1. Konpira Lanterns are the lanterns made of stone or metal dedicated by the worshippers of the Kotohira Shrine which lies at Kotohira, Nakatado District, Kagawa Prefecture. These lanterns, set along the highways of the worshippers and in the precincts of the Shrine, were once used for illumination and also kept as a remembrance of their pilgrimage to the Shrine.
As there are inscribed on each lantern the name, the shop name and the dwelling place of the dedicator, and the date of his dedication, its investigation enables us to conjecture the state of traffic in old days.
2. The subject of this investigation is chiefly about 328 Konpira Lanterns (excepting ones in the precincts of the Shrine) which are still existent in large numbers in the 10th year of Showa (1935) along each highway in the environs of Kotohira.
Judging from the distribution of the lanterns, there ran radiately, with Kotohira as the center, five old highways-the Marugame highway and the Tadotsu highway in the north, the Iyo highway in the west, the Awa highway in the south and the Takamatsu highway in the east. These and the distribution of the lanterns on each are as follows:
3. The most important of these highways was the Marugame highway. The distribution of the dedicators shows that this highway was passed by the worshippers in the wide area of the Pacific side of Japan, east of Bicchu (Okayama Prefecture). Marugame port prospered as the landing place of these worshippers.
The Tadotsu highway ranked second. It was passed by the worshippers landing at Tadotsu port, on the Pacific side of Japan, west of Bingo (Hiroshima Prefecture) and on the coast of Japan Sea, having Tadotsu port as their landing place. Marugame port and Tadotsu port, though they were 4km. away from each other, coexisted and coprospered, because they had their own traffic route. But there were prosperity and decline on each port. Marugame port first prospered and Tadotsu port, flourishing next, usurped the prosperity of Marugame port.
The Iyo highway was passed by the worshippers in Seisan (the western part of Kagawa Prefecture), in Iyo (Ehime Prefecture) and Tosa (Kochi Prefecture), the Awa highway by those in Awa (Tokushima Prefecture), and the Takamatsu highway by those in Tosan (the eastern part of Kagawa Prefectue). The last two highways were only the country roads.
4. Most of the dedicators are private persons and parties that are called “Ko”, the group of the worshippers. According to the classification of occupations, fishermen and boatmen stand foremost on each highway. This is chiefly because the Kotohira Shrine is conserated to the God of the Sea. It seems that the Kotohira Shrine had also a great influence on the belief of the populace, and on the main road, the Marugame highway, are found many lanterns offered by people of all classes-warriors, farmers, craftmen and merchants.
5. As for the date of the dedicatory lanterns, the lantern dated “the 7th year of Genroku (1694)”, which is the oldest, stands on the by-road of the Marugame highway. With the change of the times they increase in number. So it is supposed that “Konpiramairi”, a pilgrimage to the Kotohira Shrine, was very popular at the latter period of the Edo era.
The latest date of the lanterns, though it differs on each highway, is about the 10th year of Meiji (1877). After that new roads, the New Awa highway foremost, began to be opened one after another, and besides, when the railway was constructed between Marugame and Kotohira in the 22nd year of Meiji (1889), the traffic route to the Kotohira Shrine underwent a complete change.

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Rural boundaries are the traces of the ancient adjustment of ricefields and are shown by narrow water channels and ridges between them which run crosswise and divide them into square lots called “tsubo” (about 100m by 100m). They were built up between 7th and 8th centuries and still remain as they were. The writer has investigated them in Saitama Prefecture in Kanto District, and has found several cases of their deformation, as they have been left alone without any readjustment since their construction, the district have been a kind of frontier of Japan. The following are some of these cases.
Some square lots are deformed into paralleograms because they have been fields flooded for the cultivation of rice in the fans and waters of springs and streamlet have washed their edges, extending squares little by little down the slope in a very long period of time. (fig. 4, fig. 5, fig. 6)
Some are changed into fields unfit for the cultivation of rice, as the river that flows near them has often overflowed and piled up much earth and sand on its banks and this has deprived the fields of irrigation facilities. (fig. 3, fig. 10.) In some places this is done on a much larger scale owing to the change of the course of rivers and some of these fields are subdivided into many smaller and irregular plots, while others show no trace of rural boundaries as is the case with those fields that are originally unsuitable for the cultivation of rice.
The deformation of Jori must, therefore, be considered in relation to the passage of time. And this research throws light not only on the perpetuity of rural boundaries but on their changeableness as well.

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The present location of city milk in Japan, with a numbes of large cities for the center of its extended circular structure, has two predominant characteristics worthy of attention;
1. The far advanced productive forces, especially, the invention of the tankcar capable of both milk transportation and preservation has caused a fall in transportion cost, made possible longer preservation and farther transportation, thus subtracting a great deal from the superiority of close-to-city location and at the same time bringing about possibilities for a new lacation of city milk. This alone, however, can hardly be supposed to have determined the condition of the “dispersed location”. The fact is that the “dispersed location” has its own origin in the small-scale dairy management in agricultural regions-in too much non-dairy agricultural management among the small-scale agricultural management-in the non-specialistic management in that of dairy agriculture. The failure in concentrated location is due to such an overwhelmingly powerful control of the monopoly capital of city milk (e.g. the monopolistic price of city milk) over this small-scale agricultural management that the small agricultural classes even cannot pay for their production expences.
2. The small-scale producers of city milk in remote regions who have selfsufficing feed to depend on are able to take in for themselves a little amount of surplus out of the low cost, as it is, of their milk production, which is the superiority to those in close-to-city areas who, because of their necessarily intimate dependency upon the monopoly cost of purchased feed, can hardly make up for the wages reguisite for thus necessarily high cost in their milk production. Hence a shift from close-to-city regions to remote ones in the location of city milk.

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Suwa Basin, the center of silk-reeling industry in pre-war days, has changed into as area of machinery and food industries. The ivention of nylon and other synthetic fibers drove away the demand of raw silk, of which production decreased to one-fourth of that golden age. (Table 3) The total value added of the present industries is estimated to be 670, 000, 000yen (shipment to be 2, 000, 000, 000). (Table 8) The present industrial development was caused partly by the plants of Tokyo capital, which had moved to this area for safety during the war, and partly by some of those big plants that have stayed even after the war, what by the good quality of the local laborers and what by little production of inferior goods.
The labor of the area, in pre-war was mainly provided by the workwomen from neighboring provinces (Table 2), while workmen were comparatively few (about 4, 000). They were day-workers who lived in the neighboring rural communities and were called workmen-farmers. Their considerable earnings from factory labor led them to pay little attention to their farms. Land was split smaller and smaller until about half of the farmers could not make their living by the product of their farms alone. After the end of the war, at the downfall of the silk-reeling industry, these farmers could not help applying themselves closely to new industrial labor. The percentage of inferior goods among their product being small, in spite of their comparatively high wages, the managers of these enterprises found it profitable to leave their plants in the area even after the war.
The present 16 larger factories belong to metropolitan manufactures. Though only a few silk-reel manufacturers changed their trade to machinery or food industries, silkreeling industry in pre-war days in Suwa Basin can not be said to have no relation to present industrial development of the district. Because manufacturers and repairers of silk yarn machines have found their way to the subcontract factories of Tokyo capital manufacturers. The present writer believes that the above-mentioned industrial change in this area is a typical form of an industrial area based on rural communities which has changed into a modern industry area. Main machinery plants in the district are the following presision machine plants: Seikosha, a watch maker; Sankyo, a music-box maker; Yashica and Olympus, camera; and other machinery plants; Tohatsu, auto cycle; Tel-pisu, piston ring; Kitazawa, high-pressure valve. Among the main food plants, the largest is the plant of Yomeishu, a medical wine. The enterprises of sake and miso or bean paste are rather smaller in spite of their large output.

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