Rural planning (rural improvement) has now been implemented for 15 years, and it seems to be time for a review. I accordingly take up two subjects for discussion as follows.
1. It is expected that non-farming demands for land use will continue to rise in future, so a method of agricultural land-use planning should be established and institutionalized. This method should be a zoning device, defining zones for good agricultural land, reclamation, water resources, nature conservation, settlements and others.
2. Agriculture and forestry account for over 80% of the land. The decline of agricultural and mountain villages could therefore lead to a waste of land. Rural policies have been successful in making villages richer and more comfortable place to live in, but the problem is to devise an organisational system to maintain and manage the improved villages. In recent years, many interchanges between rural and urban residents have become active, and it seems to be a sensible idea to integrate the co-operation of urban residents for creating vigorous rural communities.
In addition to the above, many other rural planning problems have piled up. This is a challenge for the Association, and I hope that its members, with a variety of academic disciplines, can work together to build new rural communities for the 21st century.

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Although Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been applied as a tool for dynamic evaluation in District Suitability Classification for Agriculture*, several problem areas remain - e.g.: (i) verification of the stability of the classification scale and (ii) the method of evaluating qualitative differences of agricultural income change, etc.
In this paper, we examine the above problems through a case study of the Suwa Region, which is located in Nagano prefecture. We also discuss a classification method for the estimation of qualitative differences of agricultural income change, which is expected to be an effective method in planning processes of land use plans and regional agricultural plans.
The results of this paper are summarized as follows.
(1) PCA was applied to the data sets for three points in time, viz: 1970, 1975 and 1980. Structural changes of the first PCs, which are generally used as a classification scale, precisely reflect changes in the regional profile of agriculture.
(2) Regarding the stability analysis of the classification scales, it was verified that the influences of these structural changes of the first PC on the first PC scores are negligibly small. This fact implied that three classification scales can be unified without any damage to the validity of the classification results.
(3) Based on the above analysis, PCA was applied to the three data sets at the same time in order to unify the scales. The examination of the dynamics of both the PC scores and classification maps in the 10 years under consideration (1970-1980) made it clear that the simple quantitative method of agricultural income change might be of doubtful value in estimating the stability of regional agriculture and its future potential for development.
(4) A classification based on changing patterns of the first PC scores in the two terms under consideration (1970-1975 and 1975-1980) was excluded in order to grasp the qualitative differences of agricultural income change. Regarding the examination of the characteristics of each classification type through statistical data and field surveys, it was found that this classification method is effective in summarizing the qualitative differences of agricultural income change.
* District Suitability Classification for Agriculture is a district-based classification method of land use suitability, whose criterion is agricultural income level.

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There are many resources in rural areas with many important functions.to play in supporting our life. Therefore we have to use rural resources properly. To date, however, the pattern of use of rural resources has been one of exhaustion, and their functions have not been utilized to the full. In this paper, I consider the following three main questions from agricultural policy points of view.
1. What are the actual conditions of the use of rural resources?
2. What kinds of functions do rural resources contain?
3. What is the best method for maintaining and managing rural reousrces appropriately?

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Now in the suburbs of cities, disorderly land use, which is caused by the confusion of urban and agricultural land uses, is becoming a serious hindrance to the maintenance of ideal environments for dwelling or agriculture, and for the establishment of land use planning. The type of urban sprawl that we can often observe now around the three biggest cities in Japan will become an serious problem for the planning of other cities in the near future. From now on, land use plans in the suburbs of cities must be made according not to the choice between urban and agricultural uses but in the light of the new concept of co-existence with each other.
Firstly, in this article, we detailed the present land use conditions in the whole area of Hatano city, Kanagawa Pref., by means of a mesh analysis on the mixture of urban and agricultural land uses. Then we analyzed the results of the research of the inhabitants' views about the process of urbanization, agriculture and disorderly land uses. In addition, we studied the type of land use which is most suited to our new concept. Finally, while refering to the case study in Hatano City, we examined the way of co-existent land use and an institutional measure for it in the suburbs of cities.

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