Japanese rural community, "Mura": Considered in the historical development of rural sociology

The aim of this paper is to make the characteristics of the Japanese rural community clear. In the history of Japanese rural sociology, some attempts to find such characteristics have been undertaken by various researchers. However, most of them borrowed from foreign scholars, especially European and American. They basically employed or Occidental theory and methodology. If they could find originality, it was only in data collected in Japanese fieldwork or partial revisions of a foreign theoretical framework and methodology. I believe that true originality should be discovered in Japanese rural society itself.