In recent studies of the migration process (Åkerman, 1975; Ostergren, 1979, 1981, etc.), both the regions of emigration and immigration have been taken into account to clarify the characteristics of migrants, the decision making process of migration, the migration flows, and so on. However, in the studies of agricultural migrants to Hokkaido the factors of emigration and the processes of immigration have been dealt with separately without no focus on the process of migration as a whole.
The aim of this paper, therefore, is to shed light on the migration process to Hokkaido which was initiated by the Meiji era policy of inland colonization by examining the experience of individuals within both the emigrant and the immigrant regions. The area selected for study is Yamagata-chiku in the city of Bibai, Hokkaido, where many of the settlers originted from Murayama region of Yamagata prefecture.
Yamagata-chiku was first colonized by the Yamagata-dantai which immigrated in 1894. The Yamagata-dantai was a migrant group of farmers consisting of twenty one families and officially provided for under “the rule for collective migration”. The first sixteen households immigrated in 1894 and the remaining five households followed a year later. Yamagata-dantai was organized by the poor peasant and tenant farmers of Murayama region, primarily Yamaguchi-mura (village) and Kurazo-mura. Yamaguchi-mura's potential was limited by its small supply of arable land and Kurazo-mura was a district which was frequently damaged by floods. In addition to these geographical circumstances many of the farmers in Kurazo-mura were economically constrained by the high land tax under 1875 tax reform law. The reasons why Kurazo-mura sent thereafter many emigrants to Hokkaido can be found in those geographical and socio-economic conditions.
The members of Yamagata-dantai were closely tied to one another by the migration contract. This phenomenon is apparent in the social aspects of the sessions of ‘Shudan-kai’, a general meeting of Yamagata-dantai; the formation of ‘Kumi’, which had been organized in its home land as a neighbor group; and the establishment of Yamagata-jinja (shrine). Additionally, social ties were strengthened as a result of the form of land ownership established. The alluvial plain of Toinuttapu-genya (wasteland) along the Ishikari-gawa (river) was divided into equal lots of 90 meters in width and 540 meters in length, with one lot per dantai member.
Almost all members were granted farming lots without compensation, basically 5 hectars of land per one household. But six households emigrated from Yamagata-chiku by 1913. The wasteland in Yamagata-chiku was largely a peat bog and the productivity of the arable land declined due to the practice of the commercial dry farming without manure. Immigrants with a shortage of labor and capital were forced to move out. In their place rich immigrants came to improve productivity by expanding the farmland. With this expansion independent farmers had immigrated. As a result a differentiation of immigtants by social classes occurred from the end of the Meiji era to the beginning of the Taisho era (around 1910-1920), and some upper-class farmers began to appear. The agricultural management in Yamagata-chiku became stable after the farmland was changed to the paddy field in 1921 and the upper-class farmers became in need of Hoko-nin (employees) or tenants as a labor force.
As mentioned above a number of settlers continued to immigrate into Yamagata-chiku after the initial immigration of the Yamagata-dantai.

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Many great earthquakes have occurred in historical period along the Nankai Trough where Phillipine Sea Plate subsides under Eurasia Plate. Muroto Peninsula jutting out to the Nankai Trough, has experienced coseismic uplift appeared at the great earthquakes. The author aims in this paper to clarify coseismic crustal movement during the Holocene based on geomorphological and biological sea-level indicators in Muroto Peninsula.
Nankaido earthquake (M=8.1) occurred in December 26, 1946 is the latest one among these great earthquakes. In Muroto Peninsula, seismic crustal movement was clarified by the precise re-leveling before and after this earthquake. Before the earthquake, the northern part of the peninsula was uplifted and the southern part was subsided slowly. On the contrary, at the time of the earthquake, while the northern part was subsided, southern part was uplifted abruptly. Crustal movement after the earthquake showed the similar mode as before the earthquake. Yoshikawa et al. (1964) considered that the amount of residual uplift at Cape Muroto was 0.25m per one great earthquake such as Nankaido earthquake type recurred at an interval of 110 years, and the residual uplift had been accumulated through the late Pleistocene.
In Muroto Peninsula, the evidence for former sea levels is recognized as the marine terraces, notches, wave cut benches, potholes and the calcareous remains of attaching organisms living in tidal zone. Based on the certification of high concentrating zone in the vertical distribution of these former sea level indicators, six former sea levels are distinguished at Cape Muroto, i.e. I:11.0m, II:8.7m, III:6.6m, IV:6.0m, V:3.7m, and VI:1.3m in height. The former sea levels for each preceding height are aged as I : 6, 000-5, 000 y. B. P., II:4, 000-2, 700 y. B. P., III:2, 600-2, 200 y. B. P., IV:2, 000-1, 100 y. B. P., V:1, 000-800 y. B. P., and VI:700-200y. B. P., by means of radiocarbon dating. The earthquakes caused these abrupt drops of sea levels are named event 1 to event 6 according to the new age in chronological order. Event 1 to event 6 probably occurred at 200-0 y. B. P., 800-700 y. B. P., 1, 100-1, 000y. B. P., 2, 200-2, 000y. B. P., 2, 700-2, 600y. B. P., and S, 000-4, 000y. B. P. respective-ly. Figure 7 indicates that abrupt seismic uplift has repeated at an irregular interval of several hundred years during the Holocene, and the amount of residual uplift per one earthquake was bigger than that of Nankaido earthquake in 1946.
Earthquakes of Nankaido type are the inter-plate earthquakes, and the uplift with these earthquakes can not be accumulated from the view of elastic rebound theory. The value of 0.25m for the residual uplift with Nankaido earthquake type estimted by Yoshikawa et at. (1964) (as mentioned above), is unreliable because the precise re-leveling was not done throughout an interval of earthquakes, and its value should be decreased to about Om. Earthquakes reconstructed in this paper, i.e. event 1 to event 6 are not inter-plate earthquakes, but intra-plate earthquakes which have resulted in the cumulative uplift (Shimazaki, 1980) of Muroto Peninsula. The uplift pattern caused by each event is distinctive. While amounts of uplift of event 6 and event 4 are bigger in the southwestern part of the peninsula, those of event 5, event 3, and event 2 are bigger in the southeastern part. It is difficult to distinguish the amount of uplift with event 1 from resudial uplift by Nankaido earthquake. As observed around Cape Oyama, Higashino River and Irugi River, local uplifts occurred at event 1 to event 3 and event 5. The cause of these local uplifts could bee due to repeated displacements of active faults within Muroto Peninsula (Fig. 11).

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In this paper, the availability of the vertical electric sounding (VES) for the detection of the basal surface of the Quaternary sedimentary rocks, is discussed. Calculations were made for an objective interpretation of apparent resistivity field data obtained through the Schlumberger array. It is found that the resistivity of the Quaternary system mainly composed of gravel is as high as that of granite and the Mesozoic_??_Palaeozoic erathem. Therefore, it is difficult to make a clear distinction between the former and the latter by VES. However, the Neogene sedimentary rocks have significantly lower resistivity than the Quaternary system. This enables to detect the surface of unconformity. The relationship between the estimated depth of the basal surface and the actual one, with a high coefficient of correlation of 0.98, is shown in Fig. 7, which suggests that detection of the basal surface of Quaternary sedimentary rocks by VES can be performed within an accuracy of about 6.5m. It is concluded that VES is a useful method for estimating the depth of the basal surface of Quaternary sedimentary rocks overlying Neogene ones.

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