> Since the Meiji Restoration a majority of the communal forests have changed their character. Some of them have changed in landuse, and are now under planning as forestry fields; some others changed ownership, and are now owned by the national or village governn.ent as a juristic man. The change of landuse was not always accompanied by a change of ownership, namely, in many cases landuse and ownership changed separately. Some agrarian economists have their interest in ownership; change of landuse is of negrigible interest to them. The characteristic structure of rural communities consists of privately owned cultivated fields and communal forests or subordinate agrarian use under common ownerships. Agrarian economists insist that a present-day community which has forests under common ownerships is a remnant of a feudal age community. However, a community which has already changed the landuse is not a feudal age community. Even when common ownership has not changed, structure of communal society involves new and different elements which are characteristic in a modern community after the reshuffling law of 1889. In the feudal age communities were almost isolated from each other, and as people belonged to community were forbidden to move out of thier village, the communal forests were held as a stable community from the old days. But in the present-day villagers can move freely in and out of their village, and old villagers feel difficulty in holding their old communal forests. The forests thus cannot remain under common ownership as in the feudal age.

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