抄録
Rural communities have come to focus on the discussion on the agricultural policies and the rural policies in hilly and mountainous areas. But the research is not making good progress on the community itself. There are extremely few researches that analyze what characteristics the communities have and how they are changing. We can refer to the Census of rural community conducted by the MAFF, The data in this census are effective for the purpose of this kind of analysis.
This research catches the dynamics and the present state of communities in hilly and mountainous areas in Yamaguchi Prefecture, a paddy field region where the aging process is in a relatively advanced stage in Japan.
The conclusions are as follows:
1. It is confirmed according to the statistics that the degradation of “inhabitant, land and community” is going on. Especially there is seen recently a new tendency of extinct communities.
2. The activity in a hamlet is dependent on the population. Especially the population from 30 to 64 years old (the primary-age population) relates closely to the vitality in a hamlet. One of the problems caused is that activities related especially to agricultural production become depressed in the hamlets where the primary-population has decreased considerably due to population drain to urban areas.
3. In short, the policies for hilly and mountainous areas should target the “small-scale hamlets” of low-rate prime-population.
