In order to evaluate the age related changes of skeletal muscle image in Computed Tomogram (CT), trunk muscle at the 4th lumbar spine in 73 CT pictures (males: 33, females: 40) were observed macroscopically. The images were compared with the crosssectional area of each component section. Following results were obtained.
1. The cross-sectional area of each trunk muscle showed a clear age-related decrease in male, but only a tendency of marginal decrease was suggested in major psoas and erecter spinal muscles in femal.
2. Low density area in the skeletal muscle with associated morphologic changes tended to appear more frequently with advancing age and they were more pronounced in females than in males.
3. These changes showed a tendency of occurrence along with an increase of abdominal cavity on the abdominal rectum muscle and lateral abdominal muscles in both sexes, and tended to follow the changes of subcutaneous fat on the quadrate lumber and erect spine muscles in female.

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This study aims to examine the morphological features of Kinki Japanese at the Edo era by comparing them with other population in Japan. The material measured here consisits of 35 males and 16 females from the Yoshiwara Grave Yard (located in Osaka, Japan) in the later Edo era (18th-19th c.).
The Yoshiwara people are characterized by the transitional features from the medieval to the modern Kinki Japanese. For example, the cranial index of the Yoshiwara people is from mesocephalic to brachycephalic, the Virchow's upper facial index is chameprosopic, and the nasal index is chamaerrhine.
The Yoshiwara people are more brachycephalic than other contempolary people in Japan. This feature is also true of modern Japanese (Kohama, 1960).
Principal component analysis applying to 7 items of measurements is used here and shows that the Kinki Japanese at the Kofun period (4th-8th c.), as well as North Kyushu Japanese, are strongly influenced by the immigrant people. Though the reasons of brachycephalized crania in the Kinki Japanese at the Edo and the modern period are not fully known, it is almost certain that the immigration is one of the most important factors in the process of the formation of Kinki Japanese.

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Finite Element Scaling Analysis (FESA) and Euclidean Distance Matrix Analysis (EDMA) are two methods widely used in three dimensional morphometry of landmark coordinate data. The purpose of this study is to examine sexual dimorphism of adult human hip bones by applying these two techniques. Landmark data of adult hip bones of modern Japanese osteological specimens (19 male, 16 female) were Analyzed. In this paper, the author dicussed the analytical characteristics of each of the two techniques, and examine how sexual dimorphism was expressed when one considered the morphological differences of hip bones as represented by a large set of 33 landmarks.
The result of these analyses demonstrated that sexual dimorphism is expressed not only in those features traditionally pointed out, such as the relative location of the auricular surface, the width of the superior pubic ramus, the width of the pubic body, the depth of the acetabulum, but also in the curvature of the arcuate line near the auricular surface, which was more remarkable in the male hip bones. Moreover, results showed that regions which were significantly larger in females were highly limited (approximately 5% of landmark or distances), while regions which were significantly larger in males were over 45% of distances in EDMA and over 70% of landmarks in FESA. This indicates that sexual dimorphism in modern human hip bones, aside from difference of general size associated with body size, tends to be highly concentrated near the birth canal.

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[in Japanese]

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