The purpose of this paper is to examine the recent demographic changes in local small cities in Japan in these 30 years and to discuss their causes from the viewpoints of industrial structure, social status and urbanization. Population in local small city regions has either decreased or been stable over these 30 years. General trend of decadal population change was characterized by sharp decrease in 1960s, small increase in 1970s, and stableness in 1980s. The spatial distribution of the regional demographic change represents Japanese core-periphery structure. Increasing population is common in the core regions while population decreases in peripheral regions. However, in single-industrial towns or local industrial towns, the population decrease has been accelerated gradually. Today, the positive correlation of population change between core cities and the rural areas surrounding the cities is high in general. However, if we distinguish growing cities form declining ones, positive correlation between the city and surrounding area is not clear in the former group, and its high in the later group. Population has increased in most industrial cities, while most commercial cities lost their population. When economic activity in the cities went under depression, the increase in industrial cities is decelerated and the decrease in commercial cities is accelerated. In the local small cities, the basic industries are usually primary industry, manufacturing, retailing and consumer service industries. The positive correlation between the occupation rate of manufacturing industry and population change is high. Positive correlation of population change to occupation rate of retailing and consumer service industries is clear but not so high as that to the occupation rate of manufacturing industry. On the other hand, the correlation between the occupation rate of primary industries and population change is not remarkable. Wholesaling and producer service industries are very minor in local small cities and the correlation between those occupation rate in a local small city and population change is low as well. Demographic status is one of the decisive factors for their population change in local small cities. Younger population has a positive correlation, aged and woman has high negative correlation to the population change. Emigration of younger generation raises the ratio of aged and woman population. It is important for local small cities to bar the younger generation from emigration and to let the emigrated return to the cities in order to maintain or to increase their population.
