So far, it is often pointed out that the emphasis upon equity is one of the characteristics in medical service provision in Japan. But when we look at the spatial aspect of the service provision, some geographical inequality can be observed due to the free entry system for the medical facilities. This paper attempts to find the locational patterns of the psychiatric clinics and to understand why the psychiatric clinics are concentrated in metropolitan areas in Japan. First, a brief sketch of the changing medical policy after the World War II in Japan has been outlined. In post-war Japan, construction of the private mental hospitals had been promoted bypolicy makers in order to protect the society from the mentally ill with lower public spending. As a result, many mental hospitals have been located in the outer fringe of the metropolitan areas. With the shift in medical policy towards deinstitutionalization and community care, increasing number of psychiatric clinics had been established, particularly near the railway stations. In the latter half of the 1980's, a series of the revision of medical treatment price made the psychiatric clinics profitable, and the many psychiatric clinics had burgeoned. The newly opened clinics had a tendency to locate their offices near the railway stations, as tenants in the commercial buildings, and within the commercial districts. Therefore, this has resulted in more uneven distribution of psychiatric care for the mentally ill. Beneath such locational pattern lies the doctors' tendency for easy access to attract more patients as well as the patients' preference of anonymous environment for receiving the care away from community prejudice to evade the mentally ill. It is concluded that mixed land use in commercial areas is playing important role in shaping the geography of psychiatric clinics in Japan, and the same effects of land use control can be recognized as the spatial concentration of the outpatients into the inner areas is caused by planning control in the US large cities.

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The aim of this study is to describe the establishment processes of Kinjukyo (the Japan Workers Housing Association) and local housing co-operatives as well as to clarify the characteristics of residential development and housing supply on both the national and local scale. The author chose to study the Osaka Roju Seikyo (the Osaka Workers' Housing Co-operative) as an example of a typical local housing co-operative. Rojukyo (the Japan Workers' Housing Society) and local housing co-operatives lobbied for the establishment of a housing supplier that would be managed by a third aim body. This was based on the recommendation on Workers' Housing issued by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1961. Despite their efforts, however, Kinjukyo was established only as a special corporation. As a result, two different forms have persisted: local housing co-operatives as co-operative organizations and Kinjukyo as a public sector organization. In the housing supply system consisting of Kinjukyo and local housing co-operatives, Kinjukyo obtains public funds from the Government Housing Loan Corporation and entrusts housing development and supply to local housing co-operatives. They have supplied over 100,000 owned houses throughout the entire country. In recent years, however, the number of housing units supplied by Kinjukyo has decreased, and the management disparities among local housing co-operatives have increased. The characteristics of housing development by local housing co-operatives include the low rate of self-funded projects, small-scale development, and the overall small number of housing supply. The housing supply provided by Kinjukyo and local housing co-operatives has various problems. For example, local housing co-operatives cannot effectively function as co-operative organizations because projects entrusted by Kinjukyo use public funds and must look for tenants from among the general public. Therefore, local housing co-operatives are unable to be selective in serving their members. Furthermore, many members of local housing co-operatives have high mobility, unlike the members of consumers' co-operatives. Since the 1990's, the continuance and future of Kinjukyo as a special corporation have been discussed in plans to promote administrative reform. In December 2001, the Government decided privatizing of Kinjukyo formally.

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The purpose of this research is to examine how a land readjustment project, a typical form of urban development/renewal project, influences the formation of local residents' consciousness to the project. In the former literature, relationships between the progress of a project and changing local residents' conditions during that project have received little attention and this research addresses this lacuna. Empirically, this study deals with "The Higashi-Chiku Land Readjustment Project" for urban renewal, currently being undertaken in Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, from three different viewpoints: "Hamamatsu City Office", "leaders of their communities (the members of Town-Planing Conference, or TPC)" and "local residents". Despite being situated in the urban core, the Higashi-Chiku suffered from various kinds of urban problems, such as a high density of small and low buildings, a lack of parking lots and open spaces, traffic congestion, etc. In 1988, the land readjustment project was initiated with collaboration with the Hamamatsu City Office and TPC on behalf of local residents. Interview research with leaders of their communities (the members of TPC) was con-ducted to get the consciousness of the leaders and local residents regarding this project. The results of this research are as follows. First, the consciousness of the local residents varies with their residential sub-areas, which have functionally different characteristics and are in different stages of the development process. Second, from its conception, there have been significant differences in levels of concern and understanding about this project between local residents and the city office. Next, the author selected three sub-areas for closer examination and conducted questionnaire-research with the landowners to confirm the determinants of local residentst receptiveness to this project. Data on the 51 people's individual attributes and the items of their consciousness were analyzed using the cross tabulation method and the Chi-square test. According to the result of the Chi-square test, nine items of consciousness register as determinants to their comprehensive evaluation to this project. These items are classified into three groups; "human network and collaboration work", "change in the physical environment" and "personal situations". In addition, the author carried out deep interview research with six families and investigated their lives over the project. According to those interviews, an out-flow of population and two relocations of their residence during the project have had considerable make many impacts on their human networks and various kinds of residential circumstances.

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