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The concept of metropolitan area is the mono-centric, centripetal, nodal region for understanding and planning modern urban areas which have rapidly grown. However, the recent researches on the multi-nucleation or suburban downtowns of major metropolitan areas in United States or Japan, found another functional region with interdependency rather than hierarchy. Suburban downtowns appeared in American major metropolitan areas around 1990. On the other side, the realms around the downtowns in a metropolitan area show not independence but various flows between them. Japanese major metropolitan areas also have increased interdependent flows between suburbs hidden below the strong centripetal flows to central city. But nowadays, commuters to the central city are decreasing even in the Tokyo metropolitan area in the drastically changing social situation in Japan. It is this functional region composed of interdependent flows between realms or suburbs in common to metropolitan areas in US and Japan, that is new millennium regional concept just same as the nodal region in 20th century. And this new point of view is also important for the current urban policy of compact cities. Because a metropolitan area should be changed to a new urban area, which has some compact cities and people lived in this area has high mobility and various demands to the centers. The regional structure composed of these compact cities is therefore very crucial.

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"Geographic viewpoint and World regional image" formed at the elementary school age, influences world recognition and regional image throughout the lifetime. In this report, the role of such geography education was considered and especially focused on the description which was related to Africa. I examined social study textbooks of elementary school 6 grade bottom volumes and junior high school geography textbook used at April 2004 in Japan. There is no elementary textbook described about the country in Africa. And the photograph which is related to the Africa appears in 5 textbooks exists even in the sum total only 19 sheets. Moreover 14 sheets have shown negative side such as "people suffers from the hunger" "people waits for the food supply" "refugee" "riot" and "desertification" in the inside. I think only "misery image" of Africa was exaggerated that it transmitted and erred has been formed to children whom study in these textbooks. FUKUZAWA Yukichi(1834-1901) wrote "SEKAIKUNIZUKUSHI" in 1869. In this book he ranked in the cross culture region and it enlightened the world view which did look down region except for Europe and USA. His viewpoint in those days was "the imitation of world view of Europeans". So it was not only problem of himself. However, world recognition formation which today's Japanese erred is responsibility of the geography education of Japan. In spite of these situations, the contents of World Geography have decreased in recent Social Studies textbooks.

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This paper discusses a research life of a geographer, Bekki Atsuhiko. he was engaged in the research on the regional geography of the Malay Peninsula as a member of the research group of of imperial geopolitics formed at geography department, Kyoto Imperial University. It is needles to say, the purpose of imperial geopolitics was the occupation policy. Bekki's idea for geopolitics emphasized geographical practice and description of regional geography. He had been interested in the geography education since the days before the war, but he took the merit of synthesis of geography education seriously in the postwar social studies. He also took a serious view of the practice of geography and regional geography which differed from the ideas of imperial geopolitics. Bekki engaged in the international education research center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs .The main purpose was the international understanding through the investigation of the geography, history textbook .But, when we consider the present conditions of the world, we can not deny the perspectives of original geopolitics in geography education.

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The authors report results of the experiment to clarify tendencies and characteristics of reference points chosen at reading maps.

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In this presentation, I am going to clarify what human geography is through examining the titles of presentation. By examining all of the titles of presentation in past annual meetings of The Human Geographical Society Japan, we can see that such an expression "in x" ("x" is filled with a place name) is very often used in titles. We can also recognize other similar expressions, like "a case (study) of x", which restrict specific subject spatially. To consider the implication of them, we turn to Kuhn's philosophy of sciences. Kuhn originally introduced the concept "paradigm" to refer to scientific works, textbooks and journals taken as normative in some discipline. Kuhn understood the concept not as referring to an ideal being like dominating viewpoint or conceptual scheme, but as assigned to material being through which norms and rules in a specific discipline are learned practically. We learn basic and normative ways of behavior in a discipline through contacting again and again with the instances of daily practice in the discipline such as exercises appear in the textbooks, papers on refereed journals and so on. Kuhn referred to such examples followed in the process of daily practice of sciences as "exemplar". From such a viewpoint, it is now clear that titles of presentation which have such a characteristic as I mentioned before function as one of exemplars in Japanese human geography. If we are to understand paradigm as exemplar, it should be said that there is at least a core paradigm in human geography in Japan.

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MORI Kohan (1701-?) has been famous as a cartographer in Edo era. Actually he drew over 300 maps, but he didn't make only maps in his life. Before becoming a cartographer, he wrote some topographies, such as Sansyu-sen and Kosyu-syoyo-sen which are about Kyoto. In this paper, I analyze these two topographies by Kohan, and try to show how he had experienced in Kyoto in his youth, and how these experiences influenced his geographical thought.

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Booming of mobile Internet is a characteristic aspect of mobile phone services in Japan. All of four mobile phone companies provide mobile Internet services. The total number of subscribers of mobile Internet services exceeded 71 million, which means 53% of whole population. Mobile Internet has been rapidly penetrated the whole country since the beginning of mobile Internet services provided by NTT-Docomo in 1999. Approximately 8500 official websites and around 900,000 unofficial websites serving for mobile phone are observed in total at the present day. Although these websites provide very diverse types of contents, there are a certain number of websites providing various local information, e.g. time-table of transportation, hotel reservation, guide for sightseeing, guide for restaurants and shops and so on. Mobile phone is very popular than PC for Internet browsing in Japan. In addition, people can easily access the website providing necessary contents through a mobile phone in the unforeseen situations out of his/her home or office. Due to these characteristics, mobile Internet are considered to offer a powerful promotion means to local firms and organizations. In this paper, the outline and geographical distribution of the websites providing local information for mobile Internet.

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The main purpose of the research is to analyze the transformation of the Red River Delta (RRD) by contrasting the condition of the two coastal communes in Tien Hai district, Thai Binh, Vietnam.The main results of the research as the following:* The process of land reclaimation in Tien Hai: In only one year (1828-1829), local people had prepared seven communes, which covered 189.7 hectares.* The transformation of two coastal communes:The dyke, which was built in 1828, divided Tien Hai district into two parts: "old" and "new land", in which the "new villages" is the area between Long Hau and Ngu Dung rivers. Van Truong commune is located in the "old land" and Dong Long commune is in "new land". A comparative study on the transformation of the two villages has some initial results as the following: (1) Rural industry plays an important role for rural development. It is also one of dynamic factors for such changes. (2) In-migrant - who brings the new experiences for villages. (3) Changes of house styles - new trend for development in the RRD.In 1828, the process of land reclaimation in Tien Hai district got impression results. Van Truong and Dong Long communes are on the way of transforming. The transformation of these communes is quite different under several aspects as: the development of rural industry, number and source of in-migrant, changes of house styles. The results of this study reflect the transformation of the RRD under historical and socio-economic factors.

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Since the nineteen seventies, the Government of Pakistan had not been focusing on housing sector for development of the country, slum development activities had also not been organized effectively as well. In 2001, the federal government issued "Housing Policy 2001" in which slum development is referred in the article 5, describing several factors of formation of slum and its development. The Punjab province had a collaboration project "PLUS" with UNDP starting from 1997 up to 2002. Its method was to duplicate a community participation project successfully conducted in Karachi by a NGO "Orangi Pilot Project". Some results of them were as follows: increase and change of awareness of community participation in target area by social mobilizer's guidance, introduction of low-cost sanitation and provision of training to stakeholders for securing sustainability, establishment of residents' mind about internal/external development, etc. Through interview carried out by the author, it was found that outcome of the PLUS were the followings: even low-income people were ready to pay for development of the living area, awareness and capacity of the community for development progressed, and so on. Challenge of the PLUS were how to coordinate difference between "process oriented" and "target oriented", to get enough number of project practices, to involve awareness and capacity of the people improved by conducting (incremental) development activities, etc.

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In critical geopolitics recently, not only political discourses of politicians but also their influences on the people and various media that support the popular geopolitical imaginations are the subjects of study. As an example of the current of such studies, I focus on the spectacular activity of the Lega Nord which is one of the parties in Italy and analyze the newspaper coverage about it in terms of quality and quantity. The Lega made remarkable progress in national elections in the early 1990 and sought secession of the "civil North" from the "corrupt South" in 1996. It is the symbol politics that characterizes the politics of the Lega. Particularly the symbol politics on secession of the "Padania" which represents the Northern Italy according the Lega, was striking. I focus on newspaper coverage about the ritual for "Padania independent" which was performed in 13-15 September 1996. This got many people to hold demonstrations for or against the secession. Was this event of the Lega "successful" or a "failure"? Newspapers which I analyze are Il Gazzettino (Venice), La Stampa (Turin), Il Mattino (Naples) and La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Bari). I clarify what differences of reports there were. Because regional newspapers are predominant in Italy, I think that they are fruitful for my purpose of examining geographical differences of newspaper coverage. Especially, there might be remarkable differences between reports of the North and those of the South or between reports of Padania and those of Italy.

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Many city plans of Kyoto were printed by HAYASHI Yoshinaga during the middle of the Edo period. The design of these plans changed from the late 17th century to the middle of the 18th century. In this presentation, this change is considered in relation to the various conditions in Kyoto at that time. There were three types of the city plans of Kyoto printed by HAYASHI Yoshinaga. The plans of the first type were printed from 1680s to 1710s. And those of the second type were printed from 1710s to 1730s and those of the third type were printed from 1740s to 1760s. Distance and direction to various places from Kyoto was showed in these plans. The starting point to various places showed in the plans of the first type was Ichijo-muromachi. But that of the plans of the second and the third type was Sanjo-ohashi. Furthermore the streets in Fushimi were showed more fully in the plans of the second and the third type than in those of the first type. Sanjo-ohashi and Fushimi were the important places that linked Kyoto to the other places. These plans were not only for residents of Kyoto but also for visitors to Kyoto. And this feature became more and more clearly from the plans of the first type to those of the third type. Furthermore the plans of the third type consisted of two parts and the boundary of these parts was Sanjo-Dori. So, these plans were the biggest plans and showed the correctest shape of Kyoto in these three types of the plans.

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