In the rice-field area in Japan, we had and still have complicated irrigation systems and old customs to practise these systems, by which the organization of rural community is greatly restricted and the agricultural management is strictly controlled. The author would like to explain the situation as follow-s, taking an example of Taisho-mura, one of local villages in the Nara-pre-lecture, where long spells of drought are so customary even today.
(1) For the irrigation of ricefields this village can get its source from the neighbouring brooks, streams, springs, ponds (private or public), etc., but the irrigation water, quite separately located, can never be interchanged. The farmers cannot irrigate their fields as they wish, and must stop irrigating when they have used up the water allotted upon them.
(2) The ricefields need constant supply of a large quantity of water from June to September and as riceplants grow, they need water more and more, but August is a dry month and the lack of water happens. In this period irrigation water is strictly controlled and some powerful farmers have the right to control it by traditional customs. Even after the enactment of the post-war land reformation they preserve their eminent position over others, by keeping this right.
(3) From the beginning of June till the middle of September irrigation water may be supplied to every ricefield quite partially and unfairly by the right above-mentioned. This makes great influences to the products in the fields.
(4) The right to utilize water for irrigation, being an abstract property, is often sold quite independent of the rice field, and the price amounts to 50 to 60 per cents of that of the field itself.
(5) For lack of irrigation water, farming is carried out on a very small scale. Farmwork is chiefly concentrated only in a short period of the year. Consequently, farmers cultivating less than an acre of field must go to towns nearly to seek some jobs or must engage in some unprofittable side-jobs in the village.

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The article deals with the dark bands in volcanic ash beds which cover the tertiary hills and uplands in southern Kwanto Region. The main conclusions are as follows:
1. Dark bands show no peculiarity in grain sizes and mineral composition-s, but abound in organic carbon and nitrogeon. Dark colors are due to humic materials.
2. Field observations tell they are not the zones of illuviation at present time. So, they are so-called -fossil soils, and are able to be used tephrochro-nologically as secondary key horizons.
3. One to six bands are observed. The upper two are most common, and the lower ones are sometimes shown by cracky or chocolate-colored zones.
4. Soil-types shown by these fossil soils are uncertain. However, according to their thickness and its uniformity, prairie conditions are imagined at those times.
5. These fossil soils have close relation with the stone implements of Ja-panese palaeolithic era which has been closed up after Second World War.

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Climate may be defined as the certain inclination of air movements conn-ected with the landforms. For this climate, climatology has long used mean values. Recently so called synoptic climatology has been developed for the analysis of climates, but the air movements are still very abstractly expressed by isopleths.
The author intends, in this paper, to access air movement closer from a climatological point of view.
An area, about 50, 000km², south of Mts. Akaishi (South Alps of Japan) and Mt. Fuji, was chosen. Daily rainfall measurements of the most densely scattered stations (average distance is 20km), are used as the index of air movements. The presumption is that the area of largest rainfall indicates the area of upwards movements of air flow. 366 sheets of daily rainfall distribution maps for 1952 have been made. A remarkable conclusion induced was that rain falls not so much on the mountains but on the area between mountains and seacoast.
The author attributes this cause to the existence of local fronts, that is, the existence of colder air masses on the mountain side.
In order to know the dimensions of the colder air masses the author made, two graphs. Fig. 2 shows the distribution of axes of heavy rainfall belts. Two broken lines on this graph show the average location of the southern margins of two groups of colder air masses. The northern margins are obviously known by the edges of the mountains. Fig. 3 shows the profiles of precipitation mountains along the mountain ridge lines. In other words, precipitation change extends along the axes of heavy rainfall belts. There can be seen three gaps on Fig. 3, each of which is considered to be the east or west margins of two groups of air masses.
Thus, the dimensions of the two groups of air masses are found.
In many other places, air masses of such a scale have been found. The author whould like to name them meso air masses, and belives that a meso air mass climatology does exist and that it is an important branch of climatology and of geography. For, many facts have been found that climates influence the landscape on this meso scale, and as for air mass climatology, only by this means climates can be classified rationally.

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