Agricultural Structures and Regional Societies at the End of the Tokugawa Shogunate and Early Meiji Period: A Re-Examination of Ushu Murayama County

本文综合分析了德川幕府末年至明治初期山形县村山地区的区域社会变迁与整合过程，认为这是幕府地方知事与各县、地区社会阶层之间复杂对立与协调的过程。我们澄清了作为一个大规模佃农阶级的存在，而这一阶级在著名的世界改革情境理论中并没有被提及。我们阐明了这些农民不是村社代表，他们在德川幕府末期领导了广泛的佃农纠纷和有组织的商品生产。在明治时期，他们支持向山形县提出区域产业发展的大型富农，并与中小型富农合作。因此，富裕的农业阶层的区域一体化作为一个整体进行。

In this paper, we comprehensively analyzed regional social change and the integration process in the Murayama region of Yamagata Prefecture at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and early Meiji period as a process of complicated opposition and coordination between the local governor of the Shogunate and various prefectural and regional social classes.We clarified the existence as a class of large-scale tenant farmers and who were not addressed in the prominent situational theory of world reform. We elucidated that these farmers were not village association representatives, and that they led widespread tenant farming disputes and organized commodity production at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. In the Meiji period, they supported large-scale wealthy farmers who proposed regional industry development to Yamagata Prefecture and collaborating small–medium scale wealthy farmers. For this reason, regional integration by the wealthy farming class progressed as a whole.