Many old documents show that the Ainu in the Edo period (1603-1867), who lived on fishing, hunting, and collecting, were migratory people. It is also widely accepted that the Ainu moved seasonally from their fixed bases. This probably indicates that the residents of the bases were relatively stable. But a detailed analysis of other documents shows that two types of mobility were found in Ainu society: inter-settlement movement of households and inter-household movement of the inhabitants.
The purpose of this paper is to show that during the years 1834-1871 the households in the Takashima district of Hokkaido were open, flexible, and variable in composition as a result of the interhousehold movements of its members, though most of the households had fixed bases within the same district. The inter-household movements were analyzed by tracing the name, age, and kinship relations of each of the household members. For example, if the name of a member of household Al in 1834 was found in the list of members of household B2 in 1835, he or she was recognized as having moved from A 1 to B2. The kinship relationships of each member show which members of a household moved together and whether they moved for marriage or not. The documents used in the analysis are the annual lists of the inhabitants during 1834-1871, which were compiled by the Japanese. The details of the findings are as follows.
In the Takashima district during 1834-1871, the population of the Ainu decreased dramatically (Figs. 1 and 2). Their life had already changed, to depend less on fishing, hunting, and collecting, under the influence of the Wajin (old Japanese). The bases of most of their households were fixed within the same district, but many resident members moved between households (Fig. 3). The number of persons per 100 inhabitants during a 10-year period who moved between households was very large in the Takashima and Monbetsu districts. But it was small in the Mitsuishi and Shizunai districts and the southwestern part of Sakhalin (Table 1).
Of the 162 persons in the Takashima district whose names appeared in two or more than two lists, 81 (50%) moved to other households once or more than once. Such movements caused the membership of household A 10, for example, to change greatly during the period 1834-1871 (Fig. 6). During the period 1834-1871, the Takashima inhabitants who moved between households moved individually in most cases, rarely together. When they moved together, they were in most cases children and their fathers and / or mothers (Table 2). When they moved individually, 40.4% (57/141) of them moved for marriage. 54.8% (57/104) of the cases where they moved together also involved persons to gathering-hunting activity and/or the nomadic mode of life.

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The geographical study of tourism in Japan has largely concentrated on analyzing the development of tourist areas where indigenous tourism industries play the central role. It is not well equipped to understand the phenomena that occurred during the ‘resort boom’ of the late 1980s, when large enterprises began to play an important role in the development of tourism, adding an economic component to the geography of tourism in Japan. Britton (1991) emphasizes the integration of economic and social theory into the study of tourism. This is not enough to solve this problem in itself, but suggests a key to a breakthrough.
Developing a part of Britton's view, this paper attempts to analyze the reciprocal relation between the motion of tourism capital and expansion of tourism facilities, based on turnover of capital at the national level. The author takes as an example the membership resort club, which gives priority in use of its facilities to members, who purchase memberships.
The members are generally distributed in and around large cities (Fig. 2) and the facilities are chiefly concentrated in hot springs resorts and other scenic places located within about 100km from metropolitan areas (Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka) (Fig. 4).
In consideration of the distribution of potential members, membership resort clubs attempt to locate their facilities so as to attain maximum usage rates.
Occupancy rates of the facilities (Fig. 5) tend to fall off, and differences between on- and off- season usage rates (Fig. 6) tend to increase with the distance from large cities. Thus areas which can be profitably developed as membership resort clubs are limited (Fig. 7).
The more membership resort clubs expand their facilities nationally, the average occupancy rates fall off and the clubs have a tendency to depend more on sales of the rights of membership in their receipts. Under the circumstances of the 1980s, that was a high-potential but an inevitably vicious circle for membership resort clubs. The circumstances still exist, but without high demand for the rights.
This situation can be accounted for in terms of the relation between the motion of capital and the expansion of facilities, as follows:
The expansion of membership resort clue facilities is a major clue which magnifies the contradiction in the motion of capital. This contradiction in turn comes to militate quicker expansion of the facilities upon the capital.
Membership resort clubs rapidly increased in number and size due to demand for membership rights from high-income earners and organizations who led demand for tourism in the 1980s in Japan. Consequently, the contradiction was hidden until the end of the ‘resort boom.’ But today, with the depressed economy, demand for membership rights is in a serious slump, the contradiction has begun to be revealed, and the economically fragile membership resort clubs have been weeded out.
Rates of profit for tourism and resorts in Japan are generally low compared with other industries. The main factor is the low turnover rate of the facilities. The root of the problem and the contradiction for membership resort clubs is the scarcity of leisure time and of paid holidays for the working class.

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A newly developed topographical methodology was applied to the prediction of subsurface-layer permeability of the Rokugo alluvial fan in the Yokote basin, Akita prefecture, Japan. Rokugo was selected as a typical example of the gently sloped alluvial fans which occupy more than half of lowland acreage in the Tohoku region of Japan.
As the first step of the analysis, the latest depositional surface of about 20, 000 yr B. P. was identi-fied by three-dimensional analysis of aerial photographs and chronological information. The subsequent erosional surfaces were marked with assemblages of abandoned fluvial channels (detailedscale analysis).
As the next step, a large-scale flooded trace on the pre-determined erosional surfaces was examined in a 1 m contoured topographic map. The trace was detected as a characteristic topography with the combination of concaved-contour in the proximal fan and convexed-contour in the distal fan on the map (micro-scale analysis).
Clay and silt contained in the deposits have been washed and leached out of the subsurface-layer of the fan by repeated scour and fill in the process of degradation over the last 20, 000 years. Water supplied by either precipitation or irrigation can percolate, seep and run downward more easily in the erosional surfaces than in the original depositional surface. In the large-scale flooded trace, in particular, permeable materials which are deposited in succession, forming a thick subsurface-layer with high per-meability from the fanhead over the distal fan, can work as a trunk pass for shallow groundwater.
Geological and hydological data were combined to support this prediction. Specification of the depositional surface at about 20, 000 yr B. P., therefore, is considered to provide useful information not only for the prediction of subsurface-layer permeability but also for land evaluation.

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