1. Terraced fields stretch to the top of the steep hillsides along the eastern coast of the Bungo Channel which separates Kyushu from Shikoku. These are regarded by some scholars as a symbol of the land-use in Japan, and their development has been explained on the theory of the compulsion of the feudal lord in this region. But the author doubts this explanation and after two field surveys has ascertained the following facts.
2. The steep fields on the hllsides yielded only a small harvest until the end of the Tokugawa era, because of the frequent rampancy of wild boars and deer. Even nowadays, in a part of the west side of the Channel, there remain stone hedges like a castle wall to defend the fields against the attacks of wild animals. It is, therefore, clear that in the Tokugawa era the inhabitants could not expand the hillside fields extensively. And then these field suffered greatly from drought and typhoon devastation. The harvest of epigeous food crops was especially small there. It is surmised that it was not before the new introduction of some kinds of sweet potatoes (a hypogeous crop) into this area in the middle of the 19th century, and the stabilization of their harvest, that the area of these terraces expanded widely.
3. It is very difficult in Japan to clear the vast hillside completely for cultivation, when the form of landownership is not favourable to it. A favourable condition of ownership on the east side of the Channel arose in those years from the end of Tokugawa era to the first half of Meiji era, because in this period the land owners who had been given the priviledge of sardine-net fishery by the feudal lord, and who were named Amimoto, went bankrupt. As for the west side of this Channel, there was scarcely such a change of social classes in fishery communities, because of the condition of the sea current in the Channel and the backwardness of fishery technique on that coast. Thus the Amimoto on the west side had some dominancy and the inhabitants did not engage in agriculture to cultivate the steep hillside, as on the east side, but went to other distant districts for finding work.
4. The regional circumstances of sardine-net operators or Amimoto had such complexities as these. They had been protected by the feudal lord and, therefore, they had stale techniques and management. For instance, the nets were rice straw-nets, which were operated near the shore line only. The operators were obliged to support at the time of poor catch those 30-50 low-wage labourers and their families employed at the time of heavy catch. Accordingly the poor catch period which continued form 1882 to 1900 caused great damage to the operators. Furthermore, the fishing population which had been supported by the heavy catch of 30 years preceeding this period, had already made a sudden increase. Then the small scale netfishery, operated by the surplus labourers among the inhabitants, developed outside of the fishery-grounds for big sardine-nets. These small scale nets caught almost all sardine groups before their entrance to the Amimotos' fishery grounds, because the number of the small nets, amounting to 1500, was very great.
5. After the fall of Amimoto in the middle period of Meiji era, the hillsides which were opened to every inhabitant were cultivated and terraced widely to provide food for the period of poor catch, and the stone walls were built to protect soil from erosion after the mulberry gardens prevailing in Taisho era. This is the final of landscape making in this coastal region

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The wide, flat and swampy Kushiro plain is surrounded by marine and river terraces, and is separated from the Pacific Ocean by a narrow belt of sand dunes on the southern margin. These terraces are as follows; the marine terraces—Shiranuka (Dl₂, early Pleistocene), Nemuro (Du_1a, middle or later Pleistocene) and Kushiro (Du_2a, later Pleistocene), the river terraces—I (Du_1a), II (Du_1b, middle or later Pleistocen), III (Du_2a), and IV (Du_2b, latest Pleistocene), and the Alluvial plain. (Kushiro moor). The formation of these terraces were mainly conditioned by the transgression and regression repeated in the Pleistocene in the present moor where the Tertiary formations have a synclinal axis. Judging from the distribution of the terraces and their topographic features, on the other hand, this region has suffered from the basin-forming crustal movement, of which the centre was located in its western part in the early Pleistocene and moved to the south-east later. Broadly speaking, therefore, the moor is a down-warped depositional basin.
The topographic development of this region is as follows. In the latest Pleistocene the sea-level sank by about 90 meters below the present sea-level, and consequently abrasion platforms were built off-shore at a depth of 80-100 meters and the buried valley under the moor was cut down to about 80 meters below the present sea-level. In the early Holocene the sea invaded the plain up to 10 meters higher than the present sea level and formed an enbayment, the Palaeo-Kushiro Bay, and then retreated to the present shoreline leaving a coastal plain accompanied with sand bars and lakes. During these periods the region suffered from differential elevation, as is inferred by the topographic features of the region.
The formation of a swampy plain was caused by its ill-drained condition owing to its low altitude and the existence of the sand bars on the coast. Warping having its axis coincident with that of the former basin-forming movement has occurred since then, affecting the formation of the small reliefs on the surface of the moor.

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Yamaguchi and Sumpu which newly became capitals of “Han” in the middle of the 19 th century had peculiar characteristics in their town-area formation.
Firstly their castles had been turned into administrative offices and had lost their military significance. “Samurai Yashiki” existed in fact, but “Samurai Machi” had not been set up yet. It was a residental quarter for scattered bureaucratic retainers. “Machiya” had lost their privileged township characteristics. “Machiya” had been abolished and the phenomenon of confining a special trade to a special section had ceased to exist, so that business in general had been diffused all over the town. A new centrall street had taken the place of the old business center, and the core of the town had moved to the centrall street from the castle.
In short, this new capital was by no means a castle-town, and the writer of this article calls this new capital “Hanto” and considers this phase the last stage of a feudal castle and the forerunner of a modern city.

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