Abstract
In this chapter, I explore how Myanmar villages are organised and what the essence of a Myanmar village is. I suggest that a Japanese village is a “collective for production” and a Myanmar village is a “community for living”. In Japanese villages, joint production activities—such as agricultural cooperative movements, irrigation management, rice procurement, land consolidation, reduction of rice acreage, and management of common lands—have been conducted by each village as one unit. In Myanmar, however, there are no such organisations for agricultural production, and even if there are, they are either short-lived or converge on administrative or individual management. However, various groups—namely, consumer cooperatives, congratulatory or condolence associations, fire brigades, pagoda committees, and drinking water committees—have been set up in Myanmar villages for purposes of living together, in the same way as in Japan. Thus, a village in Myanmar is a community of life, but not a collective of production. I detail the socio-economic characteristics of Myanmar villages by comparing them with Japanese villages and consider their positive significance beyond the argument that Myanmar villagers are economically poor or loosely constructed socially.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, as in the previous chapter, when I use the term “village” or “hamlet”, I do not mean an administrative village in Japan, but a kyūson (old village), ōaza, or buraku from before the merger of towns and villages in 1889. In Myanmar, “village” means not a village tract (cêiywa ou’sù), which is the country’s smallest administrative unit, but a village (cêiywa) which is a component of a tract (see Chap. 2). In practice, however, there are many exceptions. In many cases, the Japanese ōaza is directly called a buraku and becomes a “common village”; in other cases, there are several burakus within the ōaza and each of them forms a “common village”, or several burakus unite to make up a “common village”. What is important is that there is a (sonraku) kyōdōtai or “(village) collective” somewhere in these villages. In contrast, in Myanmar, a single village may be geographically divided into three districts, as in the case of Zeepinwea Village, and there may be villages with different religions and ethnic groups, as in the case of Paukkoung Hamlet, or several small villages may come together to form a single residential area. What is important here is that there is no such thing as a kyōdōtai or “collective” in any of these groups or clusters of settlements in Myanmar.
- 2.
Kida says that a “village” is a demarcation for control by the state, while a buraku, unlike a village, is a natural group (Kida, 1967: 9–10). In that case, a “village” would mean an administrative village. In this book, buraku as the common village is the “village”.
- 3.
The terminal and minimal administrative structure in villages and towns in the Edo period. The five peasants also provided mutual assistance in daily life as fellow peasants, but it was more of an organisation for controlling and monitoring the peasants by mutual surveillance. In 1940, the gonin-gumi reappeared as the tonari-gumi (Neighbourhood Association) system, which was abolished in 1947.
- 4.
The definition of “production” and “life” is the same as in the previous chapter. I have already argued in the previous chapter that the Japanese village is a community of both “production” and “life”, while the Myanmar village is a community of “life” without commodity “production”. In this chapter, I will simplify it and say that a “community of production” naturally includes life, while a “community of life” simply includes daily livelihood, without commodity production and related activities.
- 5.
The original is in German; English translations are also available such as Tönnies, 2001. However, this chapter refers mainly to the Japanese translation (Tönnies, 1957).
- 6.
Both Otsuka’s theory of collective and Tönnies’ theory of Gemeinschaft are viewpoints on history, rather than proven “historical facts” (Takahashi, 2012: 132–133).
- 7.
In this case, the village chief is not the mayor of the village tract. Sometimes, the village chief and the village tract mayor are the same person. See Chap. 2.
- 8.
In the villages of Hakha Township, Chin State, each household contributes one-tenth of its income in the form of money, agricultural products, and livestock to the churches, which redistribute it to the poor. In this case, the village is not directly involved.
- 9.
The repeal of the Law appears to be related to the Microfinance Law, which was enacted in 2011 and came into effect in 2013. The conventional village common fund became less important as the Microfinance Law provided villages with a lump sum of money and the microcredit activities by NGOs increased as a result of democratisation. Moreover, new ways of raising and using the village common fund emerged, in which multiple households in a village receive individual loans from small-scale financial institutions to carry out village-wide projects, as in the case of the electrification project in Taunglwe Village and the water supply project in Kanthalay Village. These are due to new “catalysts” such as small-scale financial institutions and bidding systems. The feasibility and continuity of the projects depend on how effective the “catalysts” are and how long they remain effective.
- 10.
In Burmese, “sù” means to collect, “cêingwei” means money, and “aphwè” means group.
- 11.
In Myanmar, there are no social relations like those in Japanese villages where household-to-household relations continue for many generations over a long period of time and a collective monitoring function works. Thus, mutual financing associations lasting more than ten years, as in Japan, are unlikely to be established in rural Myanmar.
- 12.
Although they are called protective nat (saun na’), most nats are not mere guardian deities, but spirits that can bring disasters if not treated properly. In other words, by worshipping and consoling the nat, one can avoid disasters. Belief in nats is more about praying for them not to bring misfortune than about asking them to protect something.
- 13.
In August 2020, I received a letter from the Buddhist temple where my parental home was a parishioner. My parental home had become vacant after my parents passed away. A bill for 250,000 yen per parishioner for the restoration of the building was sent to my present address. This bill to me, who has been out of the village for decades, means that those who were born in the village collective must continue to pay for the maintenance of the collective even if they leave the village. This is another good example of the strong binding power of the collective.
- 14.
In my previously published book, I wrote: “When I see not only my father, but also several of my classmates in the buraku, whom there are only seven, become mentally ill and two young people commit suicide within a three-minute walk of my birthplace, the mental pressure that the village exerts on the villagers feels hard to ignore (Takahashi, 2012: 109)”. I received comments from my acquaintances who read this sentence, saying that such a thing had happened also in their birthplaces.
- 15.
This system of surveillance by “neighbourhood groups” stemmed from the Japanese military period which introduced to Myanmar the tonari-gumi (Neighbourhood Association) system, a symbol of Japanese rural fascism.
- 16.
However, “explosions” such as the Peasant Rebellion of 1930–31, the refusal of paddy offerings at the end of the socialist period and the subsequent struggle for democracy in 1988, and the anti-military movements since February 2021 can occur. Even in such cases, “catalysts” such as the livelihood crisis, Sayar San (the symbolic leader of the Peasant Rebellion), Aung San Suu Kyi, and the coup d’état were necessary.
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Takahashi, A. (2023). A Myanmar Village is a Community of Life. In: Regime Changes and Socio-economic History of Rural Myanmar, 1986-2019. Studies in Economic History. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3272-6_8
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