A Study on the formative process of gigantic landowners in rice-monoproducing districts of Japan

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As to the Japanese landownership, we can verify its characteristic features from concentrative existence of gigantic landowners in rice-monoproducing districts, especially in Niigata Prefecture. In the thirteenth year of Taisho, there were twenty-two gigantic landowners possessed of five hundred chobus or more in Japan ( except for Hokkaido and Okinawa ) and nine persons of them existed in Niigata. Most of them concentrated in the Kanbara and Kubiki plains, where have been forming vast paddy fields, and all their origins and formative processes dates back to the Edo era. By analyzing various processes of their land acquirement and accumulation, these landowners are classified into three types.1. The type of the Edo era: They appeared from the Horeki period to the Tenmei and grew up gigantic landowners from the Kansei to the early Tenpo. 2.The type of the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate: They grew slowly until the early Tenpo and then became gigantic landowners. 3. The type of the Meiji era: They started to grow in the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate and became gigantic landowners in the Meiji era.From these facts, we should correct the theories that gigantic landowners appeared through developments of new cultivated fields or they were not found in the Edo era yet.