Abstract
This paper aims to make clear the conditions of maintaining rural spaces, classifying rural spaces byanalyzing the changes of the situation of maintaining rural spaces. We surveyed with hearing, mapping, sketching, collecting materials at two villages in‘Yabu’town in Hyogo prefecture.
As a result, these following points are made clear:
(1) The level of maintaining condition of the area around cultivation fields, which are not abandoned, isgenerally going down. (2) There are some areas that they maintain cultivation fields but they stop maintain-ing their surrounding spaces. Such cases are shown next to the abandon cultivation fields. (3) Raising cowhas important roles in maintaining village spaces. For example, in 1955, farmer cut grasses for food ofcows, cows eat grasses by themselves and step on grasses, and now raising cows make demand of newland use in stead of rice fields. (4) The area that maintenance works were stopped is expanding firstly fromthe mountainous area to the flat area, secondly from the flat area farthest from houses to the residentialarea. These results are caused by the geographical condition, aging, farm product damage by beast inoutside mountainous area. (5) The maintenance works are mostly composed of cutting grasses. (6) Cooperativeworks have been decreasing and have been settled in individual works since 1955. Then, individual thoughtsand consciousness influence the situation of maintenance.
