農地改革期小作地引上の地域・階層・事由分析

Abstract

Land reclamation was one of the biggest land issues of the postwar reform period. It can be classified into three periods and types. The first was characterized by force and illegal actions before the Agricultural Land Reform, the second was characterized by the policy of the Agricultural Land Reform under the reform period, and the third was characterized by economic competition under the Agricultural Land Law after the reform. In this article, the second period/type is analyzed by the following points: the management scale of the landowners, reason, management scale of tenants, and lastly, the permission rate for the landowners' application of land reclamation by the agricultural land committees. The conclusion is as follows: (1) It is incorrect to understand that this problem was caused by the political pressure of the anti-reform movement of landowners. The farmland committees were strict, and did not give permission easily. Often the land reclamation was caused by confusion and the economic distress of the small landowners under the defeat period. The farmland committees made fair decisions taking into consideration the difficulties of the small landowners. (2) The land reclamation occurred frequently in the previously mentioned cases. There were many landowners who lived in their own villages and cultivated a part of their own land. These people had many difficulties which were created by the economical-social confusion at that time. For example, city and industrial areas were destroyed by the war, and the repatriation following was also responsible for some of these troubles. Generally, this occurred in the west of Japan, in particular, the Chugoku and Kyushu districts. (3) One more notable point is that there were remarkable differences in the permission rate of the land reclamation from prefecture to prefecture. This means that the attitude of each prefectural farmland committee also had a great influence on the permission rate of the land reclamation.