The main purpose of this study is to classify the recognition of the environment by people in mountainous villages. The results are as follows:
1) The inhabitants of Toyamago, which was largely secluded from the outside world until the 1950s, have a close knowledge of the natural environment as expressed in their traditional folklore. This folklore-based knowledge serves a functional purpose in the inhabitants' composite production activities, and was fully utilized in their day-to-day life.
2) Sloping areas (called taira by local people) in the generally mountainous terrain were recognized by people engaged in forestry as lumber collection and lumbering areas, while the same places were regarded by hunters as utsu, or tracks of wild animals, tatsuma where traps could be set, and nutaba where wild boars rolled in the sand. Thus taira had different meanings and functions to people engaged in different activities. People found complex values in the same natural environment.
3) Slopes in mountainous areas are generally called hira while slopes and small plots of flat land well known to and recognized by local inhabitants are called taira. While slopes called hira were used as regular farmland, their names were changed to sakahata and various otherr folk names. However, the names of land areas called taira remained unchanged and were used as a common name by the community, even when such areas were utilized as regular farmland. This seems to show that slopes and flat areas in the mountainous villages were of high value because of their scarcity and were recognized as valuable for land utilization.
4) The people of the Shimoguri district, where the terrain is relatively steeper, more isolated, and not blessed with water resources, were more aware of phenomena related to water, rather than of water itself. They had a detailed knowledge of underground rivers (mizu-michi), and utilized this knowledge in their daily lives by sinking several wells to connect with these underground water resources. In the Yaegouchi district, where natural conditions were almost entirely opposite to those in the Shimoguri district, people were interested in various phenomena related to water and had a rich knowledge of water. They knew effective ways of draining surface water and of using it for land irrigation.

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The classification of cold waves in East and Southeast Asia based on the spatial pattern of 850hPa temperature anomalies and their relation to cloud activity at lower latitudes are examined.
First, by applying rotated principal components analysis to daily 98-station data in the area 100-150°E, 0° -45°N, for 4 winters (1983/84-1986/87), five anomaly patterns of 850 hPa temperature are extracted. The negative score of each anomaly pattern (the lst-5th components) represents each cold anomaly pattern (Type I-V).
Secondly, the synoptic conditions of each cold anomaly pattern and the features of each component score are investigated. The results are summarized as follows:
Type I: The center of the cold anomaly is located in central China. The pressure trough stretches zonally to the northeast of the Tibetan plateau at 500hPa. The Siberian high at 1000hPa shifts southward along the eastern edge of the plateau. This type appeared more frequently in 1983/84, but less frequently in 1985/86. In this type, interannual variation is dominant.
Type II : This type has the center of the cold anomaly over northeastern China. The pressure trough stretches meridionally to the east of the Tibetan plateau at 500hPa. At 1000hPa, the pressure gradient over the northern part of Primorskij is steep. This type appeared often in 1985/86, but less often in 1983/84, in contrast with Type I.
Type III: The center of the cold anomaly dominates over the south of Japan. Since a sharp pressure gradient is found over Japan at 1000hPa, this type is consistent with the so-called west high-east low type in the pressure patterns of Japan. Many cases of this type occurred in both 1983/ 84 and 1985/86. This type follows Type I or Type II.
Type IV: The center of the cold anomaly is located in south China. A subcenter of the Siberian high is formed on the plains of China at 1000 hPa. Jet streams at 500 hPa are weak both north and south of the plateau. This type seems to have a 15- to 30-day period variation.
Type V: The center of the cold anomaly exists over northern Japan. At 850 hPa, the temperature gradient from Pohai to the Japan Sea is steep. This feature corresponds to so-called north high type in the pressure patterns of Japan. This type tends to emerge a few days after Type II.
Furthermore, cloud activity at lower latitudes in relation to these cold anomaly patterns is examined. When Type III or Type IV appears, a cloud band that is accompanied by a trough around 140° E and the southern edge of the cloud cluster around 110° E often emerge on GMS IR images. In particular, the appearance of Type IV coincides with the westward phase of the disturbance area near the equator rather than the usual eastward phase. Therefore, Type IV may play a role in the midlatitude-tropical interaction of the atmosphere.

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Pleistocene marine terraces along the Nishi-tsugaru coast, on the Japan Sea side of northern Honshu, are disrupted by many ancient landslides. Some of these have hummocky slide blocks and straight or curved scarps that are arcuate in plane view (herein called type I landslides). Others, with taller scarps, have slide blocks that are tilted backward (type II) ; and a few are shallow slides without prominent scarps. The type and abundance of paleolandslides vary with lithology. An area underlain by soft Neogene mudstone has many landslides of type I. Type II slides prevail in soft pumiceous tuff. Landslides of any type are rare in areas dominated by andesite and hard tuff (known as Green Tuff). Most landslides are found along the seaward edge of the lowest Pleistocene marine terrace, which is typically M l (oxygen isotope state 5e) and less commonly M2, M3, or M4 (stage 5 c or younger). Most of these slides are trimmed by, and therefore predate, the Holocene shoreline of Jomon age (about 6, 000yrBP), implying that they were formed in association with sea level lowering of stage 2 and with postglacial sea level rise. Some landslides, however, were reactivated in the late Holocene since they conceal the Jomon shoreline. Some of the reactivation may have occurred during earthquakes. Where the bedrock is soft, landslides have disrupted as much as 28% of the seaward edge of Ml-M4 terraces.

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