The urbanization of rural Japan during the 1930s and the agrarian land question

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Other Title
  • 一九三〇年代日本における農村の市街地化と土地問題
  • 一九三〇年代日本における農村の市街地化と土地問題 : 兵庫県武庫郡武庫村を事例に
  • イチキュウサン〇ネンダイ ニホン ニ オケル ノウソン ノ シガイチカ ト トチ モンダイ : ヒョウゴケン ブコグン ブコムラ オ ジレイ ニ
  • 兵庫県武庫郡武庫村を事例に
  • The case of Muko Village, Hyogo Prefecture

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Abstract

The present article examines the purchase of agrarian land for the purpose of non-agrarian development during the early Showa era, the response of the landlords and tenants who owned and cultivated the targeted land, and the ultimate settlement reached that led to the urbanization of that land, in connection with the changing face of rural society as a whole during that time. Here, the author takes up the case of the hamlet of Namazu in Muko Village, Muko-Gun, Hyogo Prefecture, where during the latter half of the 1930s the Hankyu Railway Express Corporation purchased land to build a railway station and adjoining residential area called Mukonoso. <br> A branch of the Japan National Farmers Union had already been set up in Namazu in 1931 to deal with the issue of the relocation of the Naruo Horse Racing Track and had continued direct action demanding tenants’ rights for about three years when the Hankyu Corporation appeared on the scene looking to purchase real estate. The response of the JNFU tenants involved violent encounters with the Hankyu surveying team, which for a time put a stop to the railway company’s development plan. However, the action was eventually foiled by a mandatory police order to reach a peaceful settlement, to which the Namazu tenants, insisting on their cultivation rights over the land in question, were finally forced to accept a deal on a tenancy severance payment far less than they demanded ; and Namazu was turned into a construction site for residential dwellings.<br> In contrast, the response of the local landlords to Hankyu’s attempt to purchase land in Namazu was clearly divided depending on whether or not their land was part of the company’s development plan. The most important point here was that while large scale landowners in the area sold the land to be developed, the remaining land not earmarked for development was kept in cultivation as before. That is to say, due to the presence of local tenants who unanimously desired to keep the whole hamlet under cultivation and a portion of the landlords who acted likewise, The Hankyu Corp.’s development of Namazu managed to transform the hamlet only in terms of the Mukonoso residential project, thus delaying the full-scale urbanization of Namazu until the 1960s and beyond.

Journal

  • SHIGAKU ZASSHI

    SHIGAKU ZASSHI 127 (1), 38-61, 2018

    The Historical Society of Japan

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