廣戸風被害地域の地域的特質

抄録

The district which suffers from“ Hirodokaze” is the norhern part of Katsuda-gun in Okayama Prefecture. With Nagi fault scarp on the north, it has wavy geographical features. “Hirodokaze” frequently breaks out when a typhoon proceeds eastward off the coast of Shikoku, and sometimes the north wind blows at a velocity of even 50 metres a second. The season of this wind chiefly being August, September and October, it is likely that a great deal of damage is to be done to the rice-plants. As a matter of fact, according to the materials in recent times, there have been not a few villages where more than 30% of the rice-plants were suffered, and 79% if damage both from a drought and from a chill is taken into account. As the mediate cause of the revolt of peasants in Mimasaku (name of district in the east part of Okayama Prefecture), which has often occurred in Modern Age, it can not be ignored that the peasants burst out against the ruler the grim realities of their lives which damage from wind had brought about.
Then, how people today are taking measure to cope with such terrible damage from wind? They select and set out the seedlings of early growing such as “Takeda” and “Norin-22” so that they will have come into flower by the typhoon season. At the place especially windy, other kinds, of rice-plants than “Takeda” are used lest they should suffer much from falling of unhulled rice. It has a strict connection with the wind that besides rice-crop are raised in the district tea and apples which are expected to be forwarded early. In order to protect houses from the wind, they are surrounded by windbreaks made of camellia, pine-tree, bamboo, Japan cypress and others. We call these windbreaks “Kose”. There are also many houses enclosed with earthen ramparts instead of “Kose”. At the base of a mountain, people make use of natural thickets as “Kose”, and there are not a few cases that the word “Kose” has become the name of a place at the foot of a mountain.
Old settlements are mostly located at where a wind does not blow hard, namely at the base of a mountain or at the southern foot of a hill. It is a general tendency that they form agglomerated settlements, and houses stand abreast from east to west. The settlement newly born along the highway which extends east and west is a Strassendorf, and has a series of windbreaks and earthen ramparts on the northern side of street.