Commercial tulip bulb cultivation was started by fourteen farmers on the Kurobe alluvial fan in 1948. The number of farms peaked in ten years. While the number of farms has decreased since then, the hectarage of cultivation has remained largely unchanged, and production of tulip bulbs has been increasing steadily. According to the records of the Tulip Bulb Farmers' Cooperative in Toyama Prefecture, the total number of farms which have undertaken tulip bulb production during a four-decade period reached 702. This paper depicts the changes in distribution of tulip bulb cultivation on the Kurobe alluvial fan based on the data for each farm during the period between 1948 and 1991 to identify the regional conditions which facilitated tulip bulb cultivation on the Kurobe alluvial fan.
The growth of tulip bulb cultivation consisted of three historical stages. In the first stage of rapid expansion, from 1948 to the mid-1960s, many local farmers introduced tulip bulb production to supplement rice monoculture. In the second stage of retreat, from the mid-1960s to the 1970s, many smallscale producers abandoned tulip farming, while relatively large-scale producers expanded. In the final stages of stable production since 1980, most tulip bulbs on the Kurobe alluvial fan have been produced by a small number of viable farms.
Distribution maps of tulip bulb farms from 1948 to 1991 show that tulip bulb cultivation expanded from the center of the fan during the 1950s. The distribution has gradually been restricted to several core regions of tulip production since the 1960s. Several areal units of tulip bulb production coincide with old municipalities, which have played important roles in the development of tulip bulb produc-tion; tulip farmers of each old municipality have been organized into local cooperatives on the Kurobe alluvial fan. There is a clear regional difference in the transformation of tulip production. In the right-hand area of the fan, both the number of tulip farmers and the hectarage devoted to tulips in-creased rapidly from 1948 to the beginning of the 1960s, but the number of tulip farmers has de-creased since the middle of 1960s. In the northeastern part of the fan area, even after the middle of 1960s the number of tulip farmers did not decrease. In the left-hand area of the fan, both the number of tulip farmers and the hectarage have drastically decreased since the middle of the 1960s. Tulip pro-duction was never introduced to the old fan area (deluvial upland), to relatively poor drainage land, or to the areas close to local centers.
Historical and distribution analyses identified several regional conditions as major factors for the formation of tulip bulb-producing regions. Favorable physical conditions include sandy soils, abundant water. for irrigation, and a long-period snow cover. Major socioeconomic factors are well-organized farmers' cooperatives, no major farm enterprises except for rice cultivation, high profitability of tulip bulb production in the 1950s and 1960s, good leaders and local organization of tulip farmers, financial support from local and central governments. In addition, personal factors such as willingness to commercialize agriculture and to continue tulip bulb cultivation are also important. The willingness to undertake cultivation depended on the age of the farmers, existence of successors, regional organizations of tulip farmers, personality of leaders, level of techniques, and the size and content of farm management.

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In the late 1960s some of the big cities in regional centers of Japan started to attract increased numbers of branch offices of large enterprises. One such city was Sendai, the biggest city in the Tohoku region, which has accumulated branch offices rapidly since the 1960s. It is said that the development of Sendai since the 1960s is mainly due to the increase in the number of such branch offices. Sendai has come to be called “Shiten-keizai-no-machi”, -a phrase indicating that the city's economy now depends on branch offices.
As a result, the difference between the number of branch offices located in Sendai and that in other prefectural cities in the region has become larger. In 1991, for example, there were 6, 944 branch offices in Sendai, which was followed by Koriyama city with 1, 639 branch offices. About 70% of the branch offices in Sendai are of companies with their head offices in Tokyo or Osaka (Table 1). The proportion of companies headquartered in Tokyo is as high as 59%.
Many of the branch offices in Sendai play the role of a regional control office which covers the whole Tohoku region. It is said that Sendai is the best city in which to set up regional control branch offices because they can enjoy the benefits of accumulation and the convenience of movement within the region.
However, the role of a branch office located in Sendai differs from industry to industry. For example, in the case of wholesale and construction, about 80% of the branch offices located in Sendai are responsible for supervising the whole Tohoku region. In contrast, only about 40% of branch offices in banking, insurance, transport and communication are expected to play such a role. This implies that there are some differences among industries in the effects of accumulation and spatial efficiency.
Contact activity, including face-to-face contact and telecommunication, is one of the most important activities that can benefit from accumulation and vice versa. The study of contact activity is very relevant for the analysis of accumulation effects; however, little research has so far been conducted. This is the area the author has tried to illuminate, by conducting a questionnaire survey among the workers of branch offices in Sendai from June to October 1992.
Some of the findings are as follows.
(1) A large number of external contacts are within Sendai (Tables 4, 5). Here “external contact” means contact with other enterprises, administrative agencies, and so on. About 60% of external contacts are carried out within the city; 40% of external face to face contacts within the central business district. About 40% of external contacts are within the Tohoku region outside of Sendai. Consequently., external contacts outside the Tohoku region are few.
(2) Internal contact shows a different pattern. Here “internal contact” means contact inside an enterprise. The most important such activity seen in a branch office in Sendai is contact with its head-quarter in Tokyo. About half of internal contacts outside the Tohoku region are with head offices in Tokyo. The most popular medium for these contacts is telecommunication. However, some workers in branch offices do travel to Tokyo for business purposes about once a month.
(3) External contacts are more frequently than internal contacts. And external contacts are mainly in Sendai. However, these contacts differ from industry to industry. In the case of wholesaling branch offices, 42% of external face-to-face contacts are in Sendai (Table 11), and about 40% of them are within the Tohoku region outside Miyagi prefecture. In the case of construction, however, about 90% of external contacts are within the city. In the case of banking and insurance, many branch offices have territories covering only Miyagi prefecture, and about 90% of their external contacts are carried out in Sendai. Internal contacts are also concentrated in the city.

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