The Anthropological Study of Japan

Paper by Chie Nakan

Analysis of Hiki : Kinship System of Amami Bilateral Society

The concept of hiki employed by the Amami Islanders, reveals an interesting example of kinship system in a bilateral society.The data of this essay has been collected by myself in Amami Oshima in September-October 1963.Hiki is a set of kin traced bilaterally through both parents.Theoretically ego is a member of four kinds of hiki (cognatic stocks): e. g. those of father\u27s father, of father\u27s mother, of mother\u27s father, and mother\u27s mother.Then after his/her marriage, another set of hiki through the spouse is added, thus making altogether eight hiki.The hiki of the spouse is normally differentiated in terms of en-biki (affinal hiki) from ego\u27s real hiki.The ancestor of each hiki group is normally found at the level of grand-grandparent (either male or female depending on individual cases).For example, father\u27s father\u27s hiki may mean all descendants (through both male and female) of father\u27s father\u27s mother (or father), including the latter\u27s siblings and their descendants.Thus the termination is set ambilaterally.The best example of a hiki composition is shown by the genealogy of Mr. Ijiro Ohara (Genealogy A, B, C, D, E, F and G, attached at the end of the essay: and the key tothe Genealogy is shown in the Diagram II, page 123.).In theory ego has eight kinds of hiki groups, but in reality the number may become less than eight (as seven in Ijiro\u27s case).The following two reasons may be found: one is that a grand parent or grand-grandparent would be an immigrant from the Main Island of Japan, through whom the genealogy is not traceable; and another it that marriages often occur among the members of the same hiki.A hiki is not an exogamous group: marriage is possible between both cross- and parallel-cousins.Owing to the high frequency of marriages among the local people, the majority of one\u27s village people are the members of either ego\u27s hiki or/and en-biki; and those whom one cannot establish any such relations are called chuu or tanin (strangers).The plurarity of hiki to which ego belongs, theoretically sets difficulty for each hiki group to act as an exclusive descent group.In actuality, the function of a hiki as a group differes according to individual cases.One particular hiki may act as a group, taking care of a local shrine, or having a common graveyard, for example, but in such a case, the group may not include the hiki members who reside in other villages.On the part of ego, who may belong to four hiki groups through his parents, one of them would have some functional activites as a group, but other three may remain simply on the level of recognition of the genealogical relations.In general, A particular hiki does not form a functional descent group such as of landholding like in the case of hapu of the Maori described by Raymond Firth.The function of hiki is rather found as a kind of sociological registration of the people, and its network sets a certain basis of social activites.When a man travels, it is his hiki members who offer him meals and accomodation.Also a marriage contract between members of different villages occurs through the channels of hiki relations.The succession of the noro (holy woman), normally one to a village, is confined in the women of a particular hiki.Overlapped with the hiki, there are kindred called kyodee, the range of which is normally set by second cousins, and includes also spouses of ego\u27s siblings, and their siblings.It is the kyodee who assemble on important occasions such as weddings and funerals, and also who render the first help when required.In cotrast to the kyodee, all hiki members rarely assemble together.Closer hiki members to the ego are at the same time ego\u27s kyodee.Hence distant hiki members tend to be ignored in daily life.In actual socio-economic activities, it is the village community, not the hiki which plays the most mportant role as a constant functional group

On Tibetan Chronology(569-1042 A.D.)

Chronological inconsistencies in Tibetan historical records have been pointed out by such scholars as L. Petech, G. Roerich, and G. Tucci.One particularly obvious inconsistency occurs with regard to the year e Cags-bya (辛酉) of king Dar-ma\u27s (Lan-tar-ma) persecution of Buddhists; that is, one tradition implies it to be 841 A. D., and another, 901.A Comparison of Tibetan records with Chinese records shows that they usually agree on the early Tibetan chronology, and it may be taken as true that King Darma (達磨=贊普) died in 841.The Hsin T‘ang Shio, for example, records his death in an entry during 842 (Vol. 216 b).However, in the Tibetan historical records there is no reliable material about the Chronology 841～978 such as that for the chronology 978～1042, found in rGyal-lha-kan.In this paper the writer tries to analyze stories about the ups and downs of Buddhism during the years 841～978, as recorded in d Pag-l-Sam-lJon- b Zaan and conculdes that sixty years should be added to the chronology after the birth of b La-cen (891)

Disintegration of the Nayar Tarwad, or Matrilineal Joint Family

I made a field work among the Nayars in Kerala from March to May 1956 on a grant from the Elin Wagner Foundation of Sweden.This essay is based on the data collected during this field work, as well as on legal, historical and other records concerning the Nayars and other peoples in Kerala.The main discussion of this essay is focused on the changes and disintegration of the tarwad into the modern unit of Nayar family.The analysis which I deal is arranged as follows.Chapter I.The land of Nayars, Kerala: a study of the historical formation of plural society and of caste differentiations in Kerala.The characteristics of villages and the distribution of different kinds of communities in Kerala are also discussed here.Chapter II.The land tenure system and political organization of Kerala with particular reference to the traditional economic and political position of the Nayar caste.Chapter III.The Nayar tarwad in its traditional form, its content and functions.The tarwad is a matrilineal joint family, each of which members is related each other through consanguinial kinship ties, which included all members of matrilineal descendants from a common ancestress, but not their spouses, usually to a generation depth of more than seven.As a rule, all its members live together in the same tarwad building and held common property, of which management rested with the head of a tarwad, karanavan, the senior male.Chapters I, II and III give what is Nayar caste and a picture of the traditional settings of the Nayar tarwad, as an introduction to the main discussion on the disintegration of the tarwad in Chapters IV and V.Chapter IV.Reconstructed history of the disintegration of the Nayar tarwad through records.In the last 150 years, political and economic changes have made the disintegration of the Nayar tarwad unavoidable.It has been accompanied by greatly increasing population and modernization of Nayar life and concepts.The process is traced through what has happened in Malabar and in Travancore.The two areas have been treated separately since the procoss of disintegration was not the same in both.There are differences in social usage and historical and social environments between Malabar and Travancore.Steps and times of legal changes also differ.Social anthropologically, one of the aspects of their changes is explained through changes in the residential form of marriage.In Malabar, especially in North Malabar, the birth of a nuclear family took such process as from the duolocal residence (a form of visiting marriage, the traditional form of Nayar marriage) to avunculocal residence (husband takes his wife and children to his tarwad) and then to neolocal residence (huband makes an independent household for his nuclear family to live in separated from either his or his wife\u27s-tarwad).On the other hand in Travancore, the change was from duolocal residence to neolocal residence without the process of avunculocal residence (though they had some minor cases of matrilocal residences in its transition period).However, the general orientations of both processes are the same.In both cases, the major problems in the process of the disintegration were frictions and tensions between members of the tarwad, especially between the head and other members, and succession rules of self-acquired property with guardianship of karanavan or of father.Leading educated Nayars engaged in active movements for legal reforms in the traditional law of the tarwad after the latter part of the last century.The partition of a tarwad property per capita and the legal recognition of the unit of a nuclear family independent from the tarwad were their final goal.Nayars in Travancore were first to reach the final change in 1925, when the‘Nayar Regulation II\u27passed.In Malabar in 1933 the‘Malabar Marumakkathayam Act\u27was passed.Thus legally the tarwad disapeared from Kerala.Actually at present most of the tarwad were already partitioned except royal families and a few others.In the last part of Chapter IV, there is an explanation of the partition rules according to‘Nayar Regulation II\u27.Chapter V is based on data which I have collected concerning an actual tarwad at Ernaklam.The reconstruction of the tarwad history and an analysis of the changing process reveals clearly the changes in the family orientation of the tarwad members through their individual behaviors, and the moral is psychological aspects through delicate human relations of the tarwad members in the transition period, which gives more dynamic understandings to the discussion of the previous chapter.In conclusion, it should be noted that the process of changes and disintegration of the tarwad involves structural changes in the Nayar community as a whole, which again resulted the great structural changes and modernization of Kerala, or it may be said the latter have coincidented with the former.I wish to express my thanks to the Elin Wagner Foundation through whose generosity I was able to do my field work, presenting this essay as the report

An Analysis of Hindu Families

This essay presents characteristic elements of the Hindu family, and the process of its development and disintegration, based on the analysis of my field data: namely Nandi and Chakrovati families from West Bengal, and Amin family from Gujarat.These three large families belong to the upper sector of their respective local community.Though such large families are rather rarely found in contemporary Hindu society, they offer a configuration of various important elements, which the most of Hindus share as their ideal, not always materialized in their actuality.It is normally said that the process of modernization rapidly disintegrates the traditional large family institution.However, it is also the fact that a large family institution is formed in the process of modernization, and offers a certain advantage for modern men in India, as in the case of Nandi and Chakrovati families.Certainly today there are almost no cases of the classic Hindu joint family consisting of several married brothers and cousins, where the incomes of the family are pooled into one common stock and the all family members eat together, living on entirely the common stock.The predominant residential pattern of the present Hindus is of an elementary family.However, in their conception, the word ‘family’ is not meant only for their own elementary family who live together, but is applied to a wider group than the domestic family, which may consist of a number of domestic groups whose heads are brothers or paternal cousins.I tentatively call such a group as a ‘family group’.There are still many cases in which such a family group maintains a common ancestral property; and its members, grouped into different domestic units, live in the quarters of a large house built by their forefathers, though each domestic family forms an economic and residential unit, depending on mainly its members\u27 income, such as in the form of father\u27s salary, or land or bussiness owned by themselves.Nandi family of this essay, is a good example of such large family groups.This particular family group, owing to its largeness (consisting of about 1,200 members altogether) presents a highly complicated configuration of elements, and the structural orientation of the working of the Hindu family.In the case of Chakrovati family, five of the total ten domestic families live in the same house in Calcutta, and share the food, to the expenses of which each domestic unit contributing from individual income.The fifteen domestic units of Amin family group, in spite of the partition of domestic quarters and the ancestral property, live in the same old house and maintain the atmosphere of what is called the large Hindu joint familyThere are wide range of variations in the forms of family groups, as I discussed in Chapter I, according to residential arrangements and the ways of the management and ownership of the property.In all cases, interdependences and familial attachments among the members are extremely strong.Frequency in their contacts and mutual helps after the residential separation would not be easily lessened.Naturally the degree of social (and often economic) independence of a domestic family is very low in comparison with Japanese families in which actual economic and residential factors play far more important role in the social organization, than kinship factors.In stead, among the Hindus, the function of the wider kin group to which they term ‘family’, has still important social and economic implications.In this manner, the ideal of the traditional Hindu joint family is strongly adhered, in spite of the disintegration of its actual form

Analysis of Dozoku Structure in Rural Japan

An exceedingly large number of works have been written on dozoku and its related subjects by Japanese scholars in various fields such as sociology, law, economics, history, ethnology and folklore.However most of them are concerned with ideological interpretations or typological classifications, while the analysis of the dozoku structure has been negrected.The present essay particularly concerned on this negrected subject by applying the method of social anthropology.A dozoku is a set of extended households distinguishable by genealogical relations to the common original household.The genealogical relation, however, should be always accompanied by the economic basis.For example, households A and B form a dozoku, because B was established by the economic arrangement of A: for instance, A portioned its land to B, and built a house of B.The kinship relation itself (such as, the household heads of A and B are father and son, or brothers) does not form a dozoku, unless it accompanied the economic arrangement.Though the members of a dozoku often includes a set of agnates, structurally the dozoku is not a patrilineal lineage, as one of the examples of the members of a dozoku is compared with that of a patrilineal lineage in Diagram II on p. 142.The internal organization of an effective dozoku is found on the basis of the status differentiation among the households of a dozoku, which are ranked according to the genealogical distance of each household to the main (oldest) household, thus forming a pyramidical hierarchy with the main household at its apex.The effectiveness of a dozoku as a local corporate group is maintained by the supeiror economic and social status of the main household against the branch households.The degree of effectiveness and of institutionalization of dozoku shows considerable variations according to an individual dozoku, as well as to a given period of an individual dozoku.These mostly depend on the character of the leadership and of the economic base of the main household, and also with the historical and economic situations of a village community.Unlike a lineage system, the dozoku organization does not cover the whole society: it tends to be found among the population of the upper and middle sector of a village community.And the development of a dozoku seems to be related to a particular historical and economic situation of a community: under a fairly closed and stable economic system, yet provides substantial resources which make possible to accumulate wealth for some members of the community, but restricts the members to have alternative economic means other than to depend on a given limited resources within the community.Though the dozoku institution does not cover the all population, dozoku found in any locality in Japan reveals the common structure.This fact has dictated me to deal with dozoku as one of the most significant institutions for the kinship study in Japan.In my view, the dozoku structure manifiests the crucial elements of the underlying native kinship ideology in Japanese society