Katenatsukuri and Katenatakuwae Seen in Aizu Nōsho ： “Food Subsidization” as Part of Local Farming Methods

Yojiemon SAZE, a Kimoiri (village head) from Makunouchi Village (presentday Makunouchi, Kozashi-machi, Aizu-Wakamatsu City), adjacent to the castle town of Wakamatsu, wrote in Aizu Nōsho (The Aizu Book of Agriculture) in 1684 about the agricultural methods in the Aizu region based on his own experience and the old custom known as ‘godan’ (talk around the village). It consists of three volumes: the first volume on rice farming, the middle volume on other types of farming, and the third volume on other farming affairs. In 1704, he wrote Aizu Uta Nōsho (Aizu Book of Agriculture in Poetry), in which the contents were written in the form of waka poems so that farmers could easily understand and remember them. In addition, he wrote an eight-volume book, Aizu Nōsho Furoku (Annex to Aizu Nōsho), in which he discussed the vocabulary or nōgo (agricultural language) and farming rituals of the time in a dialogue between the farmers and himself. In this paper, I would like to use Aizu Nōsho as a general name including all three of Aizu Nōsho, Aizu Uta Nōsho, and Aizu Nōsho Furoku.　Aizu Nōsho is an agricultural treatise that may be valued as a classic, written 13 years earlier than Nōgyō Zensho ( The Complete B ook of A griculture) by Yasusada MIYAZAKI in 1697, which is regarded as the representative agricultural treatise of Japan. It has a clear authorship and year of writing, has historical value among the many books on agriculture in Japan, and is highly regarded in the history of agricultural technology. Volume Three, in particular, contains many descriptions of farmer life, and provides insight into the folklore of the A izu region in the early modern period. T he author has conducted folklore research by extracting aspects of folklore related to food, clothing and housing, including farming tools and farming rituals, from the Aizu Nōsho.　Based on the contents of the third volume, this paper investigates and analyzes the types of katena (supplementing/subsidizing rice) in the Aizu region at that time, as well as the methods of gathering, processing, cooking, and eating, in order to position katena as part of the local farming system. As analytical and comparative materials, I would like to attempt to use the entries in books on customs written in 1685 and 1807, the entries of katemono (provisions for a later date) and the like from the agricultural documents of other regions, and the documents related to ʻkate-monoʼ in Fukushima Prefecture in the early modern period, in order to cross-reference the names of plants de-scribed in the Aizu Nōsho, and clarify the methods of collecting, processing, cooking, and eating them. Aizu Nōsho" contains many descriptions of how to secure the provisions, one of which references how to cultivate leaves and crops for the provisions, such as radishes and turnips, millet and Japanese millet, and the gathering of the provisions from the mountains and fields, a process called asarina at the time and includes instruction on how to cultivate, process, and store the main crops for the provisioning, known as amina, as part of the local farming methods.