近世陸奥中村藩における浄土真宗信徒移民の導入:木幡彦兵衛の覚書にみるその実態

概要

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　　　Population decline, caused by increasing social mobility, and the related immigration of Hokuriku Jodo Shinshu-sect Buddhists were precipitated by the need to redevelop agriculture, reduce poverty and restore the Mutsu-Nakamura domain's troubled finances in the latter part of the Tokugawa period. In the following paper, the memoranda of Kowata Hikobei （a rural administrator with the social position of samurai, who, along with his father, worked to organize the immigration） are used to explore the intelligence network by which 301 individuals from 57 households of the Jodo Shinshu religious community immigrated to the Mutsu-Nakamura domain during the period from 1815 to 1832.　　　The arrival of some 3,000 or so immigrants in the Mutsu-Nakamura domain from 1813 to 1871 was seen as a great "success", particularly in terms of re-invigorating the domain's finances. It should be noted, however, that this internal migration neither assisted the contemporary strengthening of the shogunate nor hastened its collapse. Rather, having a strong intelligence network the Jodo Shinshu religious community removed itself from the framework of the shogunate, and in the process they served their own organization by, in effect, making the whole Japanese archipelago "borderless".