Meeting place - Kaishochi

Japanese: 会所地 - かいしょち

...Many of them were tenement buildings, so they were also called ura-nagaya. In the case of Edo townspeople's areas, the basic layout of the town was that in the middle of a block measuring 60 ken square, a 20-ken square vacant lot called a kaishochi was set up, and the 20-ken deep area facing the street was divided into a rectangular strip of 5-6 ken wide to be used as the house site. In the front part of each house site, about 5 ken deep along the main street, the landowner set up a store, or a relatively wealthy merchant rented land from the landowner and built a store there with his own funds, a practice known as leasing.

From [Town Allocation]

...This change in medieval Kyoto can be seen as the result of merchants and industrialists, who were the actual residents of the city, using their power to remodel the city into a two-sided town that was convenient for their activities (Figure 1, Figure 2). The town layout of Edo, the center of the early modern castle town, clearly inherited the town layout established in medieval Kyoto, with square blocks of 40 jo square and two-sided towns, and took the form of creating a town on both sides of the street, with an open space called a kaishochi (meeting place site) of 20 ken square in the center of the block of 60 ken square (39 jo), and sites of 20 ken depth arranged along the street (Figure 3). However, square blocks in early modern castle towns were limited to a few places other than Edo, such as Sunpu (Shizuoka) and Nagoya, and most were rectangular blocks without open space. ...

*Some of the terminology used in reference to "kaishochi" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

Japanese:

…多くは長屋建てであったので裏長屋とも呼ばれる。江戸町人地の場合，基本的な町割りは，京間で60間四方の街区のまん中に，会所地という20間四方の空地をとり，街路に面した奥行き20間の部分を間口5～6間の短冊形に割って屋敷地とするものである。個々の屋敷地内の，表通りに沿った，奥行き5間ほどの表部分には，地主が店舗を出すか，または，地借といって，比較的富裕な商人が地主から土地を借りて自己資金で店舗を建てた。…

【町割】より

…中世京都におけるこの変遷は，都市の実際の居住者である商工業者たちが，実力で自分たちの活動に都合のよい，両側町という町割に作り変えたとみなすことができる（図1，図2）。　近世城下町の中心である江戸の町割は，あきらかに40丈四方の正方形街区と両側町という中世京都で成立した町割を継承し，京間で60間(39丈)四方の街区中央に，20間四方の会所地（かいしよち）と呼ぶ空地をとり，街路沿いに奥行き20間の敷地を配し，街路をはさんだ両側で町を作る形態をとっている（図3）。ただ近世城下町における正方形街区は，江戸以外では駿府(静岡)，名古屋など少数に限られ，大部分は空地をとらない長方形街区である。…

※「会所地」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典第２版について | 情報

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