Since the second oil crisis, the structure of manufacturing industry in Japan has changed remarkably. Process industries, formerly leading sectors, have staguated, while assembly industries such as automobile and electricai machinery industries have grown and expanded rapidly. Such a restructuring of industries and macroeconomy restructuring, for example shifting from manufacturing industries to service industries, have caused the various kinds of regional problems in the cities which had specialized in manufacturing activity until the second oil crisis. It is needed to analyze the cities comprehensively which have been affected by the above restructuring process in the lower economic growth period. The purposes of this paper are (1) to clarify the spatial pattern of those cities using the index of manufacturing specialization in 1972 and 1986, and (2) to examine the chainging spatial pattern of those cities between 1972 and 1986. The author classified those cities based on the index of manufacturing specialization and the ratio of employment change in order to analyze this chainging pattern. The results are suJnrnarised as follows: (1) The cities in Tokyo Metropolitan Region and Nagoya Metropolitan Region have much specialized in manufacturing activity in 1986, while Keihanshin Metropolitan Region and Setouchi Region have declined. (2) The cities in Tokyo Metropolitan Region and Nagoya Metropolitan Region have specialized in assembly industries in accordance with the restructuring of manufac-turing, while the cities in Keihanshin Metropolitan Region and Setouchi Region have been dominated by process industries such as shipbuilding and chemical industry. The decline of manufacturing activity in the latter region has been caused by those industrial characteristics. (3) In southern Tohoku Region, the index of manufacturing specialization has tended to go upward from 1972 to 1986 due to the increasing manufacturing employment of electrical machinery. In northern Kanto Region, the number of manufacturing employment has increased, but the index of manufacturing specialization has not gone upward as southern Tohoku Region. These are caused mainly by the macroeconomy restructuring such as growing service industries in nothern Kanto Region. Some scholors said that manufacturing activity had decentralized after the second oil crisis, but this paper revealed that this activity had concentrated at eastern Japan, especially in Tokyo Metropolitan Region.
