Page 131 - Changing Living Spaces

Utilization of Grass and Wood in Common-Use Imperial Land

incorporated into the state or municipalities and divided among individ-
uals, eventually blurring jurisdictional boundaries and making their re-
sponsibilities unclear. Moreover, residents were often only permitted to
use the resources of the sanrin.

Objectives and Methods
In Yamanashi Prefecture, the study area of this chapter, many iriai com-
mons were designated as imperial property in 1889 (Meiji 22). They were
returned to the prefecture in 1911 (Meiji 44), and commoners were al-
lowed to use and manage these imperial properties. In the mid-Meiji pe-
riod before the return, the period covered in this chapter, this estate was
called iriai goryochi, which can be translated as ‘gathering place on the im-
perial estate’, which is an oxymoronic expression considering that gath-
ering was allowed on the site of the former iriai commons. Iriai goryochi
is imperial land with recognized common use rights (Totman 2007, 136).
In this chapter, this particular land is referred to as common use impe-
rial land (CIL). The ownership, use, and management of iriai commons in
Yamanashi Prefecture have been studied from the perspectives of the so-
ciology of law and forestry.2
The most important material for this chapter is a report entitled ‘Midai
Gawa Iri Hoan-rin Hennyu Chousa-sho’ [‘Survey Report on the River Midai
water source for incorporation into conservation forests’] published by
Yamanashi Prefecture in 1903 (Meiji 36). The purpose of this report was
to incorporate this CIL into conservation forests in accordance with the
Forest Act, which had just come into effect, to prevent damage from re-
peated flooding. As will be discussed in more detail later, although use
was restricted by the Bureau of Imperial Estate (BIe), residents of the CIL
were in fact using sanrin in the same manner as before it was incorpo-
rated into the imperial estate. The prefecture closely scrutinised the res-
idents’ use of sanrin to interfere with the BIe’s management of the CIL.
The purpose of this book is to identify the impact of the changing so-
cioeconomic and natural environment due to rapid modernization on the
use and management of resources by the population. The key term ‘living
spaces’ is used in this research. To achieve this goal, this chapter used the
data in this report to clarify what institutions were introduced by the na-
tional and prefectural governments, what resources residents used, and

2 For example, Hojo (1979); Ohashi (1991); more recently Shiga et al. (2008).

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