[in Japanese]

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To begin, the study of regional planning is defined. The idea is not an abstract one confined to absolutes but one that has relative and variable characteristics based on every-day life. Regional planning aims to create the spaces that involve the every-day life of the inhabitants. It must promote the creativity of each person within the regional characteristics. This creativity grows with the relation between individuality and collectivity in every-day life. This idea, developing from the variable forming process of human character, makes regional planning more human.
Analytical modern science lacks human character. With modern science it is difficult to respect the inhabitants' own planning and their every-day life. So an integrated science must be established instead of modern science. However, the present state where the methodology is chaotic makes the study of every-day life difficult, for only precise analysis is valued and the functional grasp has fallen into functionalism.
Therefore, cybernetics and behavioural science are taken up, which are not based on the doctrine of elements. The results of each theory depend on its future practice as purposeful and practical science. Their ideas, wisely used, will produce human value.
To achieve this, true academic co-operation is required, which differs from so-called inter-disciplinary study. The learned societies can have a significant role to play in this process.
This kind of science evolves through the introduction of technology into the every-day activities of human beings. Hence, such a system is required to bring about the independent existence of people based on each particular area, having close connection with administration but without systematic control.

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Each rural area has a particular character depending on the resources, such as water or land, which control the activity and the existence of the inhabitants in the area. The distinguishing trait of the regional resources in Japan is its open and inter-dependent structure.
In the latter period of the Edo era, suburban villages had good connections with cities in the exchange of regional resources, and the balance of regional resources as well as ecology was kept over quite a large area. This was mainly due to the water circulation which brought effective environmental conservation because of its natural selfpurification. It could be said that the structure of regional resources at that time was formed so as to encourage a natural purification of the environment.
Agricultural productivity has risen along with increased mechanization and chemicalization which have definitely changed the balance of regional resources in rural and suburban areas . In this process, water use in rural areas has tended to lose its multi-functional character including irrigation, drinking, washing, fire-extinguishing, snowmelting, etc. The most important point is that the separation of the functions has been incomplete .
The author pointed out the necessity of recombining certain functions of water use in rural and suburban areas. Those are recombinations between:
1) village drainage and irrigation
2) water quality management and water quantity management
3) water use ordering and land use ordering
4) activities of farmers and non-Laming inhabitants.
Nowadays, water development is entering into “the stage of limitation”. We should take it into consideration when we discuss planning for rural and suburban areas

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In recent years the people in upland areas and their local governments have claimed that the waterusers downstream should take a certain financial responsibility for the improvement of the forested watershed. Corresponding to their demands, such cost sharing schemes as the “Forested Watershed Fund” have been introduced in several regions. Japan has a long history of similar systems in which the water users were involved in various ways, reflecting repeated conflict and co-operation between the people living upstream and those downstream. The purpose of this paper is to retrace the trends, and to pursue some characteristics of the current cost sharing schemes in an historical perspective.

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Water is closely related to and indispensable for the living environment. This is true for both urban and rural areas. People are eager to live in sunny and well-drained places with clean and plentiful water resources. In the case of unsatisfactory environments, efforts have been made to devise new technology to improve them. Therefore, present rural settlements are themselves the accumulated results of past effort.
Rapid modernization caused drastic changes in the physical and social structure of settlements. As a result, residents were unable to adapt themselves to the new changes and failed to manage their environment by themselves. Therefore central and local government have partly taken the initiative and provided facilities to improve the environment.
Rural planning should fully grasp present problems and provide a comprehensive prescription for the long term future of rural areas. In this report the following are described:
1) present water problems in the living environment
2) measures for water management and their effectiveness
3) hard-ware and soft-ware of water management. In considering water planning, emphasis is given to the necessity for comprehensive environmental planning and management in which water planning plays a part.

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Each individual place within our regional landscape has its own character and integrity. The main element is water, which is a major force in our regional landscape. Our landscape images stem from the countryside where not only physical images of rice fields are remembered, but also a strong feeling of place. To design today's water planes we extract these past images of water, and also think not only of the quantity, quality and form of water, but also the subtle ecological factors involved.

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[in Japanese]

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