This paper aims at analyzing how the vegetable growing area in Okabe Town of Saitama Prefecture has been developed and clarifying the bases on which it is sustained. The main form of agriculture was sericulture before the 1970s in Okabe Town. The growing of fresh vegetables such as broccoli was introduced in the mid-1970s. As a result, the area devoted to growing broccoli in Okabe Town occupied the first rank in the Kanto district in 1991. In the present study, three settlements, -namely, Hanzawa-shinden Kami, Naka, and Shimo, are selected as the study area from Okabe Town. This study clarified the process of developing and main taming vegetable growing by analyzing the changes of agricultural management at the farm level. At the same time, the study discussed the sustainable bases of the development of vegetable growing area at the level of farm, settlement, and region (Hanzawa Agriculture Cooperative Association). From the analysis, the following results were obtained. On the whole, the introduction of vegetable growing with the decline of sericulture in Okabe Town is related to the changes in social and economic environments with the urbanization of the Tokyo metropolitan area. In general, the development of agricultural management is influenced directly by the preparation of the basic conditions for agriculture in Okabe Town. At the level of farms, internal factors strongly influenced the farmer's decision-making: these internal conditions include the area of farmland, the number of farm workers, the number of male regular farm workers and successors to agricultural management. In addition to these factors, marriages bring a new generation to take part in farming, and alternation in generations of head of household present chances for farmers to convert their form of agricultural management. These conditions are the most important factors for farmers in introducing new fresh vegetables such as broccoli.
Vegetable growing area in Okabe Town developed through the organizing of farms at different levels. Individual farms are organized into farm groups, and the groups are developed into a regional organization (Hanzawa Agriculture Cooperative Association). In other words, the vegetable growing area developed from individual farms on a small scale to an agricultural region on a largescale. The vegetable growing area in Okabe Town is formed in three stages: the first stage in which rationality of farms is sought individually, the second stage in which the rationality of farm groups is sought, and the third stage in which regional rationality is sought in order to compete with other vegetable growing areas for a share of the market.

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This paper reviews the theoretical development of feminist geography in Europe and North Ameri ca, and discusses some issues with which feminist geography is concerned at present. As feminists have blamed male hegemony, which has dominated scholarship, for excluding of women from the production of knowledge, so feminist geographers have led the debate on the exclusion of women from the production of geographical knowledge. Monk and Hanson, in their 1982 paper, titled ‘On not excluding half of the human in human geography’, began the discussion of the exclusive production of geographical knowledge by men.
The second section explains the historical and social context of feminist geography and how it has developed, dividing the process generally into two stages: (1) From the mid-1970's to the late 1980's: In the mid-1970's, feminist geography, which emerged as a criticism of excluding women as objects of study, began to focus on such women, who are situated unequally in both public and private spheres, and then attempted to describe and map the situation of women in detail. Throughout the 1980's, influenced by Marxism and social feminism, feminist scholarship aimed to do away with sex discrimination and female exploitation by working against both capitalism and the patriarchy which promote sexual inequality. (2) From the end of the 1980's to the present : Feminist geographers placed women into the production of geographical knowledge, restoring the positive value of “femininity”. They began with examinations of difference and diversity among women and with discussions on the construction of gender and identity. Then feminist geograhers started to take an interest not only in sexual difference but also in race, religion, and class as causes of social inequality. Besides discussing how gender was constructed through spatial images, representation, meanings and environment, which are freed from real boundaries, women geographers began to investigate the influence of postcolonialism and the anti-Western tradition which it founded. To claim knowledge is the most important issue for feminist geography in recent years. When time and space change, social relations are reconstructed. So the construction of a partial or situated knowledge is often necessary.
The third section, referring to Harvey (1989), who examines the relation between postmodernism and feminism, and including the critical view of Deutshe (1991) and Massey (1991), points out that post modernism fails to notice an important aspect of discourse -the differences and diversity of feminism and that it cannot emerge from the shell of authority which places men at the center.
The fourth section, in the context of postfordism, discusses the reconstruction of male and female labor forces into what McDowell (1991) called a “new gender order” in the labor market.
The concluding section lists three issues with which feminist geography is concerned holds today: the interdependence of feminism and geography, feminist geography and masculinity, and skepticism about theorizing in feminist geography.

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On Jan. 17, 1995, a large and shallow earthquake (M=7.2, focal depth =14 km) occurred in Kobe and the surrounding area, resulting in a tremendous disaster. Nojima fault, one of the active faults of the Rokko Fault System that strikes NE-SW and is dominated by right-lateral offset, was activated in association with this earthquake, and is identified as a seismogenetic fault for the Kobe earthquake, although there must have been other seismogenetic fault activity to account for the severe damage in the Kobe area. Repeated activity of the Nojima Fault since ca. 20 ka BP is described by Mizuno et al. (1990).
The surface appearance of this earthquake fault can be traced for about 10 km on the west coast of the northern part of Awaji Island. This fault is characterized by right-lateral offset, up to 1.8 m, accompanied by veritcal displacement up to 1.3 m. The upthrown side is mostly the southeast side of the fault, indicating that this fault activity has been responsible for the formation of the hilly land of Awaji Island.
The fault plane dips steeply southeastward, indicating that this fault is a high-angle reverse fault. Clear striation upwards to the right, on the fault plane is a composite result of strike-and-dip slip movement. Only at Nashimoto is the northwestern side uplifted. The surface deformation appears as prominent overhanging fault scarps at most localities along the fault, cutting through the lower to middle Pleistocene Osaka Group. However, at Nashimoto, where the fault displaces unconsolidated alluvial sand and gravel, a flexural scarp was formed. In addition to the fault scarp, many secondary features related to this faulting have appeared, including en echelon cracks, a minor pull-apart basin, and tectonic bulges. These features were mapped in detail by several groups immediately after the earth-quake (e. g. Nakata et al., 1995; Lin et al., 1995; Awata et al., 1995; Ota et al., 1995). Furthermore, trenching work to understand the previous fault activity has been done. The recurrence interval is estimated to be ca. 800 years by Suzuki et al. (1995). The newly exposed fault scarp provides an opportunity for the study.of the fault retreat process which is described in a companion paper by Azuma et al. Coastal uplift, up to ca. 55 cm, also occurred on the upthrown side, .which suggests that eastern side (except at Nashimoto) was absolutely uplifted at the time of the 1995 earthquake.
Damage to houses on Awaji Island is rather localized only on or around the Nojima Fault. Old wooden houses with, heavy roof tiles on the fault were particularly severely damaged. However, damage to new houses built with light materials, or concrete houses was not so severe, even if they were located very close to the fault. Many houses collapsed at Toshima or Gunge, where the fault trace was rather unclear or not found at all. This may be caused by lithological factors, because these settlements are located on the coastal alluvial lowland.

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