Abstract
Hidaka-chô, Shimukappu-mura, Shirataki-mura and Maruseppu-chô contain within their administrative boundaries mountain villages with national forest occupying more than 80 per cent of the respective areas. The villagers are also engaged in agriculture, but owing to the difference of natural conditions, they cultivate rice in Hidaka-cho, rice and other crops in Shimukappu-mura and crops other than rice in both Shirataki-mura and Maruseppu-chô. But they have been dependent upon national forest as forestry workers from old times because of their petty farming and low productivity.
In recent years, however, decrease in the quantity of forest and increase in the efficiency by mechanization of tools have resulted in a tendency that they can no longer depend sufficiently on forestry. What is worse, raw materials for sawmills began to be in short.
Nowadays, development of transportation in mountain villages has made possible for the villagers to, be in contact with towns and cities, opening their vision. The waves of moderni- zation are rushing into these mountain villages.
The more economy grows up, the more towns and cities suck up manpower of these villages. Consequently young men in the villages give up cultivating rice or working in the field and find their jobs outside the villages. Because of that, the population of mountain villages in Hokkaido recently has decreased as elsewhere in the mountain areas of Japan.
