The most important farm activity in Japan has been paddy rice cultivation based on efficient irrigation systems. The irrigation systems often play a major role in defining not only orga nizations of rice production but also socio-economic structures of paddy regions. Many geographers in Japan have discussed on regional differences or characteristics of paddy regions inn terms of irrigation systems. It is difficult, however, to find the regional differences in irrigation systems because of the lack of appropriate approaches.
The objective of this paper is to analyse regional differences in irrigation systems in the Hokuriku District through employing a newly proposed approach named “the spatial structure of irrigation systems” which integrates hierarchical organization of spatial irrigation units. In order to set up the spatial structure of irrigation systems in a region, first of all, spatial units are defined based on functional territories of irrigation facilities, management areas of irriga Lion cooperatives, and areas of traditional rights of water usage or a traditional way of water use. These spatial units are picked out from individual farmers' level to villages, and municipalities' levels. For a example a first order spatial unit is formed by a small sum of paddy fields where irrigation water is supplied by the smallest ditch. The ditch is mainly controlled by a group of farmers concerned. A second order spatial unit is formed by a territory of a channel which supply water to the lower order spatial units. The second order spatial units is often equivalent to an area of a rural settlement. Then a third order spatial unit conMains some second order spatial units and it is formed by a territory where a main canal distributes water to the channels. In this way, finally, we arrive at the highest order spatial unit, which is an area irrigated by a dam diverting water from the river to main or trunk canals. The spatial arrangement of hierarchical organizations composed of various order spatial units in a river basin can be defined here as the spatial strucuture of irrigation systems. The Kurobe alluvial fan, the Tedori alluvial fan, and the Takada plain were selected as study areas out of many alluvial plains in the Hokuriku District, because the three plains are nearly same in size and have elaborate irrigation systems.
On the Tedori alluvial fan the first order spatial units are formed by small sums of paddy fields with one to three hectares of areas irrigated by small ditches. Groups of farmers concerned maintain and control the irrigation facilities. The second order spatial units are territories to which secondary channels distribute irrigation water. Their areas vary from 10 to 50 hectares and the irrigation facilities are controlled by rural communities having farmhouseholds ranging from 30 to 100. When Bansui (irrigation by rotation) is carried out during drought season, a leader of each community makes a decision in order to distribute evenly the limited water into all paddy fields. The third order spatial units are areas served by the eight main canals on the Tedori alluvial fan. The maintenance of the canals was done by lower branches of the Tedori River Seven Canals Land Improvement District in the northern part of the fan and the Miyatake Irrigation Canal Land Improvement District in the southern part of the fan. When Bansui is necessary because of the water shortage, the terTitory of each lower branch and the Miyatake Irrigation Canal Land Improvement District are divided into three parts and from one part to another water is served by rotation. These parts are named sub-third order units because their positions are between the second and the third ones. The fourth order spatial unit is an area irrigated by the trunk canal which integrates seven main canals from among eight canals on the Tedor 1 alluvial fan.

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A basic assumption in this paper is that the classification of the spatial structure of a port area is not sufficient forr studying port functions. It is also important in such studies to make clear the relation between port and hinterland and to consider this relationship in terms of port prosperity and decline. However, there are few studies on the hinterland, particularly on its formation and structure.
The problems of hinterland have been complicated in the recent decade by the changes in the commodity flow systems especially the progress of containarization, the appearance of special cargo ships, and the construction of exclusive-use berths. It is difficult to study port functions without consideration of the hinterland. In this paper, the author selected Shimizu port and tentatively assumed Shizuoka Prefecture as its hinterland. The purpose of this study was to reconsider port functions and to refine the concept of hinterland.
The author researched the commodity flow of seaside factories located at Shimizu port. It was learned upcn inquiry that the transshipment did not take place at the exclusive-use berths of seaside factories. Collection of raw materials at those factories reflected one commodity flow pattern because the commodity flow through the port had been completed there.
Then, she researched the commodity flow of factories that had markets in foreign countries which were connected with the public berths for ocean vessels. It was learned that these factories used not only Shimizu, but also Yokohama, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, and that Tokyo and Yokohama were used more often than the rest.
The commodity flow systems of export container cargo are the primary reason for the ocurrence of this phenomenon. The products are carried out from the factories, packed in containers, and passed through the custom at the nearest feeder service port, Shimizu. But the export container cargo is not always dispatched from Shimizu. Much of it is transported by land to Yokohama or Tokyo, large ports such as Yokohama or Tokyo for container ships, and shipped from there. The transportation system peculiar to container cargo is adopted by the marine transport businesses that attempt to minimize the number of ports-of-call in order to make the best use of container ships. As the marine transport business gives priority to the keep the scheduled time, as far as containner ships are concerned, it is required that the producers hand over export container cargo to the marine transport companies at the feeder service port. As a result, the transpotation costs between the feeder service port and the container ship port-of-call are paid by the marine transport business.
In this study, the author came to the conclusions mentioned below;
As far as the industrial port including exclusive-use berths for factories is concerned, the existence of a hinterland is not evident. It appears that the distance between port and factory is the factor that decides commodity flow. But as far as the export container cargo is concerned, the above is not always correct. This discrepancy may be explained by emphasizing the commodity flow systems for container cargo, and its hinterland does not always have a circular structure.
With progress in containarization, the differentiation of port functions has been promoted. Foreign trade ports are classified into the three types: (A) the port from which container cargo is shipped; (B) the port where container cargo is packed and passed through customs except for the actual loading of ships; and (C) the port where the container cargo can not be handled. A functional hierarchy of ports is reflected between (A) and (B), and the hinterland of the former and that of the latter overlap each other.

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This paper presents an analysis of place name perception of residents in Takefu city and tries to explain the characteristics of their mental maps of the city.
Eight hundred and eighty nine pupils of the junior high schools in Takefu city were asked to write their addresses and also whether they knew each of 100 representative place names within the city. Those place names in the questionnaires were selected under the following three criteria: (1) Respondents can identify those places by the given place names. (2) Selected place names are almost evenly distributed throughout the city in terms of their locations. (3) Place names can be almost equally perceived by the respondents.
The author divided Takefu city into 100 smaller districts, each of which had an area of 1km² respectively. Then, he selected one main place name from each district as a representative of it (Fig. 1). The selected names are those of “cho”. Each district means the object that residents perceive (percieved district) as well as the area where citizens live (dwelling district). A perceptional ratio was defined as the ratio (%) of the respondents in district who could perceive a given place name as the object of perception. The relation between the degrees of perception and the locations of place names was examined by means of both Spearman's rank correlation coefficients (Fig. 2) and regression analysis. In the regression analysis, the expected value of perceptional ratio was calculated by the distance between a dwelling district and each perceived district. The expected values were obtained from the regression equation in which both the distance and the perceptional ratio are logarithmically transformed. The residuals were analyzed to find the structure of place name perception (Table 1).
It was thus clarified that the structure of place name perception was influenced by two elements, the boundary of school-districts and two dominant centers in Takefu city.

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