| 抄録（英文） | 労働科学 44巻 4号（1968)
J. Science of Labour Vol. 44, No. 4
UDC 631.1:631.35:631.56
水稲作における収穫労働過程の機械化と問題点
大橋一雄＊
MECHANIZATION OF HARVESTING PROCESS IN
RICE FARMING IN JAPAN
By
Kazuo OHASHI＊
The progress made in the harvesting process of rice farming is outlined and some problems to be solved are pointed out in this paper.
1) The harvesting process including various kinds of work can be divided into 3 stages, (1) reaping, (2) drying and (3) threshing.
2) Historical review of the harvesting process discloses the steps of progress in the past years.
a) The primitive era: The ears of rice were picked. The method of drying remains yet unknown. The ears were pounded with a pestle in a mortar to thresh, hull and polish at once.
b) The ancient times: Besides picking the ears, cutting the stems at the bottom with a sickle was also made. (Nara era) It means the separation of reaping and threshing.
c) The medieval times: Reaping was popularized. Hanging the paddy on paddy racks to dry began in this era. (Beginning of Heian era) Regarding the tool of threshing in this era, nothing is known. But the work of “ threshing ” is found in many documents. The working process of reaping → drying→ threshing was formulated in this era.
d) The first half of recent times: The procedure of reaping was standardized to reaping near the root and threshing was made by threshing sticks. It is also known that threshing tubes were used.
e) The latter half of recent times: The threshing comb came into use. It was made of bamboo in the early stage, but iron one was used in latter years. Reaping with a sickle and threshing by the threshing comb after drying became thereafter the conventional procedure and continued through Meiji era.
f) The modern ages: Meiji era can be said to be the era of improvement of threshing comb. Efforts were also made in devising the threshing machine. The pedalling thresher was popularized allover the country at the beginning of Taisho era. It developed into the motor-driven thresher. The improvement of the efficiency of thresher was made just in the modern times to develop it into a machine of complicated operations.
3) The above-mentioned progress in harvesting process was made in more than 1.000 years from the medieval times to the present, but it involves only improvements of threshing tools. Since reaping near the roots remained unchanged, the development of threshing tools was made in a way specific way to this country. The reason why is that the straw had been used in making packing materials such as straw-bags and straw-rope. It seems even now to be difficult to get away of such procedures.
4) The device of threshing comb was epoch-making in the improvement of threshing efficiency, and it was once called “ goke – taoshi ” to mean a surprising tool for widows. The device of pedalling thresher was far more astonishing. In the stage up to the ages of threshing comb, the paddy was moved against the settled tools, while in case of pedalling thresher, threshing was made by holding the paddy at a rotating machine. In such a way, work load of farmers was markedly reduced.
5) The efficiency of motor-thresher has been markedly raised, and the use of motor-thresher of automatic feeding is now being popularized allover the country. However, in spite of marked rise of the efficiency as an operating machine, size of the bundle of paddy has remained unchanged. In other words, the improvement of efficiency was made by speeding up of threshing without changing the size of bundles to be treated. In fact, large bundles can not easily be dried.
6) The shortage in agricultural labour force in recent years is urging the mechanization of harvesting process. Divergent machines such as combines of large or small size, binder, reaper, drier and so on are now appearing in the market one after another. If innovations are made in the conventional harvesting process of reaping, drying and threshing, the drying of paddy can be left out and only the drying of unhulled rice will be made. That means the abolition of natural drying and the popularization of drying by machine. Such a consideration gives us a hint at the importance of rationalization of drying for the progress in harvesting process of cereal in general.
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労働科学研究所・経済学研究部・農業労働研究室
Lab. of Agricultural Labour, Division of Economics, Institute for Science of Labour |
