Minshuku is a cheap lodging house in tourist resorts. Most of them are usually operated by farmers and fishers as their side work.
Minshuku has rapidly developed with the increace of recreational demands in Japan and recently
minshuku regions have emerged here and there.
The aim of this paper, therefore, is in the first place to understand the actual status of the development of
minshuku. Chapter 2 deals with the development and distribution of
minshuku and Chap. 3 deals with the classification of the
minshuku regions into a few identified types in order to easily grasp the regionality of
minshuku regions. In Chap. 4, some advantageous conditions for the formation of
minshuku regions are considered.
As the results, some following facts were made clear. 1) The origin of
minshuku traces back to the late Tai.sho era and the early times of Shôwa era. In those days,
minshuku emerged first in mountainous areas such as Hakuba-mura, Su-gadaira (Nagano Prefecture) and in Uchibô-Coast (Chiba Prefecture). Afterwards
minshuku have rapidly developed since about 1960, particularly since 1965. 2)
Minshuku are concentrated on some specific regions around the metropolitan areas of Tôkyô, Ôsaka and Nagoya, that is, on the coasts of Izu (Shizuoka Pref.)., Bôsô (Chiba Pref.), Wakasa (Fukui Pref.) and Tango (Kyôto 'Pref.) and in mountainous districts of Minami-Uonuma-gun (Niigata Pref.), Kita-Azumi-gun, Iiyama-shi (Nagano Pref.) and Kinosaki-gun and Yabu-gun (Hyôgo Pref.).
Minshuku regions are located between 50 and 200 km. from each center of the metropolitan areas (Fig. 3).
3)
Minshuku regions are classified into two types. One is the
minshuku region located at coastal bathing resorts and the other is that near skiing grounds.
4) In fact, Japan has many good beaches for bathing (Fig. 6). But the more popular bath-ing beaches have had a tendency to disperse farther with the increace of income and leisure of the working masses, the improvement of transportation facilities and the gradual worsening of sea water pollusion by industrialization and urbanization. The formation of
minshuku re-gions at bathing resorts varies chronologically, for which accessibility of the great cities to bathing resorts has been and is the most important factor. On the other hand, for the devel-opment of
minshuku regions in mountains the resource endowment for skiing ground and its exploitation play an important part.
Minshuku regions of this type concentrate in the areas with the snowfall of more than 3m.
5) Naturally further development of
minshuku regions of both types is dependent on the degree of developing the region as tourist resorts.
6) Many tourist resorts in Japan were developed around hot springs with party tourism on official and company's business. And when the tourism for sports such as skiing, mountain climbing, sea bathing and fishing etc. prevailed in the early Shôwa era, the areas which ctedattra tourists for these recreations could not supply them enough lodging.
Minshuku emerged at first in the very such areas. Afterwards, with the development of mass-tourism
minshuku have been developed as cheap lodging houses for the youth and family trips.
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