The Medieval Origins of Common Land in Japan

Abstract

"Many villages in Japan held common lands until after World War II. Yet while common property in the Tokugawa period and its post-1868 survival or privatization has been studied extensively, research has not addressed the question of how open access land or water became communally owned and regulated. Uncultivated land was used communally for centuries, but in the fourteenth century village communities in central Japan began to regulate its use. At a time of increasing scarcity of uncultivated land resulting from population growth and expansion of cultivated land, villagers agreed collectively to exercise mutual restraint in order to ensure the longterm availability of resources derived from common land."