The Chichibu System, the Palaeozoic formations in Japan, is the chief and fundamental constituent of the Japanese Islands, being a thick series of geosynclinal deposits. The main part of the System is of Permian and Upper Carboniferous, and pre-Upper Carboniferous rocks are extremely rare. The oldest formations are of Silurian, and are known from several places in 3 provinces, i.e. 1) the South ern-Kitakami Mountainland, 2) the Hida Mountainland, and 3) the Chichibu Terrain of Southwestern-Japan (numerals 1〜13 in the figure on page 2). However, they always occur as small patches or blocks, and their relations to the basement rocks are unknown, except the case of Naradani area, where some geologists insist on an unconformable relation to the Hida Metamorphic Rocks. The Palaeozoic rocks, in some parts, have been changed into gneisses or crystalline schists, and they make the backbone of the Islands. There are, however, certain rocks which are expected by some geologists to be of pre-Silurian, but are regarded by others as merely metamorphic equivalents of the Chichibu System. Among them, the Hida Metamorphic Rocks occur in the Hida Mountainland as several isolated masses (in black in the figure) rather extensively, and the area is encircled by a tectonic line, called the Hida Zone, in which the fossiliferous Silurian rocks of this province are intermingled. The Terano Metamorphic Rocks, another one of them, occur in the Kurosegawa Zone, also an important tectonic line in Southwestern Japan, together with the Silurian rocks of this province. Here, the two kinds of rocks are found somewhat like xenoliths in or at the margin of small, lenticular granite masses. In both provinces, the differrence in grade of metamorphism between the metamorphic rocks and the Silurian is remarkable. The Editorial Committee of the present Journal asked some fifteen geologists and geophysicists, how they think of the basement of the Chichibu System. Certain special requirements were added, at the same time, for each person, according to his speciality in the field of study. Thus the Committee had eleven answers, which were reproduced on the preceding pages. The authors and the titles of these papers are as the following.
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