Quantitative analyses of rural areas at the sub-municipal scale are extremely scarce at present. The most important reason for this is a low correspondence between the territories of enumeration districts (chosaku) and basic unit blocks (kihon tan’iku) in the population census and those of agricultural settlements (nogyoshuraku) in the agriculture census.
The author examined the potential complementary use of population and agricultural data at the sub-municipal scale and presented possible uses as developed by statistical analysis of a pilot case study. Sakuno (2011) suggested that territories of enumeration districts, basic unit blocks, and agricultural settlements in Tohoku relatively correspond at the section (oaza) level. Grounded on his suggestion, the author performed a case study based on Yamagata Village (referred to as the Yamagata district of Kuji City, after its amalgamation with Kuji), a largely depopulated mountain village in the Tohoku region.
First, the degree of territorial correspondence between population and agriculture censuses in Yamagata was examined using a geographical information system (GIS), and the author concluded that longitudinal analysis at the section scale of data from 1970 was possible. Time-series analysis of the population census at the enumeration district scale is also available using 1960–1985 data.
The author’s quantitative analysis of Yamagata using these sub-municipal statistics allows for more exact and abundant descriptions and analysis than those of existing studies. Specifically, the following conclusions were drawn:
1) This study clarified the quantitative relations between dekasegi seasonal migration, out-migration, and agricultural production conditions in the 1960s when the former two were at their peaks. The results of this study clearly showed that, if agricultural conditions were hard, even the main (key) settlements faced severe depopulation and a drastic increase in dekasegi at that time.
2) In the early 1970s, construction jobs created by the rise in volume of public works spread on a narrower geographical scale than municipalities or sections. At first, their coverage was limited to within enumeration districts containing the contractors’ main office and their managers’ communities.
3) Since the late 1990s, after the amalgamation with Kuji City, depopulation of the central (key) settlement of Kawai, where most of the public facilities are concentrated, accelerated at least as much as in other sections of the district. This was mainly because of the non-replenishment of retiring officials in Yamagata and the fact that officials of amalgamated Kuji tended to live in central Kuji owing to regular job relocations within the entire Kuji territory.
These findings show a great potential for much deeper understanding of rural areas and the need for more systemic studies.
