Japanese Journal of Human Geography

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The local community, which G.P. Murdock, a social anthropologist, defines as “the maximal group of persons who normally reside together in face to face association”, is not quite identical in its scope with the village in terms of landscape. Many geographers, sociologists, and historians, however, believe in the contrary; they assume that those two were one, at least in ancient society. Corroboration of the ancient society is difficult, but ethnological facts may enable us to reason by analogy.
We shall take the case of Melanesian primitives, who make taro and yam still employing digging sticks and by burning cultivation. The scope of their local community is not necessarily equal to that of their village; a local community very often includes two or more villages or hamlets. Also, their local community, although its people cooperate in many facets of daily life, is not to be called a very solid social unity, since land, which is the most important production means among Melanesians, is owned jointly by the consanguineal kin group as distinct from the local community, and not by the latter.
Thus, among primitive agricultural tribes the local community, the village, and the land owning group differ in scope and structurally seem to be more complicated than is ordinarily supposed by scholars.

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The tea industry of Japan, which is one of the most important export industries, developed with the commencement of export at 1859. The development of export of tea was accompanied by the increase of tea production. The tea export marked the maximum at 1891, that was about 53, 000, 000 ponds, and the after the year, export decreased gradually. The areas of tea gardens also came to its maximum at 1885, that was 60, 000 hectares, and it decreased after the year, and the production of tea were concentrated upon some areas gradually. Thus, tea producing areas have been formed. That are Shizuoka Pref., Mie Pref., Kyoto Pref. and others.
The concentrated areas of tea production are divided into two types in relation to their tea producing systems.
(I) Area, in which tea farmers growing tea gardens and manufacturing tea by themselves, are dominant.
(II) Area, in which tea farmers are differentiated two types, i.e., raw leaf seller, and manufacturer mainly depending upon buying tea leaves.
The area belonging to type (I) are found in the mountains of the Ooi and Abe Basins in the Shizuoka Pref., typically. The area belonging to Type (II) develope on the diluvial uplands, such as Makino-hara area in Shizuoka Pref.
Writer discussed some conditions of the formation of the areas of these types.

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In post-war Japan, the reconstruction of national economy and the change of diet have brought up the increase of acreage of orchard. This is especially remarkable in the region where were formally many mulberry-fields. This tendency has grown up from the decline of mulberry-fields in Japan.
The writer has made the regional investigation of them in Kofu basin, the decline of mulberry-fields and the expansion of orchards. Orchards and mulberry-fields make up many kinds of combination pattern of land use at various parts of the basin. But the following is the present tendency: the new agricultural management in which the fruit cultivation is essential has driven away the old one in which the sericulture is important, and occupied the better fields in the basin. On account of this fact, it can be said that the formation of the agricultural zone in Kofu basin is now in progress.

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