Mitsugaichi is the name of a place situated in the present Hiwa-cho, Hiba-gun, Hiroshima Prefecture. Around this area, the people have engaged in agriculture by using water of the irrigation ponds for a long time. At the same time, taking iron out of sand was extensively carried on in that area and the place out of which the sand was taken came to be exploited as rice fields.
Miyaza was an organization to keep the festivals of the communities and the organization consisted of the influential men who possessed the special land in the 16th century. The people except them could not participate in the festival activities planning and had little voice in the community politics. This kind of the closed society kept on being reformed little by little, but Miyaza, after all, existed during 17th and 18th centuries.
In the 19th century, Japan began to be modernized speedily and the feudal customs of the communities also began to be reformed, but it was not enough. It was because there were some historical and geographical reasons.
The system of the land ownership, the most important system of the farm villages, was transformed by the farm-land reform after World War II, and the various customs also ceased to exist or was transformed.
I intend to make clear in this paper paying attention to the old documents and the people's customs how Miyaza which have been carried on by the people of Mitsugaichi have changed.