Rice cultivation is dominant, even in the mountainous regions
of present-day Japan. This phenomenon became conspicuous,
however, only after the mid-twentieth century. Prior to that
time, the collection of wild edible plants, especially nuts, and the
cultivation of various cereals, in addition to rice-farming were
important means of food procurement.
This report covers the Hida area of central Honshu. The
Hida area was selected for field research because the vegetation
belts are easy to distinguish and because an ethnography (Hidagofudoki),
recording life at the end of the 19th century, was obtained.
Hidagofudoki records precisely the amounts of rice, cereals
(millet [hie and awa]), and nuts (chestnuts, acorns and buckeyes)
for all villages of the Hida area. The results of this study illustrate
the combination of resources used in food procurement in
Japanese mountain villages at the end of the nineteenth century.
The following main points emerged from the study :
1. 55% of the 413 villages in the area obtained their staple
food from rice, millets and nuts, whereas the staple food of 28%
was rice and other cereals;
2. The combination of agriculture and nut-gathering had
an ecologically based vertical distribution, as is represented by the
wild vegetation. Rice and other cereal cultivation is distributed
between 400-600 m; at higher elevations the combination of
rice and other cereal cultivation and nut-gathering occured ;
and between 800-1000 m the combination of cereal cultivation
and nut-gathering appeared. At elevation above 1000 m there
existed villages which cultivated only cereals. Nuts rarely grow
in such a location in the Hida area (Table 13).
明治初期の飛騨地方における堅果類の採集と農耕
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