Recently, Japanese rural policy has imagined such communities where people with different backgrounds (i. e. villagers and newcomers) live together and manage the comfortable “countryside landscape”. However, the actual ways to build such communities are still inexplicit. This paper, taking a case from rurban community in Shiga Prefecture, considers the process of community organization from the angle of social consciousness and behavior.
The outcomes of survey have hypothetically revealed the following two points as conditions for the community organization.
1) Socialization of Newcomers: Newcomers to village community are apt to make trouble with villagers especially at the initial period of residence. Once the trouble has taken place, it leaves a long-term residue of hard relationship between them. A critical factor for avoiding such a trouble and smoothing adaptation of newcomers is “leaning” of preliminary knowledge on village customs.
2) Networking on Environmental Management: The influential newcomers may promptly adopt the current concets on rural environment, such as “countryside landscape”, but they are not experienced in carrying the concepts into cooperative practice. By contrast, the village influentials take temporizing measures to manage the local environment in traditional ways by mobilizing localite social relationship. Thus the existence of “linkers”, who combine the concepts of influential newcomers with the experience of village influentials, could be a critical matter for the organization of “countryside community”.

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This study was accomplished on the method of the low-level land suitability classification (LLLSC), called “Hichi-Bunkyu”, in which a land is classified into one of the 4 land utilization types with a view to the rational land use planning in rural villages. The concept of 4 land utilization types is as follows: i) “Sangyo-nouchi”, which is agricultural land suitable for large-sized agricultural machines, and aims at to the economical returns for such farmers, as ones with an enterprise farming system and a profession farming system. ii) “Hi-sangyo-nochi”. means agricultural land which gives plesure of being a farmer for a person living in city, a retired person, and a farmer with a side job who produces the foods for himself. iii) “Sisetsu-youchi”, is a land for houses, public facilities, rural factories, and village infrastructures. iv) “Seitaikei·Amenity-youchi”, is the important functional land for conservation of the nature, environment, landscape, and ecology, as well as the amenity in the rural area.
The results obtained in this study are summarized as follows;
1) Land use suitability of Sangyo-nouchi is high in the place where land size is large and agricultural lands concentrate. It shows a mass and collective characteristics of Sangyo-nouchi.
2) However, Hi-sangyo-nouchi has high landuse suitability in the place where land size is relatively small and close to residental areas. The suitable lands of Hi-sangyo-nouchi are scattered as compared with lands suitable for other uses.
3) Sisetsu-youchi shows high land use suitability in areas presently used for residences, factories, public facilities, and areas close to these categories. The land use suitability of Sisetsu-youchi has almost the opposite trends in comparison with that of Sangyo-nouchi and Hi-sangyo-nouchi.
4) Land use suitability of Seitaikei·Amenity-youchi is found to be high in the forest, wasts lands, fruit farms, and houses which have woods and surrounded by forests. The land suitable for Seitaikei·Amenity tends to be found also appropriate for otheruses (Sangyo-nouchi, Hi-sangyo-nouchi and Sisetsu-youchi) .

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Recently, fallowed paddy fields which spoil pastoral landscape, have been increasing under abjustment policies of rice production. And so some local governments are propeling paddy field diversion programs by planting ornamental crops, such as Cosmos and Chinese Milk Vetch, with a view to disolve fallowed paddy fields and to improve landscape.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate economic benefits of the programs, and to make clear how to propele the programs. If governments don't subsidize planting ornamental crops, no farmer will plant them, because those don't make farm produce sales profit. But ornamental crops improve landscape. Those are to say public goods. Therefore, if the values of benefits are more than social costs (expenditures of governments and cultivating costs of ornamental crops), social welfear will progress.
We subjected the six of aglicultulal distrits, where the programs were carried out by planting Cosmos in about 05 ha of grouped paddy fields. We have practiced questionnaire surveyes to residents whose living sphere included paddy fields of Cosmos.
The results are as follows. Firstly, we have estimated the values of benefits for residents by Contingent Valuation Method. The mean willingness to pay has been estimated at about ¥800-¥1, 200 per household in each districts. In four of urbanized agricultural districts, the values of benefits per district have been estimated at over If 220, 000-¥370, 000, and the values per 0.1 ha at over ¥40, 000-¥70, 000. These results would be one of standards for expenditures of governments, in urbanized agricultural districts. But in two of rural agricultural districts, estimated values of benefits were lower because of less population.
Secondly, we have discussed how to propele the programs. The programs were planned by governments and carried out by some farmers. But in order to get higher benefits, all residents should participate in planning and carrying out the programs. The rate of respondens who answer “Planting ornamental crops must be managed by governments” represented 58%, but “by all residents” represented 21%. This indicates the necessity of consciousness of residents for participating in pastoral landscape management.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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