The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of the extension of regular truck transportation networks over fixed routes in Japan.
In the secod section, the historical background of the transportation system is presented within a socioeconomic context. Following World War II, beginning in the mid-fifties, Japan experienced rapid economic growth. The two oil crises of 1973 and 1979, however, hit Japan.
These economic changes influenced the system of domestic commodity flow, and one of the most remarkable changes can be seen in the development of the truck industry. The volume of freight hauled by trucks has increased to the point where it now exceeds that of rail or domestic shipping (Fig. 1).
In particular, the regular service of truck transportation which consolidates small lots of cargo and carries them on fixed routes has grown. This development has been dominated by a few numbers of large corporations. The expansion of these corporations is indicated in Tables 1 and 2.
In the third section, the process by which the companies have developed networks is examined. The examples of two companies which are refered to hereafter as “B” company and “C” company, are introduced in detail. “B” company is the largest carrier in terms of all forms of cargo for regular service, while “C” company is the largest carrier in terms of parcel and profit for regular service. During the rapid economic growth in Japan, both companies developed networks of trucking service from metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka to nortrern and western Japan, with the Tokaido routes being regarded as perhaps the most significant development. The growth of the two companies can be partly explaine4 by the increase of demand in various industries in Japan.
Following the two oil crises, however, industries' demand fell, and these trucking corporations began to concentrate on parcel transport to service households. As a result, nation-wide networks from Hokkaido to Kyusyu were expanded (Figs. 2 and 3). The development mentioned in this section can also be attributed to the construction of expressways and large truck-terminals.
In the fourth section, the transportation network for regular truck movement is elucidated. In March 1987 for both “B” company and. “C” company, about half of all trucks were operated in the Kanto, Tokai and Kinki districts, otherwise known as “the Tokaido Megalopolis”.
To conclude, the author summarizes the spatial extension of regular truck service as follows: during the period of rapid economic growth, the distribution system mainly involved the mass transport of bulk cargo. Since the two oil crises, however, the focus has shifted to the transport of small cargo and parcels, requiring speed and high frequency. The network development of regular trucking services over fixed routes should be understood in the context of these socioeconomic changes.
However in considering this topic, the negative effects of the truck industry's development should not be ignored. The resulting increase in traffic accidents and environmental pollution, and the decline in the use of railways, for example, have meant increasing social cost.

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Whether the Bai-u front is polar front or not is very interesting problem. Some climatologists and meteorologists have considered the Bai-u front as a part of the Pacific Polar front, and the others have thought it the subtropical front. To solve this question, it is necessary to investigate the relations between the Bai-u front and the Polar air mass considering the seasonal change of the Polar air mass. In this report, the author has examined above problem. The results are summarized as follows;
1. According to the examination in the continuity and the latitudinal fluctuation of the surface fronts along 140 E, the Bai-u season in 1985 was divided into four stages (Fig. 3).
2. The analyses of wind shear and equivalent potential temperature showed that the Bai-u front was maintained by the subtropical jet stream (Fig. 4, 6). There was the highly mixing air formed by heating from the surface of the earth on the north of the Bai-u front (Fig. 5, 7). The polar front accompanied with the polar jet stream was seen in the north of the Bai-u front. In the following paragraphs, the author explains the relations between the Bai-u front and the Polar air mass in each stage.
3. Early in May (Fig. 18-a)
The Polar air mass uniformly spread over the continent and the ocean of East Asia. The polar front was formed around the southern limit of the Polar air mass. The Bai-u front is different from the polar front because the Bai-u front is not formed in this stage.
4. Early Bai-u (Fig. 18-b)
On the continent, the Polar air mass was reduced at the north side of 60 N because of the heating from the ground. While on the ocean, the volume of Polar air mass was large and its southern end reached the Pacific coast of North Honshu. The southern limit of Polar air mass does not reach the Bai-u front. Namely, the Bai-u front is not found as the southern limit of the Polar air mass.
5. Late Bai-u (Fig. 18-c)
The center of Polar air mass shifted to the Arctic region and the upper limit of Polar air mass around the Baring Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk was at the level of about 900 mb (1000 m). The occlusions of fronts were observed frequently at far east of 160 E through the Bai-u season. Therefore the fronts of this area may be thought a part of the Pacific Polar front.
6. Late July (Fig. 18-d)
The Polar air mass more reduced its volume at the area on the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk than in the late Bai-u season. The highly mixing air was not observed on the continent.

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This paper traces a trend in the methodological study of geographic education from the turning point of the 1970s in Japan, and points out the problems for its further development.
After the reformation of education in 1947, the subject of geography was divided into two subjects; a part of human geography and regional geography was put into a subject called ‘social studies’, a newly established subject in the reformation, and a part of physical geography was put into natural science. Unfortunately, the attempts of the reformation met with failure at least in the case of geographic education, because it lacked integrated geographic philosophy and methodolgy. Moreover, they had come to be much distress and stagnation in many schools.
However, in the early 1970s, the study of geographic education entered a new era of development in many sub-fields. Studies on the modern history of geographic education, mainly after the Meiji era, emerged triggering these developments.
Additionally, the remarkable progress of the study of cultural geography and humanistic geography promoted the growth of a new theoretical system for the study of geographic education as an interdisciplinary study of geography together with philosophy, pedagogy, child psychology, cultural anthropology and so like. In this methodology, the concept of Weltbild translated as “another world” is signficant. Weltbild is the mental geography of the world, the geography which is perceptively constructed in the mind. The author conceptualizes this as child's Weltbild deriving from Piaget's concept of “la représentation de monde chez l'enfant” with a geographic interpretation. Together with child development, “la representation de monde chez l'enfant is transferred to “Wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung” mainly through school education. Geographic education plays an important role with the Weltbild in this transference. Because much of this is based on hypothesis, it is necessary to clarify the structure of this représentation and transference through the fieldwork method, as developed by R. Hart, and his colleagues.
In many ways geographic education resembles the learning of one's native language. In general, a child acquires his/her “geography” through various experiences, and thereby constructs his/her own Weltbild. As in the case of the education of native languages, children correct language that acquired by themselves in their social life, with grammer learned in school education and make their language life more fertile. The author proposes this methodology for use in the teaching of geography which he calls “genetic geographic education theory”.
Along with this methodology, the new curriculum for oversea schools for Japanese children has already been developed, and now it is expected for domestic schools to revise in order to put them to use.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the rainfall variations of the Baiu, a rainy season in Japan, in the historical time and the Little Ice Age in particular. In order to reconstruct the rainfall variations in the historical time, old documents and diaries were used. The process of reconstruction was as follows: 1) Regional division based on the rainfall data for June, July and June plus July in the instrumental time was carried out using the Varimax rotated principal component analysis. With this method, Japan could be divided into eight regions for June and six regions for July and June plus July. 2) Unrotated principal component analysis was applied to the rainfall data in each region. Then the first principal component scores of each region were defined as ‘Rainfall Variation Index (RVI)’. 3) In order to reconstruct the RVIs in the historical time, regression equations were made using monthly number of days with precipitation more than 1 mm as independent variable for each region. With these equations, RVIs in the historical time were estimated.
Comparison of RVI between in the instrumental time and in the Little Ice Age, whose boundary is set around 1900, shows that there was much rainfall in the Kanto district, East Japan, in the latter period. Moreover, it was known that there were regional differences in RVI through the ages.
Finally, the authors pointed out that it was necessary to confirm further the reconstructed results with abundant material and to compare to other reconstruction by different kinds of proxy data.

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