交通地理の方法

J.G. KohlからA. Hettnerまで

抄録

Transportation is one of spectacular phenomena on the earth surface. Such being the case, it is uncommon to pass without saying anything about it at geographical study of various regions. Particularly in our country, specialists in transportation geography are few and even less methodological works in this line had been published. Therefore, it may be necessary for us to treat the true nature of transpotation geography and examine it from a pure theoretical standpoint. I have tried to throw light upon this theme in making comparative study among several methodologies of representative experts such as Kohl, Ratzel, Vidal de la Blache, Hassert and Hettner.
J.G. Kohl is known as the founder of transportation geography for his famous lifework which was published at Dresden in 1841. He had for the first time systematically grasped the regional features of the transport phenomenon as a whole, in conformity with its correlation to the physical environment, and then followed up his study on the mutual location between the transport route and the settlement, believing that these two factors make up both sides of the shield in human life. Having scrutinized every environmental conditions in transportation, he came to express with confidence, already about 80 years before the airplane invention, that the most favourable transport route would find itself in the high layer of the atmosphere in the future. It is his unique process to treat deductively the theoretical location and formation of routenets and settlements, with exemplification of a lot of geometrical figures.
Friedrich Ratzel took the transportation for a sort of “historical movement” which is the fundamental conception of his geographical thought, and looked with special attention at the correlation between the ever moving human being and the fixed earth. He also pointed out the existence of the “geographical restriction” from the fact that a steady continuity of the routes' location is taken notice of there, in spite of the everlasting development of the transportation efficiency and means. Furthermore he looked on the transportation as “a conqueror of distance”; so his principal concern had been focussed to confirm how the transportation time was shortened at a certain space in examining the effect of the technical transport improvements.
It is well-known fact that Ratzel's theory had not been met with warm acceptance in Germany and English-speaking countries, yet it was a little bit another story in France.
P. Vidal de la Blache, leader of French school of geography, together with many other historians and sociologists, started to criticize Ratzelian thoughts, and in such process the standpoint of geographic possibilism against the Ratzelian determinism is said to have been built up; peculiarity of Vidal's method is its historico-geographical comprehension of the transport. He noticed that many Eurasian folded mountains would not to be overcome without utilizing of the vital transport spots: “gates”, as ancient geographers termed them, and such recognition got him to hit upon the “principle of continuity”. In addition, he took up the origin of transport animals and vehicles in various lands all over the world, and then the functional correlation between railways and modern roads.
K. Hassert was Ratzel's disciple. His method was influenced by his master on the one hand, but at the same time he paid particular attention to the theories of national economists on the other hand. In his two-volumes lifework, a comprehensive survey of past transportation geographical researches, there are found detailed explanations of the transport on roads, railways, inland water ways and ocean routes in various regions on all over the earth surface in close touch with each environmental conditions and regional characteristics.