At the lower margins of steep slopes forming three levels of erosion surfaces in Chugoku mountains there developes pediment topography. The longitudinal width of the pediment is about 1500m and their inclination is from 7° to 9° in most cases. The more marginal a pediment is, the more gentle is the inclination. The pediments are covered with strata of cobbles, boulders and coarse sands, but in those strata bedding and sorting are not remarkable. The inclination of escarpments behind is 24° to 30° or 35° in rare occasions. Transitional slope between the escarpments and the pediments are zonal. The escarpment foot has not a zigzag outline but a straight one. The developments has already stopped and they have been dissected by streamlets.
In Chugoku mountains pediments are mostly found on granite area with hardrock cover, where local base-level was rather stable and relief was rather high. All pediments are on granite and a part or all of back hill in formed with hard rocks. Though all districts where pedimants can develop have a similar climatic condition, actual development of pediment is distinctly controlled by kinds of rocks. It seems that the collapse of granite is more similar to that of rocks under arid or semiarid climate than other rocks. The pediments are formed by parallel retreat of escarpment, which is caused by weathering, gravitation and rainfall. And, they are modified by sheet wash.
It can not be known under what climatic condition the pediments develop. Inferring from the strata on, the pediments, the climate must have been more arid than that of the present.

View full abstract

The areas of mulberry-fields in Japan and also in Mie prefercture were largest in 1930, but in 1958 they are 27% and 15% of each of the areas used as mulberry-fields in 1930.
In this research I have investigated the decrease of mulberry-fields in relation to the growth of the Kuwana-Yokkaichi coastal industrial district and to the competition of tea-plants culture in Hokusei District (the Northern Mie Prefecture).
At present the area of mulberry-fieids in Hokusei District is 16% of that in 1930.
(1) The Hokusei District is now the center of the distribution of mulberry-fieids, taking the place of the central Mie prefecture which was the center of the fields in former days. The regional difference of the degree of the decrease in Hokusei District, however, is remarkable. Formerly we could see mulberry-fields everywhere, but now they remain mainly in the district from the central hilly part to the foot of Suzuka mountains and its decrease is remarkable along the seaside area and in the southern region.
(2) The remaining mulberry-fields are distributed, topographically, on, the hill land, the uplands and on the lower part of the slope of the bases of mountains, geologically, on and around Kuroboku soils (black humus) of the diluvial formation, and from the point of irrigation, on the land which is irrigated by rain water and in danger of damage from drought. Such lands are low in productivity. And this is the main reason why the farmers in these regions adhere to raising mulberry-trees.
(3) Recently the regional differentiation of the cultivation of farm crops is going on. Particularly the diffusion of the commercial crops, such as sweet potatoes, greens and tea plants, is preventing the revival of the mulberry-fields on even expelling them.
The remarkable decrease of the mulberry-fields in the southern region whose center is Suzuka-gun has been caused by the increase of teafields. Hitherto the cultivation of mulberry-trees and tea-trees have repeated intense alternation on the land utilization due to the competition on labor. At present the tea-fields are distributed principally on Kuroboku soils in the alluvial fan of the Utsube-river.
(4) The growth of the seaside industrial districts whose centers are Kuwana City and Yokkaichi City is changing the character of farming and the scale of sericulture (mulberry-fields) in the suburban districts.
Namaly the increase of side-working farmers in these district leads to the shortage of labor and urge the decline of mulberry-fields and sericulture which demand more labor than other agricultural managements.
The corelation between the rate of side-working farmers and the rate of the remainder of the mulberry-fields is clearly observed. In the high rate area of the side-working farmers extensive management prevails, and the mulberry-fields in this area are left as the means of extensive management.

View full abstract

The latter half of the present century is an era of urbanization, a phenomenon common to all over the world. The application of conventional systems to cities and towns, ignoring the changes of social structure in urban districts due to the urbanization, will produce not a few contradictions. One of them is the inequality of suffrage, one of the basic human rights.
The inequality of suffrage can be seen not only in Japan but in the United States of America.
In the Federal Lower House and State Congress of the United State where a proportional to population representation system is adopted, and the Federal Senate which has the character of a political unit representation, remarkable contradictions can be seen as follows:
(1) In the Federal Lower House, the seats are distributed in proportion to the population of each state by the President. But the seats thus distributed are re-distributed by the Congress of each state to the minor electoral district system of “one representative per constituency”. For examlpe, under the constituency in 1950, the 8th district in Texas should have been given two seats if the calculatiorn were made truly in proportion to the population. Under the current electoral system, the urban districts are given fewer seats than those of rural districts in spite of the fact that the formers have larger population than the latters. In other word, a vote of the people living in urban districts has only a third or a fourth value of a votee xercised by the people living in rural districts. (Table No. 4 and No. 5)
(2) One of the causes for the above mentioned inequality of suffrage is that the State Congress the majority of whose seats are occupied by the representatives elected from rural districts has the right to determine the electoral district for the Federal Lower House (Gerrymandering can often be seen) and that the rural districts have a traditional prejudice against urban districts.
(3) The contradiction mentioned in paragraph (1) results in the number of the number of seats and the rate of votes polled. For example, urban representatives gain a great number of votes, while a larger number of seats go to rural districts with smaller population and more electoral districts. Thus, the will of urban people can not be reflected fully, and rural voices bear down urban ones. Such a phenomenon can be seen in both in the Federal Congress and the State Congress, creating oppositions in the administration and the legislature.
(4) In the case of the State Congress, the current fixed number of seats in each electoral district has been fixed in accordance with the population at the 18th century. Therefore, in Florida the urban population is 60% of the population of the state, but the number the seats occupied by the representatives elected from the urban districts is only 7-9%, showing an utter unbalance of political power between urban and rural districts. (Table No. 8)
(5) The member of Federal Upper House has the character of a state representative. Now that the significance of the state has been decreased, such a system may be behind the times.
Lastly we propose the following suggestion in order to wipe out the contradictions mentioned above and establish a true democracy:
1. The right to determine the electoral districts held at present by the State Congress be transfered to the third person such as court, committee for eletion administration and the like.
2. The district-representation-system (Federal Upper House) be gradually changed to a proportional to representation system.
3. The proportional to population representation system be gradually changed, too, to a proportional to voter representation system. Since there is a difference in the age structure of the people living in urban and rural districts and the rate of urban voters is larger than of rural voters.
4. Exercise of “the right to speak”

View full abstract

This paper undertakes to provide and analyze the data of internal migration in Japan for the period from 1950 to 1955. By use of the “Survival Ratio Method”, based on the data of Censuses of 1950 and 1955, estimates of net-migration between 1950 and 1955 have been prepared for the rural and urban parts: of each prfecture. For the application of this method, Shortcut Method is adopted, being adjusted by the multiple regression equation, because of missing the age and sex composition of population in 1950 for the boundary of 1955, so that the Detail Method which requires the age and sex data can not be applied..
The most remarkable feature is that the heavy concentration of population to the eight major prefectures (Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi, Kyoto, Fukuoka, and Hokkaido), though the internal migration of Japan consists of two major movements, namely the out-migration from the more agricultural to the more industrial: prefectures and a movement from rural to urban areas within earch prefecture. Among these eight: prefectures Tokyo and Osaka have the outstandingly big amount of net-in-migration as well as their high, migration rate.
Another remarks is that the number of prefectures in which even urban areas actually lost population: by net-out-migration in this period, reaches as many as twenty four, partly due to the expansion of urban boundary to the rural areas, and partly due to stationary or decreasing status of population in the good number of urban areas. This indicates that the concentration of population has created not only a movement of people from rural area, but also a movement of people from urban area in less industrilized prefectures to urban area in more industrialized prefectures.
The urbanward movement of population may be divided into three types from the comparative study of net-migration in urban and rural area of each prefecture. They are: 1) long rural and urban migration. This is the type which has predominantly long-distance migration in both rural and urban areas by sending out the people to the outside of the prefecture. Prefectures which lost population by migration in rural and urban area belong to this type. 2) local urbanward migration. This is the type which sends, out rural population to the other prefectures, though urban areas of the same prefecture received some of the adjacent rural population, as will be seen in the case of prefectures which hay net-in-migration in the urban area and net-ont-migration in the rural area. 3) long-distance urbanward migration. This is the type which have positive net-migration in both urban and rural area as will be seen in the case of Tokyo and Osaka.
The side-job-opportunity in secondary and teritary industry in urban areas may be concluded as basic factors which affect the feature of the movement of prople, since both of them show the close relationship with migration rate, following a pattern by type of movement or by region such as eastern or wes- tern Japan and Tohoku or Hokuriku district.

View full abstract