Today, the number of hot-springs for therapeutics in Japan has been so small that it cannot be compared with that of hot-springs for tourist purpose. But, recently, therapeutic spa has been found to have increased its contemporary singnificance. In this paper, the author analysed the formation process, and change in function of Kakeyu hot-spring settlement of Maruko Town in Nagano Prefecture, as a typical example of large hot-spring sanatorium with modern rehabilitation facilities which was established at a small traditional health spa.
Kakeyu hot-spring settlement is located at the small terrace of the Uchimura River, about 710_??_740m above the sea level (Fig. 1). For a long time from the Edo era to the establish-ment of the sanatorium in 1956, there had been built only 9 hotels without indoor bathplaces which were managed by the landowners near the Oyu public bath. The rest of the vill-agers were mostly engaged in farming, forestry and sericulture.
In 1954, three farmers accidently found a very rich hot-spring with an amount of 3, 000 1/min. of hot water. Since the hot-spring of Kakeyu is effective for hyperpiesia, Nagano-Ken Kosei-Ren (Nagano Prefectural Union of the Welfare Societies for the Farmers) estab-lished a sanatorium (with 561 beds in 1975) in order to maintain farmers' health. At the same time, some farmers and stay-bathers opened new hotels, because a part of the water of the new hot-spring was shared among them. Since then, the hot-spring settlement has expanded and hotel accomodation has remarkably improved. That is, nine hotels with the accomodation fo 450 people in 1955 increased to 33 hotels with the accomodation for 2, 935 in 1975. And, labour shift from agricultural industry to service industry involving the sanatorium or the hotels was rapidly going on.
In 1958, Nagano-Ken Kosei-Ren started the mass recreation system of a week's stay in the winter season for farmers of Nagano Prefecture. Its total cost being inexpensive, for example only 13, 460 yen in 1973, many parties of farmers (49, 000 people in 1972) have visited Kake-yu spa (Fig. 2). During the summer season, lots of old bathers come from Tokyo and in other seasons except winter, there are bathers from nearby districts. Therefore, the seasonal distribution of bathers is getting to be even almost all the year round (Fig. 3).
The total number of bathers in 1972 was about 400, 000, and the bathers from both Tokyo and Nagano Prefecture occupied 30% of them respectively.
In recent years, MVlaruko Town Office has the initiative to develop hot-springs with an intention of keeping out the large-scale enterprises. Especially, the integration of hot-spring was made possible in 1968 and it resulted in an intensification of union among people of the community (Fig. 4). This development of Kakeyu hot-spring settlement may be sug-gestive of remodeling many other hot-springs in the future.

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The Tsugaru Plain, about 60km long from south to north and 5 to 20 km wide from east to west, is located in the northernmost part of Honshu Island and is surrounded by hills and volcanoes except in its northern margin. The plain mainly consists of alluvial plains of the Iwaki and the other small rivers, which are classified into alluvial fans, a natural levees zone and a deltaic plain from south to north.
In the natural levees zone, the alluvial plains are divided into two levels which intersect each other, the upper alluvial plain being dissected in its southern part and overlaid with deposits of the lower one in its northern part. Along the eastern and western margins of the deltaic plain are distributed terraces and landlocked sand spits 4 to 5 meters high above sea level which are correlated to the upper alluvial plain in the natural levees zone. Under the plain there are terraces of two levels and fluvial valleys buried with Holocene deposits.
The Holocene deposits forming the plain are chiefly composed of sand and silt, and are locally different in composition in the natural levees zone and the deltaic plain. Accord-ing to results of diatomaceous analysis of the Holocene deposits, marine and brackish water species are dominant in the northern and western parts, whereas fresh water species predo-minate in the other parts of the plain. Generally speaking, the Holocene deposits were more remarkably influenced by fluvial action in process of deposition in the southern part than in the northern part, and a brackish water area seems to have most extensively occu-pied the plain when the middle silt bed was deposited.
In conclusion, the geomorphological history of the Tsugaru Plain in the Holocene period was inferred as follows;
(1) In the early Holocene, former fluvial valleys were drowned by transgression and were filled with sediments different in composition in each drowned valley.
(2) With progress of transgression, an embayment had extended to the central part of the plain by 5, 500 y. B. P. Drowned valleys had been entirely submerged and the expan-sion of sedimentation area caused sediments to become fine. A delta composed of fine sedi-ments was formed at the head of the embayment.
(3) A slight regression caused dissection of the deltaic plain and a new delta composed of rather coarse sediments was formed further downstream.
(4) Around 2, 500 y. B. P. forest flourished on the dissected deltaic plain and peat accu-mulated on the new one.
(5) After 2, 000 y. B. P., the lower alluvial plain was formed burying forest and peat lands.

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The regionalization approach which has been integrated by various criteria has been one of the major subjects for regional geography. Nowadays, with the remarkable devel-opment of quantitative geography, it has often been re-examined in various regions by a new method. The purpose of the present paper is to classify, as objectively as possible, the municipalities in Hiroshima Prefecture with the analyses of their demographic and socio-economic characteristics and their population changes, and also to make clear the regional structure. The main results are summarized as follows:
1) Examined the factor analysis (principal axis method) with 57 variables which refer to the regional characteristics such as population, household, age structure, migration, occupational-industrial structure, educational level, housing conditions, standard of living and so on (Tab. 1), the writer extracted nine factors by the rotation of factors with eigen value over unity and considered the highest three as main factors in detail. They can be labelled as urbanity, blue collar worker and suburban area factors. The urbanity factor which explains about 40 per cent of total variance is the primary factor. It seems that the occurrence of such a large first factor mainly stems from regional properties of Hiroshima Prefecture where the large regional capital, Hiroshima City, is sharply confronted with mountainous area of conspicuous depopulation. The writer assumes, however, that, if a similar analysis may be conducted in any prefecture of Japan, the urbanity factor would appear as the first factor. Because the improvement of rural life may be less effective due to the strong outflows of migration from country to large cities so that the spatial difference of life between rural and urban areas, especially large cities, may exist still obviously.
2) The spatial distribution of factor score for the urbanity factor shows a remarkable contrast between the coastal cities and the rural areas of inland and islands. A typical depopulation area such as Chugoku Mountains, Jinseki Plateau and Sera Upland records especially low values. These results coincide with the fact recognized in certain previous geographical surveys, too. The loading value of each variable for blue collar worker factor (explained 11 per cent) has shown similar tendency to that of the first factor and seems to be a sub-dimension of it. Therefore, this score distribution is also similar to it. Contrary to these two factors, the factor score of suburban area factor (explained 7 per cent) shows the highest values in the suburban area of Hiroshima City and is relatively high in its outside zone. A noticeable fact is that the highest value zone does not occur in the vicinity of Fu-kuyama City. On the other hand, the factor score of coastal cities as well as island and remote inland area is very low (Fig. 2abc) . The reason why coastal cities record low values, however, may be different from that of islands and inland area.
3) From the factor analysis about population change from 1920 to 1975 for each five year period which totalled 11 periods, th three factors were extracted. They represent the rapid economic growth period after 1960, the pre-war period, the convulsion period in wartime and post war period respectively (Tab. 4). It is noticeable that the population change rate between 1920 and 1925 is considerably similar to that of the convulsion period. In addition, the spatial pattern of the population change for pre-war time tends to be largely different each other compared with the population change of each five year period after 1960 (Tab. 5).

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