ABSTRACT
In terms of current issues of social anthropology, the analysis offers an example of the organizational structure in a peasant society which lacks a unilineal descent system. The examination reveals that the primary elements which provide the frame of organization in rural Japan are household, local corporate group and village, not family, descent group or status group. In the absence of any specific function of descent, residence and locality become primary criteria for group formation in rural Japan. The majority of anthropologists has approached their studies of social organization in rural Japan through kinship analysis, and has debated at length in terms of patrilineal lineage and personal kindred. A local corporate group comprises a set of neighbouring households among which kinship relations may or may not be found. Whatever the internal organization may be, these local corporate groups play a role similar in some ways to a localized descent group in other societies.
