Geographical Review of Japan
Online ISSN : 2185-1719
Print ISSN : 0016-7444
ISSN-L : 0016-7444
Volume 53, Issue 8
Displaying 1-4 of 4 articles from this issue
  • Takayuki AKAHANE
    1980 Volume 53 Issue 8 Pages 493-510
    Published: August 01, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: December 24, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    After World War II, especially in the period of high growth of Japanese economy, machinery industries such as electric machinery, transport equipment, and ordinary machinery increased their production rapidly. These machinery industries include components sectors with low-productivity of labor. Because of low-productivity, these components sectors moved into the inland rural regions away from the Pacific Belt of Japan, in order to obtain cheap labor force. And at present, . these components industries have become very important elements of the local economy in the rural regions. This study deals with one of these components industries, and aims to make clear the manufactory system, the composition of labor force, and the regional structure. Industry dealt with this study is an inland type, labor-force oriented, electric machinery industry which is the most labor intensive among the industries developing in the rural regions, and mainly produces electronic components such as resistor, condensor, transformer, coil, etc. And this study investigated the case of the Minama-Saku district, Nagano Prefecture, central Japan, where the electronic components industry has been developed.
    Following results were made clear by this study.
    Manufactory System: Components factories (main factories) usually farm out a part of processes, mainly those of lower productivity, to many small workshops. In this respect, the manufactory system becomes hierarchical, being composed of components factories, branch factories, subcontract workshops and domestic workers. The spatial form of the manufactory system is that components factories are located at the central city of the region, branch factories are located at intermediate zone between the central city and the surrounding rural areas, subcontract workshops are scattered in the whole region, and housewives as domestic workers are in the surrounding areas of each factory. Such a hierarchical manufactory system has been made in order to obtain cheap labor force which is latent in the rural region, and it is also a flexible production system for reduction at depression periods.
    Composition of Labor Force: In this industry female laborers are more numerous than male ones in almost all factories. But the larger the scale of factories is, the lower the ratio of female is. And in the large scale factories the ratio of young laborers is high, in the small ones the ratio of middle and old-aged housewife laborers is high. Most of domestic workers is housewife laborers. In respect to a spatial aspect of the composition of labor force, the ratios of female workers to total workers, housewife workers to female workers, and farm-housewife workers to housewife workers generally increase with distance from the large scale factories located at the central city to the small scale factories in the rural areas. And the large scale factories such as components factories employ young laborers from wider areas, but the small scale subcontract workshops employ housewife laborers from narrower surrounding areas.
    In this way, the labor market of the electronic components industry consists of two parts in the rural region such as the Minami-Saku district, Nagano Prefecture. One is a market of young workers who find employment just at the graduation from school, other is one of converted workers from agriculture, etc, mostly housewives. These two labor markets are subdivided by the factory's ability to pay and by the latent form of relative surplus-population in the rural region.. The large scale factory depends on the former and the small scale factory on the latter. The working conditions such as wages differ in every class of the labor market.
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  • Hidenori OKAHASHI
    1980 Volume 53 Issue 8 Pages 511-530
    Published: August 01, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: December 24, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The present paper attempts to examine the recent changes in the employment structure and the trends of agriculture and farmers in a mountain village, Kamitakara-mura where most of workers are engaged in construction industry. Recent trends of the mountain village seem to be much affected by public policies of the Central Government.
    In Japan, many mountain villages have experienced consistent and serious depopulation over the last twenty years. The causes of this population decrease have been explained by the economic decline of the mountain villages and also the increasing demand for labor force, especially the young workers, from metropolitan areas. There has been insufficient non-agricultural employment in those villages. It has caused a continued emigration out of those mountainous areas. But we might recognize the fact that employment in the mountainous areas has much increased after about 1965. It is caused by the manufacturing industries relocated from metropolitan areas to those areas for their cheap labor, or construction industries which have grown in the process of increasing public investment.
    To be sure, much effort has been made for the study of both the nature and extent of depopulation and the economic change in mountainous areas, which is mostly concerned with traditional industries (agriculture and forestry). However there has been relatively little discussion of the employment structure and its relations to the trends of agriculture and farmers. Now we are postulated to clarify this problem for explaining and solving the decline of both population and economy in those areas. We have today several literatures which focus on the local labor market in mountain villages around industriarized areas. On the other hand, there are few field researches which tried to clarify the employment structure in mountain villages far distant from industriarized areas. In these villages, most of laborers cannot commute to industriarized areas and are mainly employed in local construction or forestry. Therefore the aim of this paper is to examine the following issues: 1. the expanding process of the local labor market, especially in case of construction industry. 2. the characteristics of employment, 3. the interrelationship between the employment opportunity and the trends of changing agriculture, 4, the trends of farmers in a sample settlement. The study area is Kamitakara-mura which is located at the foot of the Hida mountains in the northeastern part of Gifu Prefecture, central Japan. There are tourist resorts with the background of beautiful mountain landscapes and good spas. In winter this area has heavy snowfall which disturbs transportation and construction work. The following results were obtained:
    1. After about 1965, the structure of the local labor market has distinguishably changed and the non-agricultural employment has much increased.
    2. New employment opportunities have been created, for male workers by the construction industries which depend on the public investment, and for female workers by the leisure service sectors and small manufacturing industries such as textile and electronics. Most of laboreres (about 60%) in this village are not employed throughout the year. Every year, they lose their jobs in winter season and rely on unemployment insurance relief. Their low wages are supplemented with the unemployment allowance. Their employment conditions are not secured.
    3. The changing process of agriculture after the Second World War was divided into three periods.
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  • Fumitake SHIMIZU, Masami TOGO, Tokihiko MATSUDA
    1980 Volume 53 Issue 8 Pages 531-541
    Published: August 01, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: December 24, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the high mountain area of the Japan Alps, there are many scarps invariably facing the ridge, namely uphill-facing scarps on tops and sides of ridges. Similar scarps found in Europe, United States and New Zealand have been ascribed to erosion, slow movement along deep-seated shear plane and tectonic movement. In the present paper the authors studied the formation mechanism of uphill-facing scarps on the slopes of Mt. Noguchigorodake and its vicinity mainly composed of granitic rocks.
    The uphill-facing scarps of this area cut through the debris slopes and post-glacial deposits. The ridge-top is sandwiched in between the uphill-facing scarps on both sides. Each scarp on both sides of the ridge bears similarities in form, size, distribution and degree of dissection. From these facts the uphill-facing scarps on each side of the ridge are inferred to have been formed by the same mechanism in the same time (probably postglacial period).
    Distribution of the uphill-facing scarps in this area is limited only around ridges. Most of these scarps are nearly parallel to the long axis of the ridge and are incompletely arranged en echelon. The total length of the scarps arranged en echelon is 2 km or less. These facts imply that their formation processes are not controlled by regional stress but strongly
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  • 1980 Volume 53 Issue 8 Pages 542-547,553
    Published: August 01, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: December 24, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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