Fujita H., translated by D. Eason
Accordingly, the phenomenon of village formation during the subsequent medieval period
has also become a matter of interest. Sano Shizuyo has written an environmental history of vil-
lages and riparian zones during the medieval and early modern periods.^19 Focusing on village
landscapes and the medieval development of rivers, she examined utilization and resource man-
agement in the Lake Biwa coastal region and along the shoreline of the tributary Yasu River in
Ōmi Province (modern Shiga prefecture). Yoshida Toshihiro and Itō Toshikazu have also con-
sidered the medieval village from the perspective of managerial issues.^20
The majority of maps depicting villages during the classical and medieval eras are Heian- and
Kamakura- period maps of estates (shōen). These, of course, reflect the perspectives of the ruling
elite. But scholars have also attempted to reconstruct the ways in which local residents conceptu-
alized things, drawing on maps and charts produced and submitted by villagers in the course of
legal proceedings. This sort of humanistic geography has exerted a major influence upon text-
based historical studies as well.^21
As I suggested in the previous section, Chinese influence on the landscapes of cities was sub-
stantial during the classical era. This has generated considerable debate about continuities into
medieval times. Kyoto, the imperial capital for more than a thousand years, persisted in the same
location through the end of the medieval era, into the early modern period, and into the modern
age, even as it underwent profound changes of character. For this reason, while archeological
excavations have been numerous and frequent, most have been confined to narrow areas, making
analysis and interpretation undeniably difficult. Scholars struggle to make the findings unearthed
in these limited digs speak, and to trace their stories in detail.^22
Kyoto remained an economic capital as well throughout this long span of time, while to the
south, the eastern fringes of the older capital at Nara—which came to be called the outer capital
(gekyō)—and other smaller urban areas remained the foremost cities in the country. This hierar-
chical arrangement can be traced back to the classical period, when Kyoto sat at the apex of a
structure supported by the provincial capitals (kokufu) across the country. Close consideration of
the results of archaeological excavations reveals that while these provincial capitals were con-
ceived in terms of fixed spaces and areas, they are better understood as what Kinda Akihiro has
called “noncontiguous, functionally compartmentalized” cityscapes, wherein the provincial
headquarters and the roads leading to it served as nuclei or axes around which numerous enclo-
sures for workshops, storehouses, living quarters, and government offices were positioned.^23
Scholars today further recognize that this kind of fragmentary, functionally compartmentalized
organization of space also characterized the provincial capitals and military administrative centers
of the medieval age.
On the other hand, Kobayashi Kentarō has followed the orthodox historical geographer’s
approach of confirming land distribution patterns from cadastral maps produced at the start of
the modern period.^24 Beginning with the late fifteenth- and sixteenth- century castle town of
Ichijōdani, in Echizen province (modern Fukui prefecture), Kobayashi used cadastral maps to
confirm land- allotment patterns, and then used these as a basis for identifying the residences of
the Asakura house’s retainer corps. Archeological excavations later confirmed these findings—
and also discovered an artisans’ residential area to the north that even Kobayashi had not
foreseen—leading to the designation of this area as a special historical site, and its development as
an historical park. This is an extraordinary example of historical geographic research on the
medieval period leading to regional revitalization.
Kobayashi has also conducted studies of the Nōbi Plain, the landholdings of Chōshū domain,
and Tosa province, each centered on the reconstruction of cities with a focus on regional settle-
ments. His work on Tosa is particularly interesting, centering as it does on analysis of the
Chōsokabe cadastral register, Chōsokabe chikenchō, a forerunner of early modern land surveys