Abstract
Before the World War II, among Japanese cities ranking high in population there was a large gap between the so-called six large cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama, and Kobe and other smaller cities. Concerning the central functions, the central cities in the broad region beyond the prefectural area had not developed except Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. But Hiroshima and Sendai had partly those functions.
After the World War II, Japanese economy has developed strikingly and economical system of Japan has become larger in scale than before. Consequently, the secondary and tertiary industrial populations have increased gradually. As the results of the population concentration into such cities as Fukuoka, Sapporo, Hiroshima, Sendai, these cities have developed as the center of the large region besides the above cities. Among these cities, the development of Fukuoka and Sapporo are especially rema rkable, which were smaller than Hiroshima and Sendai before the World War II. Fukuoka has gained superiority in conpetition .for establishing the center of the large region in Kyushu. The central functions in Kyushu were dispersed in Fukuoka, Kumamo to and Nagasaki by the historical inertia from the feudal age. On the other hand, the cent ralfunctions in Hokkaido had remove from South to north withthe progress of frontier settlements, and the central city in Hokkaido was transfered from Hakodate to Otaru and then to Sapporo.
The development of these center of large region indicates that the present prefectural system is no more fitted for the actual condition of the regions and the prefectural system must be transformed to that matched to the large regional system.
