The authors study on gentle slopes which are widely distributed at the foot of the low mountains in the southern part of Hyogo prefecture. These slopes with concave longitudinal profile are predominantly developed on the rhyolitic mountains.
The results of this study are summarized as follow :
1. The gentle slopes consist of colluvial slopes which continue to alluvial fans toward downslope.
2. These colluvial slopes and fans can be divided into surfaces I to V in the descending order. The older surface is generally distributed with steeper slopes in the mountains.
3. The surface I was formed during the glacial age but one, the surface II during the last glacial age, the surface III mainly between the post-glacial age and approximately 6, 000 years ago, and then followed formation of the surfaces IV and V.
4. The surface I was formed at the base of slopes as a depositional surface with debris produced by the frost action in the cold period and by removing of these deposits due to solifluction and mud-flow. These deposits turned later into the red weathered crust in the interglacial age. The surface II was formed in the cold period of the last glacial age by the same mechanism as the surface I. The surface III is mainly fan with composed mud-flow deposits and formed between the maximum phase of the last glacial age and approximately the time of Jomon transgression in the post-glacial age. The surface IV and V were formed as fans mainly composed of deposits that re-moved from surface II and III in the later period of relatively mild and wet climate.
5. A series of these depositional surfaces are distinguishedly distributed on the rhyolitic piedmonts. This fact is considered to have been caused by the discontinuous disintegration of rhyolitic rock which forced in the production of a large amount of debris difficult to be re-moved.
6. The fractured zone in the rhyolitic areas seems to be closely related with the production of a large amount of debris.
7. The concave slopes of these piedmonts viewed from a distance are resulted from overlapping of the above-mentioned surfaces I to V.
It can be concluded that the following factors are closely related all together to the formation of colluvial slopes in this area; the fractured rock by faulting, the peculiarity of the grain size of debris produced under the rock control at the time of disintegration, the difference in weathering and disintegration of rock, and the way of transportation of debris affected by climatic changes.

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Taking it for granted that flatlands in Japan can mostly be developed to arable lands, we can find the unusual fact that the forests on flatlands are kept by rural people. We call them the flatland forests as compared with the mountain forests. Japanese farmers used to utilize those flatland forests mostly as the places which supplied materials useful to their rural lives. Since about 1960, however, flatland forests in the suburbs have rapidly begun to be used for the urban land-use under the rapid national economic growth of Japan.
In this paper the author describes, first of all, the transformation and the decline of the utilization of the flatland forests on the Musashino Upland which happened to be the western suburbs of Tokyo, by examining three different periods of topographical maps and some documents. Secondly, he explains through his fieldworks the reason why the flatland forests are still kept and utilized in the farming especially in the area identified as the flatland forest area through the works above.
The results are summarized as follows:
1. The flatland forests on the Musashino Upland had supplied lots of materials, such as fallen leaves from which the farmers made compost, and wood for fuel or charcoal among other things, before about 1960. But, as chemical fertilizers and fuel oil have come into wide use, the forests have generally become dispensable for their rural lives and have been converted into urban land-use (dwelling-sites, industrial-sites, school-estates etc.) along with the urban development of Tokyo Metropolitan Area.
2.. On the northern part of the Musashino Upland, especially in a rural community named Kamitome in Miyoshi-cho, lie a sizable amount of flatland forests still now. Until the 1960s, the farmers of Kamitome had gathered fallen leaves, wood for fuel, lumbers, roofing materials from their forests. They grew mainly barley and sweet potatoes on the farmlands covered with loam. They not only made fertilizer out of fallen leaves, but also they kept the seedbeds warmer by fermenting them. Thus, the fallen leaves were the most important materials from their forests.
3. In the 1960s the farmers of Kamitome stopped gathering wood for fuel and other subsistence goods from forest owing to the change of their way of life under the commercialized economy; while they continued to gather fallen leaves. Their agriculture became more prosperous by growing rootcrops (carrots and Japanese radishes) to add to sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes, which are shipped to the market in Tokyo as commercial products, are still grown by the traditional methods where they require a lot of fallen leaves, and it is necessary for the farmers to use a large quantity of compost from fallen leaves in the growth of rootcrops in order to prevent the troubles derived from planting the same crop repeatedly. Besides, fallen leaves are costless comparing with other organic fertilizers, and they are also available without fluctuation every year. Therefore, the flatland forests play an important role in many ways in the farming of Kamitome.
4. The author classified the farmers into two classes : the upper class farmers who possess more than 2 hectares of farmlands and the lower class farmers. The upper class farmers depend their livelihoods on the sweet potato cultivation with complementary rootcrop cultivation. Possessing most part of the forests in Kamitome, the upper farmers can get fallen leaves enough to reproduce their farming. Moreover, some of them possess surplus area of forests which can be used by lower farmers.
The lower class farmers, on the other hand, mainly grow rootcrops. Most of them are newcomers or branch farmers. They possess no or little forests. They borrow part of the surplus forest of the upper farmers mentioned above to obtain fallen leaves necessary to keep their farming.

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The population of mountain villages, especially that of snow-covered highlands, has decreased since the latter half of the 1959s. On the other hand, the demand for recreation facilities in the mountain regions has increased with the growth of the national economy, causing the expansion of the recreational areas in the snow-covered highlands. The above tendency is particularly noticeable in the central highlands where skiing grounds have been developed.
The author has already defined a “skiing settlement” as a resort settlement, where the development of a skiing ground plays a very important role in the formation of the resort settlements, causing the skiing ground and the settlement to function as one complex. There is a great variety of skiing settlements in Japan. In the preceding paper, he presented a typology of Japanese skiing settlements through analysis of their origins and the processes of their transformations. According to the study, skiing settlements in Japan are classified into two groups.
The first group is composed of the settlements “developed from existing settlements”. In this case, socio-economic structures of the settlements have drastically changed since the skiing grounds were developed nearby. Nozawa Onsen (Spa), on which a paper has already been presented by the author, is a typical example of this group.
The second group is composed of the skiing settlements “newly developed” along with the development of new skiing grounds. New settlements came into existence, as the newly developed ski areas prompted the removal of local people into formerly non-settled areas. The author analyses in this paper the case of Tsugaike Kogen in central highlands of Japan as a case of a newly developed skiing settlement, taking into consideration many factors: the process and background of the removal of the settlement, the charactor of the developers, the management of both lodging houses and farms by the local people, temporary workers for tourist industries and so on. The following are the facts which emerged from the analysis:
1. It was in 1960, on the opening of Hakuba-Oike Railway Station on the Oito Line of the Japan National Railway, that a regular skiing ground was developed on Tsugaike Kogen in accordance with the intention of the people of the rural community, Kawauchi, who were the owners of the ground. The local people, who had mostly engaged in a traditional seasonal labour in Japanese sake-brewing industries away from home during winter, took a growing interest in the management of lodging houses together with the development of the skiing ground, since they thought that they could overcome the: economic disadvantages of a heavy snowfall through winter recreation. But since they didn't have capital enough to carry out the project, the local people invited external capital and many ski lifts were constructed by the capital in a short time. As a result, the local people of Kawauchi began in the mid-1960 s to remove their dwelling houses to the outskirts of the skiing ground in Tsugaike Kogen which had formerly been a non-settled area.
2. With the development of skiing grounds, almost all of the local people in Kawauchi moved into the plateau around the skiing grounds for the purpose of the management of lodging houses. The managers flowed in not only from Kawauchi but also from other areas, and a distinct settlement which can be defined as a skiing settlement of the second type was newly formed. At present, the greater part of accommodation is operated by the managers who came from areas other than Otari-mura, the administrative village which includes Kawauchi.
3. Tsugaike Kogen is in one of the Japanese beech forest belts. This plateau provides favourable natural conditions essential to ski resorts with good quality and a great quantity of snow and a variety of ski slopes.

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