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In Japan, civil engineering projects have played an important role in the development of agriculture. Building dikes, canals, and ponds substantially expanded the amount of irrigated land. Furthermore, draining lakes and the sea reclaimed a great deal of land. These investments in field expansion, as well as the rise in productivity per acre, contributed greatly to the advancement of agriculture in Japan (Ishikawa 1967, Booth and Sundrum 1985). It is true that, sometimes, village communities opposed civil engineering projects. However, in many cases, village communities promoted field expansion and land improvement projects in Japan. Indeed, at the beginning of the Tokugawa period, large-scale projects by governments often promoted the establishment of close-knit rural communities. Government projects encouraged the growth of villages consisting of autonomous small households. Thereafter, villagers accumulated wealth and began carrying out civil engineering projects by themselves. In the nineteenth century, village communities played a very important role in building facilities for irrigation, drainage, and reclamation. Villagers supported or initiated water management projects by making plans, providing labor, and, sometimes, funding capital. Furthermore, the close social network encompassing villages based on the water control system helped settle disputes among several villages. Prominent figures in regional society arbitrated many conflicts outside of government courts. To examine the relationship between the development of civil engineering projects and the growth of village communities, section 2 of this chapter provides an overview of the increase in paddy acreage between the seventeenth century and the nineteenth in Japan, based on the database of civil engineering projects. Section 3 analyzes the relationship between the growth of villages and government 9

The Development of Civil Engineering Projects and Village Communities in Seventeenth- to Nineteenth-Century Japan