I am very pleased that “Studies of Land Classification” has been discussed with much interest among agricultural researchers over the last 10 years. Especially Prof. NAGASAKI and KITAMURA's book titled “Studies of Land Classification” published by University of Tokyo is informative on this subject. I would like to comment on this research field in the light of my own experience.
Following my experience, it is not so meaningful to seek the single aim and single method of analizing land classification research. “Land Classification” itself has a very broad meaning and we can approach it from many directions. So if we seek a single and integrated aim and method, we will lose the real and important results of land classification studies. The important thing might be that researchers of land classification should know clearly that every research field has its own aim. At the biginning of land classification research there is an aim, not a method.
Many discussions appear in this book concerning economic land classification, and I expect some may have reservations about economic land classification. As I write in this paper, at one glance, economic land classification cannot be thought as the category of land classification which many land scientists think it to be. Economic land classification has its own special history in U.S.A. But, I understand its ultimate aim is the interpretation of concept and component of land productivity in perms of economics in soil science.

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A traditional rural community with newcomers is a transitional form before it develops into a mature community. If the old and new rules are integrated, and the old and new residents understand and accept each other, this mixture will become a community of harmony. Of late, this new form of community has been spreading all over the country as people have started showing favourable attitudes towards agriculture and rural areas.
For the three years 1981 to 1983, our team conducted surveys in three local authorities: Kakegawa in Shizuoka prefecture, Inazawa in Aichi prefecture and Shinjo in Nara prefecture, and the results conformed that noted above. The common feature which was found in these three study areas is residents' positive attitudes towards changing themselves, in order to make their community more active and more co-operative, rather than being just a cluster of people living together.
This positive attitude leads to the organisation of new events. Creating new events therefore will be a very important device to make the mixed community a community of harmony.

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In order to protect agricultural land and establish the land use order in urbanized rural areas, we should make an appropriate land use plan based not only on land use suitability but also on the wishes of farmers who own the land. Otherwise the planned conversion of agricultural land to urban use cannot be achieved, and the confusion of land use will be advanced further.
The results of a questionnaire survey of farmers living in the urbanized rural areas of Osaka and Kyoto show that farmers wish to own and cultivate agricultural land which is at least 20-30 ares in size, close to home, with high potential for agricultural production. On the other hand, agricultural land they wish to sell or divert to urban use within the next ten years is only about5 ares in size, far from home, with low potential for production.
The author, by using the rural district of Seika municipal town as an example, developed a planmaking method for land use, integrating both the farmers' wishes as well as the land use suitability. Some problems of the land suitability classification for land use planning are also discussed with a suggestion for a new land classification method which takes into account the effects of landconsolida-tion.

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The mixed residence area-mixture of farmers and non-farmers-has been spreading in Japanese rural areas as a result of modernization and industrialization. In this mixed community, the household economy has been stabilized through the increase in non-agricultural income. Today, therefore, living conditions in this new form of community is improving relative to the crowded towns in terms of the environmental and cultural conditions. People living in these areas hope to keep their environment and culture intact, or strengthen their qualities.
This “urbanization of Japan” has been proceeding right into the local provinces, and the moderni-zation and industrialization of rural areas are advancing further. This has led to the increase in numbers of non-farmers in rural communities. We therefore must establish a new theory of planning and design for the living environment as well as for the land-use structure in these communities. This theory can be termed “The Theory of Preservative Planning and Design” or “The Theory of Preservative Development” which includes the traditional concept of “The Theory of Modernization and Europeanization”. To this end, we must study the features of ruralspace: the cultural as well as living structures in the natural and communal space setting. Its aim is to discover a stable structure which can be continued into the future, and then to try to put the theory into practice. In this way, the nature and culture of rural areas can be maintained and developed in the future generations.

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