The purposes of this paper are to make clear the population change during 25 years from 1955 to 1980 and estimate the future population of 7 heavy snowing mountainous secluded, and kaso (depopulated) areas in Akita Prefecture.
The findings can be summarized as follows.
1) Depopulation of those areas resulted mainly from the migration of the unmarried young people between the ages of 16 to 24 into the metropolitan districts.
2) The rates of the population decrease of those areas range from 43 to 25 percents.
3) Crude birth rates declined on the whole conspicuously until 1970 but those of only 5 areas, Higashiyuri, Chokai, Ugo, Sannai and Higashinaruse, indicated rising curves partly due to the increase of net-inmigration from other areas and partly due to the upward trend of fertility of women.
4) Both the outflow of the young and the deminution of crude birth rate disturbed the shape of the population pyramid in each area.
5) The future trend of the population change seems to show slight increase in some parts and the stagnation in the other.
6) The estimated composition of the population by age in 1987 and 1993, constricted in two generations of 20 to 30 and 40 to 50 of age, take shape of a cloud caused by an atomic explosion, showing a higher ratio of old age groups.
