This paper is a report on the regional structure of city region pattern in Shimane Prefecture, western Honshû. Two indicators have been employed in order to explain the relationships between cities and their surroundings. The indicators are a) main places to purchase shopping goods for the dwellers and b) commuting areas of the dwellers.
In Shimane Prefecture, most city regions are small in area. Core cities in some city regions are distributed on the coast of Japan Sea, others scattered inland. Each core city is a service or business center in a rural-urban community. In general, the areal form of a city region is longitudinal extending from north to south. Communication between the city regions is restricted within narrow limits because of imperfect transportation facilities. Functional competition between core cities is only observed in the Izumo area in eastern Shimane. In mountainous areas, towns and villages are comparatively isolated from the main city regions of Shimane, rather they are more or less functionally linked with those of other prefectures such as Hiroshima and Yamaguchi. In the river valley of the Gô, no significant core cities are to be found and so the local towns perform central functions instead.
In Shimane Prefecture, industrialization recently developing has promoted suburbanization, though very small in scale. Examples are Matsue, Yasugi and Gôtsu. Matsue, prefectural capital of Shimane, has been experiencing suburbanization. Market-gardening district in the Tsuda and Nogi areas of its southern suburbs has recently changed to residential sections. Because of the prevalence of narrow and hook-shaped roads in the heart of the city and also of the existence of only two large bridges connecting northern and southern parts of Matsue, intra-city traffic is very congested. In this city, industrialization is not rapid and no large industrial plants employing more than 300 persons are to be seen. Nevertheless, Matsue's central function is by far the largest in this prefecture and its sphere of retail trade and commuting covers an area of 100-minutes distance along the San'in railroad. For the pedlars still found in a large number, Matsue functions as the primary center for their selling and buying. In this paper, some other cities and towns such as Izumo, and Gôtsu are also geographically dealt with in a similar fashion.
Despite the efforts made to industrialize Shimane Prefecture further, still agriculture dominates among all industries, although it cannot support more people. Out-flow of people from rural parts has been a general tendency of late. Even the tertiary industry is not very prosperous, and many goods must be shipped in from other districts such as San'yô even today. Development through either secondary or tertiary industry would not be quite successful here. And so much emphasis has to be put on agricultural production, so that the people of Shimane could become better off without much development in secondary and tertiary industries. Such a relatively under-developed situation of Shimane Prefecture must be taken into consideration when we deal with the regional development.

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The steady growth of the world market for pearls since World War II has stimulated a corresponding growth in the pearl industry in Japan. Prior to the war, the industry was limited almost entirely to the numerous bays and inlets of Mie Prefecture where the physical environment permits the production of pearls of all types. However, under the stimulation of the postwar market, suitable areas in Mie Prefecture rapidly reached the maximum intensification possible use. This was followed by expansion to other areas where water temperatures and calm waters, the imporant controlling factors in the physical environment, are suitable for pearl oyster growth. As available areas which could be used year-round became fully utilized, a practice of transferring oysters to areas of cooler temperatures in summer and warmer temperatures in inter developed. As a result, four types of cultivation based on place have arisen. These are: 1) areas where all grades of pearls can be produced without seasonl transfer, 2) areas where transfer between relatively cool and relatively warm waters must take place seasonally to produce superior grades of pearls, 3) areas where mother oysters only are cultivated for sale to the pearl culture areas, and 4) areas where seed oysters only are grown for sale to the above areas.
This postwar expansion has given rise to many social and ecnomic problems growing out of the long-established system of sea area property rights, strong prefectural loyalities, the fact that owners and technicians are chiefly from Mie Prefecture, and the general decline of coastal fishing. The interaction of these human and physical factors presents problems of considerable geographical interest.
Pioneers of all newly established areas are culturists from Mie Prefecture who stimulate people of those areas looking for new activities to substitute for coastal fishing. These people began pearl culture under the guidance of Mie culturists. In areas where all grades of pearls can be cultured without seasonal transter coastal people, both rich and poor, participate. However, in areas requiring transfer between cool and warm waters, it is rather difficult to join because of capital and various socio-economic obstacles. Inland Sea areas contain many large scale oyster raft owners from Mie and local coastal villages. The other areas permit both rich and poor culturists.
Among all newly developed areas Ehime and Nagasaki Prefectures are the most important and influential because of their superior physical and socio-economic conditions. On the other hand, although having good physical conditions, small scale oyster raft owners dominate in coastal villages which have strong traditions of exclusiveness such as Shizuoka Prefecture. A characteristic of these areas is that many enterprises are owned jointly by several persons or are managed by fishing cooperative of fishing villages.

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1. Up to the recent time, climate has been defined as the average state of the atmosphere expressed as a combination of the mean values of its individual elements such as temperature and precipitation. The geographical and statistical study of these characters has therefore been the principal occupation of the climatologist. Nearly all the studies on the climatic change, however, have been directed toward fluctuation of the individual elements and not toward that of a combination of these elements in the pure definition of climate. In this paper, the secular change of climate is expressed by the shifting movements of the major climatic areas instead of the fluctuation of individual elements and for this purpose Köppen's climatic types are adopted. In other words, Köppen's formula is used for individual years as long as possible for many stations surrounding the North Pacific Ocean and the fluctuations of each climatic type are determined. In its basic application, the Köppen system should be applied to the mean values of normal conditions at certain places, and never to calculations for individual years. It is not inappropriate, however, to use Köppen's rule to express the climatic tendencies of respective years compared to normal conditions. In this way, Russel once described the dry climate of the United States, calling it “year climate”.
2. Generally, the normal or average climate does not coincide with the mode or the most frequently experienced climate. For example, Cf a is the normal climate at Pusan in South Korea, but this was experienced only once for the period 1905 to 1944 or 3 % of the total years, while for the remaining 97% the climate was Cwa. A similar condition is found in the lower stream area of the Yangtse Valley in China. In the extreme cases, the normal type to be obtained by the use of mean temperature and precipitation has never been experienced actually at a few places. At Maku in the Pescadores Islands, for instance, year climates were completely occupied by Cwa, BS and Aw notwithstanding the normal type is Cfa. Among 300 stations in a whole area under consideration, number of places where the normal climate does not coincide with their most frequently experienced types counts forty-five. In Japan proper with the normal type of Cfa, Cwa climate is liable to occur at many places.
This fact presents a serious problem for the definition and fundamental system of climatology and in such a reason several types of climatology not based on the combination of the averaged values of their elements have been established. Dynamic climatology is one of them and this is often called the modern or recent climatology against the classical climatology for the former type.
In my opinion, however, this appelation is sometimes not adequate because the so-called classical climatology built on the average state of the atmosphere is still promising for its further development with a practical application to geography and other areal sciences.
3. Basing on the frequency of year climates, stability of climate is determined. To express the degree of climatic stability and instability, the number of Köppen's climatic types that have been actually occurred during the period of observation is taken as an index.
Now the climate is considered to be stable at the places where the number of climatic types actually occurred is less than three, and unstable when it is more than five. According to this criterion, the tropical region is generally most stable and it gradually becomes less stable toward the subarctic regions. On the other hand, the unstable climate is characterized by its peculiar distribution. Fig. 1. shows the area of climatic instability indicating that the tonal pattern is prevalent excepting the Great Basin district in the United States.

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[in Japanese]

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