E-journal GEO Vol. 12(2017) No. 1

Established in 2014, the urban facility location plan was designed to promote the “compact city plus network” concept. After giving an overview of the background and content of this plan, this paper organizes problem points in the creation and implementation of an urban facility location plan from the perspective of geography. In this study, I organized the problem points in terms of the boundaries of the area to which an urban facility location plan applies, establishing urban functions in relation to the hierarchy of urban areas in which the functions are to be induced and to the locational variations in land-use regulations. What these problem points have in common is the boundaries of the area set by an urban facility location plan. Although the plan calls for its creation using the boundaries of a metropolitan area, because the plan area and the metropolitan area do not match, efforts to achieve compact cities will be limited to municipalities, the bodies responsible for creating the plans. This is a fundamental problem underlying the urban facility location plan. It can be said that the problem demonstrates the rigidification of the city planning system, in which the urban planning area cannot be reorganized or changed.

Although Canada, which celebrates its 150th Anniversary of Confederation in 2017, is legally a bilingual country where English and French are the official languages, the reality is very complex. Based on the author's survey and census data, this paper explores Canada's bilingualism by examining the linguistic landscape and characteristics of its bilingual population. Under the provisions of the Official Languages Act, enacted in 1969, federal operations managed by the government of Canada must be bilingual with all signage and services normally offered in both official languages throughout the country. Each province, however, follows its own language policy. Consequently, a federal and a provincial facility may employ different language policies even though they are in the same geographic locality. The distribution of bilingual speakers also varies across the country. While the bilingual population rate in large cities is slightly higher than that in rural areas in English-speaking Canada, the bilingual population rate is the highest in census divisions where the French mother tongue population rate is high, that is, Québec and parts of New Brunswick and Ontario. This trend, which has been observed over the long term, has not changed despite the 1969 legislation making French an official language of Canada.

This paper clarifies elements of regional attractiveness based on subjective evaluations using data on 1,000 municipalities in “Regional Brand Research 2015.” First, 75 variables of regional characteristics in the research are summarized into 13 elements by component analysis. Second, elements of regional attractiveness are clarified by multiple regression analysis with subjective attractiveness as an explained variable and the 13 elements as explanatory variables. As a result, it was clarified that subjective attractiveness is composed of 11 elements. The element of tourism and leisure is the most effective in subjective attractiveness, followed by food and agriculture, convenience of living and shopping, and history. The elements clarified in the study will make it possible to evaluate objective regional attractiveness.

This paper examines the role of guarantors who help immigrants with the immigration process and with establishing new lives in rural Africa. The Kaonde live in the Mufumbwe District, Northwestern Province, Zambia. There are four other ethnic groups in this area: the Lunda; the Luvale; the Chokwe; and the Luchazi. These four groups are immigrants, and are permitted by the Kaonde chief to live in the Kaonde area. There are three basic types of migration: “village to village,” where people move from one village to another; “via city,” where people from villages move to the city for work and later move to a village; and “city to village,” where people born in the city move to a village. Most non-Kaonde immigrants moved to a village to escape family conflict or to avoid creating envy of their urban lifestyle among their relatives. They rely on guarantors, who are known in the Lunda language as chinsahu. Any person can become a guarantor if he or she is trusted by an immigrant. Guarantors can help to ensure a peaceful migration, provide friendship, and assist immigrants in building new lives in rural Africa.

The spa town of Kinosaki, within Toyooka city, Hyogo prefecture, is one of the main hot-spring areas in western Japan. At the center of Kinosaki are the public baths (soto-yu), where most small-scale hotels are located. These hotels attract young adult and female visitors from neighboring prefectures. In addition, the numbers of tourists from both Asias and Western countries are increasing. This recent boom is a result of tourism-based community design undertaken from the late 2000s. This study clarifies the characteristics of tourism businesses, hotels, and visitors in Kinosaki in recent years, focusing on the interpersonal relations of leaders who promote community design combined with tourism. The results indicate that male leaders in their 20s to 40s promote community design combined with tourism in Kinosaki. It is notable that residents who do not have occupations related to the tourism industry are included among the leaders. Historically, creating indoor spas within hotels resulted in conflicts within the community. However, a mutually beneficial spirit emerged under the tourism-based community design theme. Traditional festivals contribute to establishing personal relationships among various ages and occupations, and male leaders in their 20s to 40s were entrusted with festival organization. Recently, women have joined the community design combined with tourism efforts, and neighboring areas have cooperated with Kinosaki.

Dominant components of spatio-temporal variations were derived from principal component analysis of spatially high-density data on air temperature and pressure over the Kanto region in summer, obtained from our own observation network. Their connectivity is discussed from the viewpoints of meteorological conditions and diurnal variations. The spatial patterns of the three major components for the pressure and temperature fields resemble each other in order of their contribution, and the temporal variations in these scores also show statistically significant correlations.

The characteristics of spatial variations, as indicated by the distributions of factor loadings and related composite maps, are as follows: the first principal components represent the variation between the inland area of the Kanto plain and the Pacific coast region with land-sea breeze circulation; the second components relate to variations in urban heat island phenomena in the core of the Tokyo metropolitan area; and the third components are connected to the northeast wind system. In general, the spatial relationships between air temperature and pressure fields for these components are characterized by the relatively low-pressure region corresponding to the high-temperature region.

The major characteristics of the diurnal variation in air temperature and pressure fields on sunny days can be summarized as follows: 1) in the daytime, a relatively high-temperature, low-pressure area is located in the inland area, and then a southerly sea breeze gradually prevails over the whole Kanto plain as it develops; and 2) during the nighttime after sunset, the urban heat island phenomenon in the core of the Tokyo metropolitan area and northern suburbs appears clearly, corresponding to the low-pressure area.

Based on data from the Basic Resident Registers in 2014 and 2015, this paper examines the characteristics of municipal areas (including wards in ordinance-designated cities) where Japanese net migration loss was fully or substantially offset by foreigners' net in-migration in quantitative terms. In a recent paper, the authors analyzed the 2014 migration data from the same source. However, because the data source seemed to classify a large number of foreigners' international out-migrations as “other” ex officio deletion, the present paper combines the data of “other” ex officio registration/deletion (except “nationality change, etc.”) with those of migration to reexamine municipal net migration trends. Our analyses show that the number of “fully offset” areas was much smaller than reported in our former paper. Nonetheless, when we take into account those “substantially offset” areas where foreigners' net in-migration supplemented 50% or more (but less than 100%) of Japanese net out-migration, the number of “fully or substantially offset” areas reached a notable level in 2015. A comparison between 2014 and 2015 indicates that these areas increased less in regions distant from the three metropolitan areas. It also shows frequent transitions into/from the “fully or substantially offset” status among areas examined.

We conduct a multivariate investigation of the full-year employment rate of Japan-born Japanese wives in the United States in the context of their counterparts from six other Asian countries (Korea, Taiwan, India, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines), using the micro data of the 2009–2013 American Community Survey. We find that the Japanese wives have the lowest full-year employment rate, and that this remains true after controlling for the effects of seven explanatory factors. We also find that among the wives (1) with very young children, (2) with college education, or (3) with a high-wage husband, the Japanese wives are markedly less likely to have full-year employment. Together with the high full-year employment rate of Japan-born Japanese husbands in the United Sates, the employment pattern of the Japanese wives can be interpreted as rooted in the Japanese cultural norm that involves strong preference for (1) the use of the maternal principle in interpersonal relations and (2) the use of ba (main site of social interaction) as the criterion for forming functionally important groups.