The objective of this paper is to confirm appropriate cross ventilation for realizing a comfortable indoor environment in residential houses during the Showa era before WWII. Cross ventilation is one of the physical factors in architectural design. "ASAHIJYUTAKUZUANSHU" is a typical style book for Urban Dwellings and Houses in that era. About one hundred housing plans for small families were listed in it. Architects in those days tried to take cross ventilation into account in their housing design. The plans for the houses represented in the book were analyzed from the viewpoint of cross ventilation. In order to evaluate cross ventilation, the "effective area index" was newly defined. Consequently, it was found that the effectiveness of the ventilation depended on the arrangement of an entrance and living room, and the effective area related to indoor airflow.

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This research targeted younger residents in a mountainous area of the Sanin region. They were asked to complete a questionnaire about their views on how they planned to support themselves in the future and what kind of a lifestyle they hoped to lead. The aim of the study was to gather materials concerning strategies for more fulfilling and improved village life in the mountainous areas. Approximately half of the younger residents surveyed wished to continue living in their village, giving reasons such as the "local climate", "exchange with people", and "being more or less content with current living conditions". However, the present situation of life in these villages faces problems that need to be overcome, relating to employment of youths, depopulation due to an exodus of younger residents, residential environment, medical services, education, transportation and hard life at the time of snowfall. In addition to the above-mentioned issues, achieving a village where younger residents would like to live requires measures for creating jobs, promoting reverse migration, constructing housing for youths, and making the village attractive to women. The result of the previous study that targeted senior citizens are also included.

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In recent years, the incidence of injury to elderly persons due to traffic accidents, slips, and falls has been rapidly increasing. Here we investigated the visual difficulties experienced by the elderly in daily life in order to propose a safer and more comfortable environment for them. Results of a survey concerning the vision-related activities and driving skills of 100 elderly subjects were examined in terms of the relationship between color discrimination ability and visual acuity. Eighty-three percent of subjects realized that their visual acuity was impaired. Reading a newspaper was the most common difficulty in everyday activities reported by the subjects, and this activity was slightly more affected by visual acuity than by color discrimination ability. The most difficult aspects of driving were identified to be driving at dusk and driving in the rain. Color discrimination ability was found to be slightly more influential in driving than visual acuity. Many subject drivers identified deep Yellow and deep Red as colors with higher visibility for umbrellas. These colors showed good visibility even for subjects with low visual acuity and low color discrimination ability. Our findings indicate the importance of developing and implementing visual and color environments for the elderly that take into consideration their age-related impairments in visual acuity and color discrimination ability.

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