Since the latter half of the middle age, lands covered with volcanic ashes in Japan were gradually turned to habitable areas by the progressive exploitation. A general tendency was such, however, a vast tract of wild land extensively remained untouched, where water facility condition was extremely bad, or common right to forest or land was complicatedly mixed or anything else. On the southwestern foot of Mt. Fuji, we see an example of these cases.
The author intends not to study individual ‘shinden’ settlements situated on the foothills but to approach the problem in view of comparing them with exploitation done on the alluvial plain to the south. Distribution of ‘shinden’ settlements and process of their development were mainly considered.
A result shows that four patterns of distribution are distinguished; a) foothill sloping ground of sparse water holding, b) the Fuji delta and its neighbours, c) the northern Ukishima-ga-hara damp ground, and d) the coastal banks along the bay of Suruga. However, most of the newly reclamation works of rice field was carried on in the alluvial plains. In the Fuji delta region it was needed to change the stream course to the right bank of the Fuji river and organize a flood control and irrigation system. In the Ukishima-ga-hara it was of utmost necessity to construct tidewater controling banks and draining channels, and only a limited reclamation was put into practice near Ukishima-numa as the work at that time was hard and difficult. On the volcanic ash tracts of Fuji foothills exploitation of new settlements was dependent upon the possibility of drinking water security, cultivation there was mainly of upland crops.
Construction works were done on a large scale by the order of ‘daikan’ (local governor) in the delta plains, while reclamatin on the damp Ukishima-ga-hara was mostly small in size, such as ‘Murauke shinden’ and ‘Mitate shinden’, and these were relatively early of their origins. Exploitation works on the Fuji foothill slope were mostly of ‘Murauke’, small in general size and carried on later, the Enpo era (1673∼80) to the end of the Shogunate government.
The reason why exploitation was late on the hilly tracts was not only that the land was of volcanic ash soil reserving little water in it, but such other factors should be taken account of, as the direct control over forest lands by the central government, or common right of fodder gathering owned by neighbouring villages.