Tong-si-yang-Kao which was compiled in the Ming-dynasty (the latter part of the 16 th Cent.) is a landmark of great importance in the history of traffic and communications of the South Seas. It has, from time to time, been referred to by students of Oriental History both in the East and West and the navigation-routes and plate-names appearing in this document have been variously studied and discussed by them, but there are many questions to be solved, For instance, almost no geographic interpretation has been advanced as to why such and such a course was taken at such and such a period of time. Again the study of the place-names in the past are still controversial in many respects. From the standpoint of Historical Geography, I have re-examined the navigation routes by taking the geographical factors into consideration, on the basis of many large scale charts and the Pilot books which are indispensable to the study of navigation-routes. The navigation-routes which I have treated here are those in the western part of Malaysia recorded in the “Western route” (_??_) of this document.
In this thesis, I have tried to give the results of the study on the following three courses only.
(1) From eastern coast of Malay Peninsula to the ports of Eastern Sumatra.
(2) From Bangka Strait to West Java.
(3) From Malacca to northern Sumatra.
Studies on other routes in Malaysia were already published in my 1st report. (See “Shien” -the journal of historical Studies, St. Paul's University- Vol. 16. No. 2. 1955) Also a short report about the general characteristics of navigation technique recorded in this document, namely uses of wind, observation of weather and islets, means of soundings, or uses of scientific instruments is added here.

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For many years, the water of Lake Biwa has been used to irrigate the plain near by. Simple instruments such as well-sweeps or tread-mills were used before, but now motor is widely installed for that purpose. The area irrigated stretches to more than 9, 500 cho in Shiga Prefecture, and the plain, to the east of Lake Piwa forms its center. The remarkable characteristics of the irrigation system may be summarized as follows:
(1) In most places, water is drawn in one step directly into the field from the lake or through some water-channel, the height of the water to be pumped up in such a case being about two meters. According to the height of the land or the water situation, however, water must be pumped up at two, three or four levels.
(2) The pumping facilities sometimes belong to a farmer individually, or when they are on a large scale they are operated under the control of several towns or villages. Some irrigationmachines are carried from farm to farm by boat, and others are fixed on the rice-field.
(3) The height and the width of the land which may be irrigated are gradually increasing according to the improved pumping techniques.
(4) Since the introduction of motor for the purpose of irrigation, the intensive farming has been greatly promoted, and the mode of irrigation has been greatly improved.

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1. Uchinami district of Fukui Prefecture is a mountain village in the western part of Hakusan Mountains. With its steep slopes and deep gorges, it has few patches of plain-land and was isolated for long. Under such circumstances, the villagers who are not blessed with cultivable land have supported themselves with ‘out-going’ farming (they move in the spring time from their winter base to the temporal huts on the mountain slope where they carry out the shifting culture, and come back in the end of autumn.). But with the development of modern commercial economy, the self-sufficing economy has broken down and ‘out-going’ farming has declined with only a few execeptions.
2. ‘Out-going’ farms are distributed within a belt of 3-6 km from the base village and a height of 500-1, 000m.
They raise barnyard grass, millet, red beans, Soya beans and buckwheat on their burning cultivation fields, and grow coptis japonica for sale. As the productivity in the primitive burning cultivation is very, low there is much probability for those farmers to transfer to the more profitable and more paying occupations.
3. From the middle of Meiji era to the early Showa era (about 1890-1930), they pursued sericulture as a side job to gain cash. From about 1935, however, as the public works were begun in this village, the villagers were engaged in those works to gain cash, which led in consequence to the decadence of the burning cultivation. By and by charcoal-making took place among them. Therefore the ‘out-going’ farming decreased rapidly.
As the opening of the roads for trucks after the World War II made the connection with markets easier, the mountain forests which had been considered valueless have become commercial goods, and forest industry has developed. Consequently, drag roads are now under construction. The owners of the mountain forests prohibited the burning cultivation for the purpose of afforestation. From the above mentioned reasons, most of the villagers abandoned their shifting culture, and now are engaged in wage-earning work of civil engineering and forestry. ‘Out-going’ farming is now almost disappearing.

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Intending to clarify the internal structure of villages at the later part of Tokugawa period, those villages situated along the Yagurazawa-Oukan are examined in this study. The Yagurazawa-Oukan is the name of a byway used and developedd at the later part of Tokugawa period mainly for the economic activities of local people, whil ehighways at the same period, such as Tôkaidô highway, were used and developed mainly for military and political purposes:
The Yagurazawa-Outran crosses through Central Sagami from east to west, starting from Fdo Akasaka and passes through Mizonokuchi, Ebinakokubu, Atsugi, Hatano, Gotemba, and finally meets the Tôkaidô highway at Yoshiwara. In this study, the author selected the major part of the data from Jinshin Koseki (“census register obtained in 1864”) and obtained the statistical figures through the analysis of the data in accordance with indices established. The indices are listed as follows;
(1) average number of person per family. (2) rate of married people. (3) rate of stable family (a family having two or more person of 16_??_60 years old) (4) average number of working person per family (a working person here defined as lineal person of 21_??_60 years old). (5) average number of children per family.
The author also classified all the families of a village into three classes (such as, upper, middle and lower) according to Kokudaka (“size of land required to produce a Koku of rice or its equivalant products.”) each family possessed. From the data thus accumulated, the auther tried to identify the mutual relation between the structure of a village and the degree of land dependence of a village. The results of this study may de summarized briefly as follows;
1. Two patterns are observed in the statistical charts prepared to show the numbers of families according to the stratum of Kokudaka possessed. In one of the patterns., rather small differences are represented among the levels of three classes, while the other patterns indicates remarkable `differences. In other words, the latter patterns indicates that the majority of families in a village are divided into almost two part, either into the upper class or into the lower strata showing real small numbers of families in the middle class.
2. It_ is also observed that stability of the family structure of a village are affected in proportion to the Kokudaka possessed by each family. In some agricultural villages, statistical figures for the respective indices show that there are wide differences between the upper and the lower classes in any one of the indices. It is further represented that the basis of villagers' livelihood depend on land in pro portion to the size of land possessed. Meanwhile in some “town type” villages show low degree of land dependence and the character of the village structure of those villages were changed gradually into so called “city type” structure.
3. In considering the degree of land dependence from the view point of locality of villages, it, is observed that mountain villages, fishing villages, and post towns in the south and north-west part of Central Sagami represents low degree of land dependence in general. Meanwhile those agricultural. villages in the plain part of Central Sagami indicates rather high degree of land dependence. Among these, some located in rice field area show much higher degree of land dependence in comparison with others in the dry-land area. This means partly that the degree of land dependence of a village it determined in proportion to the Kokudaka of the village.

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