Presentations

During the transition to the Meiji era, the Japanese government initiated a nationwide cadastral survey to establish a modern land tax system, resulting in the creation of numerous large-scale cadastral maps. Previous studies have noted that the circumstances of map production varied significantly by region and have frequently pointed out overall distortions associated with early surveying methods. This research, however, focuses on "local distortions" to examine how they reflect the specific administrative and social structures of the period. Ritto City in Shiga Prefecture, the case study for this research, is a region where the ancient grid system remains relatively intact, ensuring high comparability between historical and contemporary geographic data. The research employs two distinct methodologies to illuminate the spatial logic of this period. First, the study utilizes a cartometric approach using a Euclid regression model. By focusing specifically on the regression residuals rather than global trends, the analysis visualizes local distortions. The results reveal that these distortions are not random but are statistically correlated with the distance from specific central hamlets. This suggests that the accuracy of the survey was implicitly influenced by the perceived importance of these hubs within each administrative unit. Second, the research constructed an extensive GIS database by integrating official survey documents with subdivided cadastral maps to visualize the spatial arrangement and boundaries of small place names. This database allowed for a rigorous analysis of the "one central hamlet per administrative village" principle. The results identify a consistent alignment where central hamlets are characterized by common nouns meaning "hamlet" rather than traditional proper nouns. This correspondence suggests that these locations were so self-evident as centers of daily life and social interaction that they were identified through generic terms in the administrative records. The conclusion highlights that both the quantitative analysis of map residuals and the spatial analysis of toponyms point to the same phenomenon: the intentional structuring of new administrative units around pre-existing living spaces. This integrated approach offers a robust methodology for analyzing historical spatial cognition and the formation of modern administrative space, applicable to other regions undergoing transitions in surveying technology and territorial organization.

A non-profit organisation, Kurasumu Shiga, located in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, was established by a collaborative group including city officials, a designer, an architect, a scholar, and local residents living around their base. The organisation was originally founded on the desire to grapple with the social issue of vacant homes in the area. In addressing this issue, Kurasumu Shiga adopted a strategy of collecting life histories of the residences and their local context, framing this endeavour as an approach to documenting the history of memories on housing, or Cultural Memory (the Assmanns). The reason for this initial focus stems from the desire of owners facing the potential abandonment of their homes to ensure that the new owners would understand their deep attachments to the property and the surrounding community. Beyond facilitating connections between current owners and potential future owners, the organisation also operates a community canteen that provides a set of local cuisine based on inherited recipes that local women have improved over years. During the process of improving their original recipe, the NPO has deepened its understanding of the local community. The organisation's entire experience can be seen as a historical practice. In this presentation, we will introduce the detailed process of the organisation and its diverse activities, as well as related projects in the early days of the founders such as collaborative events to hold a local festival, academic projects on traditional folk events and pilgrim associations, because the prehistory of the organisation might link to the current rich activities. We have paid attention not only to the historic events but also to everyday local life, or Everyday Public History (Halstead), for weaving public history with the community for letting them to make their own future with a feeling of being rooted in sedimented histories (Lloyd), achieved through the tangible and shared medium of food. The presenters are all directors of the Kurasumu Shiga organisation, bringing both research and practice perspectives to the study. Dr Kasai has contributed to Japanese public history research by co-editing an academic book titled Doing Public History. Dr Takeyama serves as the director of Kurasumu Shiga while working as a local government official, and holds a PhD. Mr Kimura has participated in the history of memories on housing project as an architect (representative of an architectural design firm) and holds a Master's degree.

To analyse how communities develop and how their members connect with the trajectories of those communities, it is essential to adopt triangulation, or a combination of multiple methodologies, as pioneered by the Chicago School. This paper presents two case studies in Japanese suburban areas where the author applies such combinational methods to first-hand materials gathered through fieldwork. The first case concerns a traditional hamlet that still maintains numerous folk and ritual events. Here, the author analysed account books of traditional events spanning more than 200 years, in combination with biographical interviews and geographical information system (GIS) mapping. The second case is a more recent suburban community, known as a ‘New Town,’ with only a half-century of history and few traditional events or organisations. In this case, the author collected almost all neighbourhood monthly newsletters and related documents from the community’s inception, along with biographical interviews, and applied text-mining techniques. Across both cases, the paper demonstrates: (1) biographical interviews provide an effective means of accessing residents’ interpretations, including latent meanings, though they may sometimes contain inaccuracies; and (2) technologies such as GIS and text-mining can be applied not only to quantitative data but also to enrich qualitative analysis. By combining interviews with community-level documentary sources, this study highlights methodological innovations in qualitative sociology and contributes to broader debates on how multiple sources of evidence can be integrated in community research, offering a model for future cross-contextual and interdisciplinary applications.

From the 1960s, “new town” development flourished in Japan, reaching its peak in the early 1970s. In these newly developed areas, it was necessary not only to construct buildings but also to create connections and form communities among people. At the time, Japanese sociology placed a strong focus on community formation; however, today, half a century later, new towns are gaining attention as regions facing challenges such as aging populations and vacant homes. This report analyzes the process of community formation from a historical perspective, focusing on a specific new town in Japan. First, analysis of a half-century of monthly newsletters reveals that community formation can be divided into three phases: generation, disruption, and maturity. Second, analysis of oral histories from 20 elderly residents shows how these individuals, who experienced the disruption phase, perceive their community activities as failures. This perception leads to an interpretation of a certain “disconnect,” suggesting that their experiences in workplaces and families are unrelated to their activities within the community. The newsletters and oral histories underwent text mining with co-occurrence analysis and self-organizing mapping, which revealed the different trends each year. This approach of using computational techniques to identify key themes and cases for deeper analysis, followed by qualitative analysis, draws on the methods described in S. Weller et al.’s book Big Qual. The report also touches on the differing interpretations of "community" by sociologists and local residents in each phase. Through examining the historical development and reinterpretation of this new town over fifty years, the report reflects on the challenges of community formation in the present day. Particularly, it is crucial to understand how the younger generation, who are now the primary leaders of current community activities, interpret the history of the new town they live in.