Abstract
The aims of this paper are to identify inter-prefectural migration patterns, and extract “migration field” which are defined as joint origin destination regions of migraion.
Data for the study were taken from the Resident Registration data published by the Bureau of Statistics, Office of the Prime Minister, Japan. The data are expressed in the from of 46×46 origin-destination migration matrix.
Study period in the study is in 1971-80, and divided into three periods, that is, 1971-72, 1973-75, and 1976-80 (see Table 1).
Factor analysis were applied to reduce theabove-mentioned migration (OD) matrix to its underlying dimentions, representing regional groups of places (prefectures) treated as destinations and origins.
The results are shown in Fig. 1 and Table 6. They are summarized as follows:
Through all the periods, Eastern Japan field and Western Japan field were two major patterns of inter-prefectural migration in Japan. But, Western Japan field is weakening its influence contrary to the growing of Kyushu field, Hanshin-Sanyo field and Chugoku field.
Consequently, in the above mentioned period, it became clear that the migration fields in Japan were in reconstructing process.
