Throughout eastern and southern Asia the village stands in a position of critical but often unacknowledged importance. It provides the residence and social focus for an overwhelming proportion of the people living in those parts of the continent lying east of Afghanistan and south of the Soviet borders—perhaps some 72 per cent of the total, or roughly 900,000,000 persons. Or, if only the regions specifically under examination in this symposium—Japan, India, Java, and the Philippine Islands—are taken into account, it will be discovered that some 62, 83, 80, and 75 per cent of their respective populations reside in villages.2 When one speaks of village government or politics in eastern or southern Asia then, a vast preponderance of the area's total population is involved.