Geographical review of Japan, Series B.
Online ISSN : 2185-1700
Print ISSN : 0289-6001
ISSN-L : 0289-6001
Volume 74, Issue 1
Displaying 1-8 of 8 articles from this issue
  • Simon R. POTTER
    2001 Volume 74 Issue 1 Pages 1-14
    Published: June 30, 2001
    Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The history of Japanese cartography, not being well understood outside Japan, requires further attention for scholars who do not use Japanese, including expanding the existing body of foreign-language knowledge and further explanations. In this context, the present article examines the Japanese vocabulary for “map” and sheds light on how the Japanese have viewed maps as artifacts. After a brief on the English word “map, ” the Japanese words which have functioned as generic terms for “map” are discussed in regard to their origin, meanings, and usage, as well as the cultural forces that influenced their coinage and/or mainstream adoption. Following this is a demonstration that even today the question of what word to use for “map” in Japanese has not been settled, there being three commonly encountered words, two of which have semantic defects and the third being recently derived from “map.” The final section notes that the record indicates that the Japanese have not considered maps to be sufficiently distinct to require their own designation, as well as that content and an understanding of the relevant English vocabulary, not necessarily the Japanese, determine whether an artifact is a “map” or something else in English.
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  • Minako KURAMITSU
    2001 Volume 74 Issue 1 Pages 15-32
    Published: June 30, 2001
    Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In these two decades, interest in ‘local’ has gradually increased in development theory and practice. ‘Participation, ’ one of the most prominent concepts in emphasizing ‘local, ’ has the purpose of implementing development projects based on people's needs at local level. Such needs are assumed to consist of ‘local’ factors. However, there are many meanings of ‘the local’ in development practice, and most of them are likely to converge on social and cultural aspects. This article attempts to examine factors influencing women's participation in two development programs in Samoa, in order to reconsider the meanings of ‘the local’ in relation with development practice. Comparing the two programs, factors influencing the possibility of women's participation were derived from various aspects; from human relations among the group to economic conditions in both individual households and residential villages. On the other hand, women's motivations to participate were basically determined by cultural norms. As a consequence, it is apparent that factors affecting the situations of women's participation are considerably diverse in terms of the projects themselves and women's daily lives. To comprehend the meanings of ‘the local, ’ it is necessary to consider the scales and the contents, which are regarded as ‘local’ in development practice.
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  • A Core of the Japanese Machinery Industry
    Atsuhiko TAKEUCHI, Hideo MORI
    2001 Volume 74 Issue 1 Pages 33-46
    Published: June 30, 2001
    Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The most important core that has sustained the innovations of the machinery industry of Japan is the technological complex composed of SMEs in Southern Tokyo, the core of which is ota-ku. Entering the 1990s, the firms and their industrial complex have changed their respective methods of operations under the drastic change in economic conditions. That is, in addition to the founding (1st) generation the new generation participated as management and engineering staff. This resulted in the crystallization of craftsmanship and ME technologies to bring about the sophistication of plants and their complex. These innovations were led not by the TNCs but by the SMEs. Consequently the complex of SMEs that was in a vertical relationship with the TNCs has functionally grown into a horizontal one. At the same time, the new generation that has grown up together in the same area has promoted its network or interchanges with various types of residents to strengthen the overall industrial community. In recent years, the local government has promoted attractive regional industrial projects to strengthen and fortify both the technological complex and the innovative system. The measures taken for the vitalization of industry have in turn, brought about the improvement of the environment. In Inner Tokyo, the basis of sustainable renovation depends upon the renewal of the area based upon the symbiosis of industrial complex and the environment.
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  • Takaaki NIHEI
    2001 Volume 74 Issue 1 Pages 47-61
    Published: June 30, 2001
    Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Examining agricultural efficiency in terms of energy balance will be a first step in helping to find a solution to the sustainable development of agriculture, and to environmental problems such as the exploitation of natural resources especially in developed countries. This study attempts to define regional energy efficiency based on the regional input-output energy ratio (output/input), which is calculated by the input fossil fuel energy and output food energy of all crops produced in a region. It also investigates the changes in regional energy efficiency of the prefectures in Japan from 1970 to 1990. By inspecting typical combinations of crops, the regional energy efficiency, which will be an index for examining the temporal and spatial changes of regional crop production, is divided into four categories: high (regional input-output energy ratio: more than 2.7 in 1970 and 1990), middle (1.8-2.6 in 1970, 1.7-2.6 in 1990), low (0.7-1.7 in 1970, 0.7-1.6 in 1990) and very low (under 0.6 in 1970 and 1990). Applying these categories to the prefectural level, specific features were seen in the decrease of the prefectures with middle efficiency in the southern Kanto Region and the appearance of prefectures with very low efficiency in the southeastern part of Japan over two decades. It is considered that the decline of energy efficiency was caused mainly due to the increase in the percentage of greenhouse crops planted in the prefectures that are active in the production of paddy rice and horticultural crops. The emergence of the prefectures with very low efficiency in 1990 also implies that intensive crop production reinforces the impact on the natural environment by the usage of fossil fuel energy especially in the region that has high economic land productivity.
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  • A Geographical Case Study of Sali in the Senegalese Petite Cote
    Abdou Khadre DIAGNE
    2001 Volume 74 Issue 1 Pages 62-77
    Published: June 30, 2001
    Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Since the 1970s, tourism development in the Senegalese Petite Cote has rapidly expanded, with diverse impacts in a number of spheres. The human and physical geography of the Petite Cote and its ecosystems are being powerfully shaped by the new entrepreneurial activity. What changes, positive and negative, has tourism brought along the coastline How can locals be better integrated into the tourism sector How can sustainable tourism development be effectively promoted here To assess the impacts of coastal tourism, questionnaire surveys were conducted in 1999 and 2001 in three focal areas for tourism in Sali resort. The surveys indicate that tourism has significantly modified traditional social structure and spawned an array of new social ills, such as prostitution and theft. The tourism boom has transformed many villages into satellites for cheap menial labor. The present investigation can be usefully viewed as a concrete case study of unsustainable tourism development. Despite the fast pace of tourism expansion, it is still oriented largely to maximizing returns, with the evident exclusion of most of the local population. Numerous tourism-related pollutants now plague the environment of traditional villages. It is argued that locals should be better integrated into the tourism process and pollution must be dealt with by rigorous new measures with an aim to promoting more sustainable development in harmony with the local economy and ecology. In particular, necessary skill levels among locals must be upgraded; concomitantly, traditional activities can be reinforced within an eco-tourism framework geared to attracting more tourists interested in an alternative type of holiday experience.
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  • Osaka's Korean Festival
    Lisa H. LEE
    2001 Volume 74 Issue 1 Pages 78-91
    Published: June 30, 2001
    Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Performance studies have often placed their attention on performance as an event, and on how it reflects people. This article, however, focuses on the relationships between cultural performance, identity and space, as it plays out in the constitution of ethnic identities. Through a qualitative analysis of the Ikuno Korean Festival in Osaka, it examines and critiques how identities are constructed, and how this process is shaped by the mediation of intea and inter-community concerns. Particular attention is paid to the potential of reorganized culture through a thinking of similarity rather than difference. The dynamic interrelations suggest that festival provides a particular and informal public sphere wherein certain social logics and identities are contested. These discursive arenas are therefore marked by certain exclusions and inclusions. This study shows the complex process of identification at the micro-level through which identification is constituted and continuously negotiated through the mimetic process of everyday life.
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  • Ryoji SODA
    2001 Volume 74 Issue 1 Pages 92-112
    Published: June 30, 2001
    Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The Iban of Sarawak, Malaysia, who are well known as typical long-house dwellers, have attracted scholarly attention because of their frequent migration related to their custom such as shifting cultivation and “headhunting.” This paper examines a new trend of the Iban's rural-urban migration and its impact on the long-house community. Recent economic development in Sarawak has provided Iban males with stabler jobs, which enabled them to sojourn longer in urban areas. This has resulted in the increase in rural-urban migration accompanied by wives and children. While more females have been leaving the long-house to follow their husbands, Iban villages experienced change in subsistence activities, such as the increase in wet paddy cultivation, the shrinkage of the average planted acreage, and the aging of the farming population. The out-migration of the younger generations and the decline in agricultural activities gave rise to the tendency of the extinction of family line and the bonds between families, which are reflected in the degradation of the long-house community.
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  • 2001 Volume 74 Issue 1 Pages 113-115
    Published: June 30, 2001
    Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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