An Inquiry into Mahito

What did it mean to occupy an intermediate place in Japan’s historical social order? Kita Sadakichi approaches the question through mahito, a designation whose written characters, pronunciations, and applications changed across the centuries. His inquiry follows connections among hereditary service groups, household servants, religious mendicants, funeral workers, and peasants.

Early chronicles and genealogies stand beside poems, court diaries, village registers, and reports from regional scholars. Reading these materials closely, Kita compares rival explanations of words and asks how property, labor obligations, custom, and official registration shaped people’s status. He repeatedly distinguishes a proposed derivation from the evidence on which it rests.

Published in 1924, this essay offers a period study of social organization and historical language. This complete English translation preserves the documentary quotations, four poems, numerical records, and concluding argument. Notes explain technical terms, historical dates, textual uncertainties, and discriminatory terminology or contested theories in the original. AI-assisted translation.