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Arable Land as Commons

Land Reallocation in Early Modern Japan

The origins and role of corporate landholding and land redistribution practices over arable land in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Japan have posed a quandary for scholars. The most common forms are widely seen as means to spread the impact of flooding among villagers in districts that are considered to be at great risk from flood hazards. Such conclusions are often based on individual village studies. In contrast, this study takes a regional approach and tests the validity of this relationship using geographic information systems technology experimentally. This experiment reveals a variety of anomalies that, taken together, suggest that any link between natural hazard risk and the presence or absence of redistribution practices is more subtle than typical explanations assert.