わが国における山村問題の現状とその地域的性格

計量的手法による考察

抄録

This paper presents a preliminary assessment of the nature and extent of rural deprivation in mountainous areas of Japan. In recent years the scope of British rural geography has broadened into social problems and planning and a special emphasis has been placed on deprivation in rural areas. In mountainous areas of Japan, typical regional depression has progressed for the last thirty years, that is, restricted job opportunities, low income, a higher rate of aged population and above all serious depopulation. So most of these areas have been designated as ‘problem areas’ (KASO areas or development mountain villages) by the Central Government. For examining key aspects of such problem areas, it seems appropriate to adopt a welfare approach based on the concept of deprivation. But from this point of view, little research has been carried out. Therefore this study attempts to establish the fundamental dimensions of deprivation and to classify mountain villages based on the spatial variation of deprivation. The former was analysed through the use of principal component analysis and the latter was achieved by a cluster analysis (Ward's method). Local authority areas (shi, cho, son) are used as the areal framework and 683 mountain villages were selected for this analysis. The results obtained are summarized as follows:
1. As a result of the principal component analysis of deprivation characteristics (36 variables, shown in Table 1) in 1980, the author extracted eight components (cumulative percentage of the total variance, 66.0%), all of which had eigenvalues of over unity (Table 2). The character of the components is indicated in Table 3. The first four components represent social and economic dimensions and the other four components explain the living conditions. The major four components could be termed as follows: the level of aging of the society (eigenvalue; 7.8, Percentage of the total variance explained; 21.8%), the trend of depopulation (KASOKA) (4.0, 11.0%), the condition of occupation and household economy (3.7, 10.3%), the level of employment opportunity and income (2.6, 7.2%). This result suggests that the most important factor of deprivation in mountainous areas is the increase of aged population and its effects on mountain village society.
2. The spatial patterns of deprivation were clarified by a typology of mountain villages based on the first four components. Six types were derived from a cluster analysis (Fig.3, Fig.4, Fig.5). The spatial patterns of these types were explained from two points of view. One is the contrast of Eastern and Western Japan produced in relation to the extent of depopulation, the other is the center-periphery relation which is concerned with the regional imbalance of the national economy (Fig. 7).
3. From the spatial variations obtained above, it became clear that rural deprivation in mountainous areas of Japan can be classified into eight regional types: 1) metropolitan region-type, 2) surrounding areas of metropolitan region-type, 3) Tohoku-type, 4) Chugoku mountains-type, 5) northern Tohoku-type, 6) outer belt of south west Japan-type, 7) Kyushu-type, 8) Hokkaido-type.