This paper emphasizes the importance of considering “diverse economies”, including informal spheres of care service, and the emotional aspect in geographical studies about welfare services, focusing on childcare and elderly care. Care service is organized in a system consisting of local industry, labor market, and family, and the location of care labor in the system has been changed with the economic system and welfare state. According to the context of spatial organization theory, welfare state theory, and the total social organization of labor approach, the “post-20th century system” and welfare policy under neo-liberalism has increased the importance of a perspective of the diverse economics of childcare. In order to advance geographical studies focusing on the informal sphere in the diverse economics of childcare, the author referred to “Geographies of Care”, emotional labor, and labor transfer. From the perspective of Geographies of Care, it is necessary for researchers to broaden their perspectives into the local and spatial organization of a broad understanding of care which has been changed with economic systems, and care labor in the global care chain. Geographical studies of care labor has found regional differences in the supply and demand of care labor, in particular, the mobility of labor into metropolitan areas from the marginal areas of Japan. What remains to be seen is geographical studies focusing on the subjectivity of care labor. In addition, from the viewpoint of emotional labor and labor transfer, for the sustainability and viability of care service, it is necessary to regard both care-givers and care-takers not as collective numbers but as agencies with subjectivity, emotion and relationships. In light of the foregoing, the author proposed introducing the frameworks and theories of “care space” and “third space” into the geographical studies of care services.

    This paper reports a change in the acceptance process for foreign candidates applying as certified care workers in Japan in terms of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), the geographical distribution of candidates and the care facilities accepting them, and the current conditions and issues of their acceptance.
    With regard to labor demand in nursing care service industries, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare suggests that about 550,000, annually about 60,000, nursing care personnel must be secured by the end of 2025, in addition to the about 1,900,000 employed in 2016. However, a shortage of care labor will not occur uniformly throughout all parts of the country, but will progress with accompanying regional differences. The Ministry shows an active job opening-to-applicant ratio of 5.0 or higher for care service professions in Tokyo Metropolis and Aichi, Nara, and Gifu Prefectures as of June 2018.
    The acceptance of EPA foreign certified care worker candidates is a system to strengthen an economic partnership between two countries. However, in the nursing care service industries, it is expected to be one solution to labor shortage problems. For this reason, care facilities which have difficulty filling vacancies with Japanese workers see this as an option to secure personnel. The total number of candidates accepted by 2017 is 1,494 from Indonesia, 1,400 from the Philippines (37 entering school), and 598 from Vietnam. The acceptance of candidates was relatively slow until around 2012. It has increased ever since, thereby reflecting a relaxation of acceptance requirements and a shortage in care labor.
    A prefecture-by-prefecture analysis shows that a small number of facilities accepted candidates between 2008 and 2016 in the Hokkaido, Tohoku, Hokuriku, and Kyusyu regions. However, a large number of facilities accepted candidates in metropolitan areas such as Kanagawa Prefecture (48), Tokyo Metropolis (43), and the Chiba, Aichi, and Osaka Prefectures (38). Therefore, areas where the maximum number of candidates were accepted were those with high demand for labor in nursing facilities.
    As “Care Worker” was added to the job categories in the Technical Intern Training Program in 2017, the visa status “Care” was established for foreign students who acquired the qualification of a being a certified care worker, in the same year. In 2019, Japan also started accepting foreign human resources with a residential status of “Specified Skilled Worker” as opportunities have increased for foreign workers to perform care services in the country. Compared to the EPA system, the three new systems saw an increase in the number of countries sending laborers and the number of facilities accepting those laborers. In a situation where care labor shortage is becoming increasingly severe, more foreign laborers than ever before will be accepted in nursing care service facilities in Japan. It is thus a research task to clarify where and how they will be employed. Therefore, we need to analyze their placement in Japan's labor market.

    This paper considers the characteristics of spatial changes in industrial employment on a nationwide scale in Japan since the 1990s. It also investigates the labor force acquisition strategy utilized by manufacturing firms in the peripheral areas of Japan.
    First, the spacial structure of the manufacturing industry in the early 1990s was identified as a four zone structure centered on the three major metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Later, with a general decrease in manufacturing employment, the spatial structure was reorganized into five zones. Among these five zones, industrial employment was relatively concentrated in the second zone consisting of the Tokai, North-Kanto, Koshin, and Hokuriku areas. This occurred due to the growth of transportation equipment as well as production equipment. Contrastingly, industrial employment has drastically decreased in both the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas. In the peripheral areas, manufacturing employment has also declined, especially in labor-intensive industries such as electrical machinery and textiles. Regional trends in industrial employment during the economic recovery period since 2013 were not significantly different from long-term trends since the 1990s.
    Second, the labor force acquisition strategy utilized by manufacturing firms in the peripheral areas of Japan was described. According to a case study of machinery in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) located in rural areas in Kumamoto Prefecture, those companies have spatially expanded the labor market area and established offices outside the area to acquire human resources. The companies also used external economies in regional central cities to recruit human resources and obtain knowledge and technology for innovation. Those SMEs strengthened their innovation activities through recruitment of innovative workers despite the difficulty in acquiring human resources from the local labor market. This is noteworthy from the viewpoint of maintaining industrial employment in peripheral areas. It is necessary to generalize based on examples from other regions.

    The purpose of this paper is to stimulate discussions on the economic geographies of reproduction, especially, the reproduction of population, which is a blind spot of academic enquiry that Japanese economic geographers share. Globally, recent interchanges between population geography and labor geography have raised economic geographer's interest in the sphere of reproduction. However, previous studies tend to take it for granted that the reproduction of labor across generations, which is a basis for the persistence of capitalism, persists. This precondition is obviously too optimistic.
    Reproduction of labor is neither secured nor executed by the hand of capital and the nation. This intrinsic difficulty of reproduction urged capital and the nation to subsume the process of reproduction into the developmental regime formed by the nexus between Fordism and the Keynesian Welfare State. Since the ending of the “Golden Age of Capitalism” made it difficult to sustain the regime, fertilities in many developed capitalist countries have been below the replacement level, which also elucidates the difficulty of reproduction.
    Under the banner of “Shoushika Taisaku” (Countermeasures to the low fertility rate), the Japanese government (and many other governments) has tried to eliminate barriers to raising children. Other than passive interventions, all that a liberal and democratic government can do is to encourage Japanese adults to have children in a non-authoritarian manner. However, the people's behavior goes against the hope of the government thus far.
    The target of the state's policies is its population; the government does not care about individual everyday lives. As a result, the government almost always deploys one-size-fits-all countermeasures to the low fertility rate issue, such as subsidizing families with children or giving incentives to establish childcare facilities. In the author's opinion, Japan's countermeasures to the low fertility rate are underpinned by economic and environmental determinism. Both attitudes presuppose that the purpose of policies is accomplished once specific conditions are satisfied, which is a counter-geographic idea. In reality, the level of fertility is determined by countless factors whose relationships are place specific. This is one reason why the government's endeavor to boost fertility rate has been futile.
    When the reproduction of labor cannot be achieved within the boundary of a state, the spatial scale of reproduction transcends it. Japan is one of the most reluctant countries when it comes to endowing citizenship for foreigners. Rather, the government designates foreign workers as labor that can be purchased on the spot. Labor geographers have described migrant workers agency or abilities to move elsewhere. Despite these inexpedient conditions, the number of foreigners who chose Japan as a country to work is increasing thus far. On condition that the government does not change its attitude to foreign workers, it is highly unsure that Japan can secure enough workforce to sustain its society and economy.
    The intrinsic problem with reproduction is rooted in the principle that the reproduction of human beings is based on subjective decisions of individuals. It generates aporia and doubt between individuals and the society that the pursuit of private profit does not always realize the optimum of the whole society. That said, individuals need not and should not discard the decision rights for marriage and childbirth and sacrifice themselves for the whole society.

    The purpose of this paper is to statistically identify trends in industrial employment in the six prefectures (Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata and Fukushima) of the Tohoku district since 2000 and to clarify their regional characteristics. Focusing on the automobile industry as a recent trend, this paper examines the development of the industry and the current situation surrounding such activities as human resources development.
    The “existing industry” of electrical machinery and clothing industries once prevalent in Tohoku has greatly retreated. Instead, the automobile industry in the Tohoku district is supporting industrial employment in the region. This paper points out that it is evolving with regional contrasts.