Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework through which recent social change of suburban communities in Japan might be viewed. For this purpose, the author reviewed the literatures on rural communities studies of some British geographers and Japanese sociologists.
As a result, the author emphasizes the neccessity to understand social changes of suburbs from the view of reorganization of the communities brought about by konju-ka and to discuss the issue relative to the current differentiation of rural areas. The konju-ka village is a type of dormitory village unique to Japan which is composed of fram and non-farm households in the suburbs. He also suggests that the following points should be considered in geographical studies on rural communities:
1) Rural areas, characterised by low population densities and extensive land uses (H. D. Clout, 1972), are considerably affected by the natural environment and the friction of distance. This fact creates different hardships in rural areas than in urban areas.
2) The assimilation of a traditional rural community into the whole society's socio-economic system results in spatial differentiation of the rural area (G. J. Lewis, 1979). The mechanism of national systematization has to be studied and clarified from a geographical point of view.
3) The Japanese village community functions not only as a neighbourhood association, but also as a geographical unit of a conserving system with a spatial territory (A. Kawamoto, 1972). Based on this definition, a village community can be viewed from three perspectives-locality, local system and human communion.
The konju-ka, the new cleavages and conflicts within the suburban community, is attributed to its geographical nature, accessibility to urban areas, and the socially and spatially complicated structure of community organization caused by a diversifying population in the village territory. Therefore rural social geography needs to conduct quantitative analyses of the differentiation of rural areas and field surveys mainly focusing on investigation of social intraction of each group within the village community located in the suburb.
