Previous studies of the traditional Chinese landowner-tenant relationship generally took one of three perspectives known as the ethical perspective, the class perspective, or the economic perspective. However, each of these perspectives only concentrated on one facet of the landowner-tenant relationship. Furthermore, due to the limitations of the historical data, previous studies merely emphasized kangzu incidents as the main form of landowner-tenant disputes. In this paper the author uses the Ba county archive to analyze many lawsuits over rents between landowners and tenants. He thereby finds that kangzu cases only constitute an extremely small proportion of the whole while the vast majority of cases are qianzu 欠租, kenzu 掯租, and pianzu 租租 in villages of Ba county during the Tonzhi era. He then analyzes actual contents of the four types of rent disputes, thereby demonstrating that qianzu means the arrears of rents, kenzu means arrears of rents with inadequate reason, pianzu means refusal to pay rent using a fabrication, and kangzu means the refusal to pay rent and the denial of validity of the rent. Although these distinctions among the four types were meaningful to the people at that time, they may have been ignored in scholarship heretofore. Therefore, we must adopt a new viewpoint in our studies in order to understand the importance and significance of these distinctions. In this paper, the author examines subjective consciousness of the landownertenant relationship at that time in order to establish a new viewpoint from which to study the traditional landowner-tenant relationship in China. He thereby demonstrates that everyone whether landowner, tenant, neighbors and administrative officers commonly interpreted landowner-tenant relationships as a kind of zhu-ke (host and guest) relationships and dealt with related disputes in terms of zhu-ke relationship in Ba county during the Tongzhi era. In a word, a landowner (zhu) and a tenant (ke) understood and conducted affairs concerning landowner-tenant relationship such as payment of rent, reduction of and exemption from rent, and warnings under the ethical rules of the zhu-ke relationship. Then, when viewed from the perspective of the zhu-ke relationship, we can understand the distinctions among the four types and various aspects of landownertenant relationships. Regarding the landowner-tenant relationship as zhu-ke relationship is based on the specific history and society of Ba county during the Qing era, but it may also present a new viewpoint from which to understand social relationships in China after the early modern period., 特集 : 「巴縣檔案」に見る淸代社會と地方行政, Special Edition : Society and Local Administration in the Qing Era as Seen from the Ba County Archive