This paper discusses about the fallowed Paddies under the goverment program for rice set-aside from the viewpoint of rural land use. They are to be not only realized explicitly as the compulsory forced-fallow by regulation, but also realized implicitly as the 'Social Fallow' because of the unsufficience of labor of their user's farms.
In Japanese rural society, there have been common sense that farmer would not have been seemed as lazy farmers. Especially, the typical index whether he is lazy or not is how carefully he endeavor to weed. Therefore, at some paddies, it was observed that farmers worked hard to weed over the minimum creteria which is stipurated on the program of rice set-aside.
However, it was also observed at some paddies that farmers substantially abondaned to maintain the condition of paddies at least to the lebel under which farmer could reversiblely re-start to grow rice after the period of fallow.
Thes phenominon can be explained as the 'Social Fallow' which is widely observed suburban areas among other advanced countries. Farms in which labor resources are unsufficient seems to get the land use of their farms extensive, besidely, to neglect the care of their fallowed paddies.
The problem is that there is the difference between elder generation and youger generation about the consiousness for the care of fallowed paddies, especially for the weeding. Elder generation tend to consider the reputation of them within the villege community and it indue them to weed carefully. But, most of them do not have their farms' successor. In future, it would be doutfull that such kinds of behavior continue to exist in modernised rural society.

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Ordinarily, when we divide a whole region into some homogeneous subregions, hierarchical cluster analysis is often used. But, applying the ordinary cluster analysis, such a division that unit districts belonging to a cluster form a subregion which is composed of only unit districts satisfying conditions necessary to characterize it about homogeneity among the unit districts set on the basis of the object of the division, cannot be realized. According to the object, there are also the divisions which have to satisfy such conditions about the homogeneity in a subregion. Then, in this paper, the author tried to devise a modified cluster analysis method which is able to realize such a division, and applied the method to the division of the 98 municipalities in San-in region from the standpoint of agricultural homogeneity.
In order to realize such a division, it become necessary to judge whether any two clusters satisfy the conditions or not in case that the two clusters are fused. If the two clusters don't satisfy the conditions, they cannot be fused. In this paper, applying such a criterion, the fusion was accomplished. Only the pairs of two clusters whose unit districts satisfy the conditions in case that the two clusters are fused become subjects of the fusion at each fusing stage of the clusters. Other fusing ways are the same with those of the ordinary cluster analysis method. Applying the method, the author divided the above 98 municipalities into 18 subregions (clusters) which satisfy the conditions set in the division.
The author also presented such a method that not only the conditions about the homogeneity but also the condition about contiguity mentioned in the previous paper can be satisfied in a division. The author divided the 98 municipalities into 25 subregions (clusters) which satisfy both kinds of the conditions, applying the method. The methods, which were devised in this paper, are important and effective if such conditions are necessary. But, the establishment of the conditions means that strict conditions are imposed on the fusing process. Then, we have to be careful that many subregions are necessary if we need many conditions among unit districts belonging to the same subregions.

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The object of this study was to clarify the characteristics of the planning process and planning methods for rural settlement adjustment plans by means of community participation using the selection system out of alternative plans. Also, it was to study conditions for materializing the selection system out of alternative plans. The basis of the method of study was an analysis of the planning process for rural adjustment plans in the Hirugaya District, Sagara Town, Shizuoka Prefecture.
1. The attributes of the inhabitants, that is the nucleus of the selection system out of alternative plans, were clarified. In particular, the characteristics of the farm households were determind for every class of farm households by scale of the farm size.
2. The planning process using the selection system out of alternative plans was analyzed. The method of decision making by inhabitant participation, the results of the evaluation, the policy of framing a plan for 7 plans from the first to the third were clarified. The decision making by participating inhabitants includes evaluation by urban residents and evaluation about every class of farm household.
3. The characteristics of planning by community participation using the selection system out of alternative plans in the Hirugaya District was analyzed. Planning by the selection system out of alternative plans has a strong point of being able to comprss and refine the actual plan.
4. The exisistence of the inhabitant leader, the dentity with the attributes of inhabitants, the role of the advocate planner, the plan presentation method, the well-known improvement method and where the discretion of the administrative organ lies are important for the selection system out of alternative plans to be materialized. 5. In the future, a comparison study is necessary concerning the method of community participation in the planning process between framing a plan by the selection system out of alternative plans on one hand and framing a plan by bottom-up approach with inhabitants' views on the other.

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The objective of the research study was to estimate factors in change of farm land area by statistical analysis. The study area covered 47 prefectures in Japan. The hypothesis was that both socio-economic and geo-natural conditions influence change of farm land area.
The results were as follows.
1) The proportions of forest area and urbanization promotion area have a highly negative correlation. Urbanization was concentrated on plain regions because of geographical features that affect urban development.
2) In the multiple regression analysis, explanatory variables were selected in terms of level of agricultural management and urban pressure. It is clear that average farm size, distance from a city, capital equipment price per unit of farm area, and construction price of primary industries related to agriculture, forestry and fisheries per unit of farm area had a significant influence on the change of farm land area.
3) We estimated the strengths of the structural relationships among variables by path analysis. The results shows that, the agricultural income increases as the distance from a city decreases, thereby restraining the reduction in farm land close to cities. However, we conjectured that average farm size is a more important factor for increasing the growth of suburban agriculture which effectively utilizes the geographical condition of close proximity to the city.

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