Hidaka-chô, Shimukappu-mura, Shirataki-mura and Maruseppu-chô contain within their administrative boundaries mountain villages with national forest occupying more than 80 per cent of the respective areas. The villagers are also engaged in agriculture, but owing to the difference of natural conditions, they cultivate rice in Hidaka-cho, rice and other crops in Shimukappu-mura and crops other than rice in both Shirataki-mura and Maruseppu-chô. But they have been dependent upon national forest as forestry workers from old times because of their petty farming and low productivity.
In recent years, however, decrease in the quantity of forest and increase in the efficiency by mechanization of tools have resulted in a tendency that they can no longer depend sufficiently on forestry. What is worse, raw materials for sawmills began to be in short.
Nowadays, development of transportation in mountain villages has made possible for the villagers to, be in contact with towns and cities, opening their vision. The waves of moderni- zation are rushing into these mountain villages.
The more economy grows up, the more towns and cities suck up manpower of these villages. Consequently young men in the villages give up cultivating rice or working in the field and find their jobs outside the villages. Because of that, the population of mountain villages in Hokkaido recently has decreased as elsewhere in the mountain areas of Japan.

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In the cities which have the same population and functions, it is found that the central shopping streets in some cities are more thriving than the ones in other cities. And so, the writer intends to explain the relation between the central shopping streets and subsidiaryshopping streets in the cities.
To attain this aim, after selecting high quality shops which deal in watches, spectacles, precious metals, etc. and drugstores which deal in daily necessaries in the central shopping streets, the writer has calculated the ratio of the former shops (A) to the latter ones (B), using the formula A/B×2 for the customer attracting power (“2” denotes the ratio of the B consumers of A store to B).
The investigations treated here may be summarized as follows:
(1) As the city population increases, the index of customer attracting power also tends to increase except for giant cities: the indexes of the customer attracting power are about 10 for one-million cities, about 7-8 for 500-300 thousand, about 5 for 300-500 thousand, about 2 for cities with less than 100 thousand population.
(2) The index of the customer attracting power for the central shopping streets is not always related with the concentration of amusement (pachinko houses, movie theatres, etc.), but is related with the numbers of pedestrians on the central shopping streets ; it is also related with the index of the customer attracting power in the central business districts and with the sizes of the urban regions hinterlands for smaller and medium-sized cities.
(3) From the shares of the customer attracting power of the central shopping streets to the subsidiaryshopping streets in each urban region, the writer has found out the characteristics of the local concetration and decentralization of shopping function in each urban region.
(4) It has been found that the index of the customer attracting power for the central shopping streets in each city is generally ralated with the average land-value of the same streets, and the writer found the following types for the shares of the customers in the central shopping streets in each urban region by means of the land-value insted of the customer attracting power : a¹…… Sapporo type, a² …… Sendai type, a³ …… Fukushima type, b¹…… Hiroshima type, b²…… Fukuyama type, c…… Shizuoka type.
How the intensity of the customer attracting power in the central shopping streets to the subsidiaryshopping streets in the urban region is influenced by the concentration of the means of transportation, such as buses, tram-cars, etc., the combination of the various functional streets, the custom of the consumers and the commercial conditions of the urban region and its hinterland is not yet analyzed and it awaits future researches.

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1. Preface
Traffic accidents in Japan are increasing recently in spite of the nationwide “traffic safety first campaign”. Unexpected accidents related largely to traffic accidents have been ranked at the fifth in Japanese death-order by causes, but in 1968 they jumped to the fourth order. The author has written a paper entitled “THE GEOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS” in this journal, and now he would like to make a report focusing on Japanese metropolises.
2. Correlation of Traffic Stagnancy and Traffic Accidents in Metropolises
For five Japanese metropolises (Tôkyô, Ôsaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, and Kôbe), correlation coefficients between the traffic stagnancy and traffic accidents were calculated by using the formula of correlation on the samples of Tab. 1. Results are as follows: (1) For the average of the five metropolises in the traffic stagnancy and the number of occurrence: r_??_0.64. (2) For the average of the five metropolises in the traffic stagnancy and the wounded: r_??_0.62. (3) For the average of the five metropolises in the traffic stagnancy and the dead: r_??_0.30.
Next, taking Tôkyô as an example among the five metropolises, the author made a correlation chart (Fig. 1) as to the relation of the traffic stagnancy and traffic accidents. In this figure, x is the traffic stagnancy, y₁ is the number of occurrence, y₂ is the number of the wounded and y₃ is the number of the dead. And the following relations were found;
y₁_??_x+1.6, y₂=_??_x+2.0, and y₃=_??_x+4.2
As for such, if the traffic stagnancy comes to occur frequently because the traffic volume reaches over the limit of the metropolitan traffic capacity, both the number of occurrence and the wounded increase certainly in answer to it. While it comes to have the action of selfcontrol in traffic presently, thereby the traffic volume comes to decrease substantially within the metropolis despite of increasing number of registered motorcars externally. In addition, the motorcars which drive through the metropolis are forced to speed down because of the traffic stagnancy. These are why the number of the dead in the metropolis has been diminishing recently as shown in Tab. 2 and Fig. 2. Such circumstances within the metropolis are also why the relationship between the traffic stagnancy and the dead is flimsy on an average. 3. Regional Characteristics of Traffic Accidents within the Metropolis
Tab. 3, Fig. 3, and Fig. 4 show the last decadal transition on traffic accidents in Tokyo Wards. Firstly, in the number of occurrence, the average of Tokyo Wards is 4.4 times. As compared with it, the center is 1.9 times, the middle part 3.3 times, the subcenters 4.8 times, and the fringe areas 7.3 times. That is to say, the center and the surrounding middle part are less than the average for Tôkyô Wards in the increase rate. Above all, as Marunouchi of the center, there is even a region which showed a decrease of nearly 30%. On the contrary, the subcenters and the fringe areas are more than the average for Tôkyô Wards. And there are not a few areas over 10 times in the decade as well, Above all, it shows about 22 times in Nishiarai area. For the dead, however, the average for Tôkyô Wards shows a decrease of 6.1%. As compared with it, the center is a decrease of 51.3%, the middle part is a decrease of 17%, the subcenters show a decrease of 41.3 %, and only the fringe area shows an increase of 22.3%.
Tab. 4, Fig. 5, and Fig. 6 show the distribution of the routes with the high density of traffic accidents per kilometer along roads. Consequently, it was seen that 27 routes of the high density in the number of occurrence distribute near the scope of the center and the subcenters generally.

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