ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with Japanese essays written in 1986 on Ming-Qing studies. Two articles based on recent field work in the People’s Republic deal with various historical aspects of Chinese society which survive today. In “How Cohesive Forces Function in the Village” (2 parts, Chugoku kenkyu geppo 455, 456), Ueda Makoto argues that the patterns by which Japanese have understood the nature of rural Chinese society (such as kyodotai or communitarian bonds) differ enormously from the realities of Chinese villages. In “Land Revolution and the Xiangzu” (in Henkakki), Miki Satoshi examines the dissolution of the local xiangzu in the process of the land revolution during 1927-33. Kawakatsu Mamoru’s “Wheat-Rent Practices in Jiangnan in the Qing Period” (in Nakamura) verifies, on the basis of tenant contracts and rent agreements, the maintenance of rent collection in the form of wheat-rent.
