Yuka-mura, a farm village in Okayama pref., south-western Japan, is situated near a mine named Yanahara. Naturally, the most village-men are drawn to work at the mine instead of their own farm, so the farming must be leave to the care of their wives and their old parents, thus in this village the subsidary farming is deemed low productivity.
By interviewing with selected 60 families…20% of all the farm families…author was able to clarify the following points: (1) Salary from the mining company is not enouth to make a living, so the villager think it indispensable to keep their farm for ever. (2) But the farm is so small in area…44 are in average…that the villager is unable to cultivate fruits or to rear cattle, they grow only paddy there. (3) Two sources of income…one from the mine, the other from the farm…are gratifying for them now, but at the same time they are worrying on future profession of their children. In order to have more chance in good job, they have to move to the city. (4) No villager agree to sell their farm because it is no doubt that the farm is their last means of living after retiring from their job. To keep farm means to keep their guarantee of living. The labor market in Japan is rather unstable now.
In these points author indicate the dead-lock against the agrarian policy of Japanese government to improve the farming productivity by making adequate size of the farm and by keeping good labor supply.

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In this research, the author has investigated the present situation of Yakutskaya agriculture, as a case of agricultural exploitation in Northern Siberia, and has obtained following results.
In the present agriculture of Yakutskaya ASSR, animal-husbandry is the most important, because the climate in this area is unfavorable for crop farming (the length of the frost-free period is too short for crop growing) and there-to Yakutskaya agriculture is characterized by lower yield of crop production than average yield of crop in USSR per ha, the low level of mechanization (especially, the mechanization of animal-husbandry), the shortage of workers for agriculture, the dispersion of cultivated land in the vast area of kolkhoz, and so on.
In such situations, crop production of Yakutskaya ASSR is flat and food supply in this area relies on other areas.
The agricultural development plan as one part of Yakutskaya economic development plan has been made on the basis of economic development plan for Eastern Siberia. According to the plan, in the coming 7 years agricultural output in Yakytskaya ASSR is expected to be several times more than in 1958. But still the important part of agricultural production is not in grain production, but in livestock products, potatoes and vegetable products.
Consequently, grain will still be transported from other areas to Yakutskaya ASSR, and Yakutskaya agriculture will not be able to give sufficient supply for its population.
Crop farming and animal-husbandry, both of which need much labour, prevail in Yakutskaya agriculture. But even in recent years this area is in want of both labour force and agricultural machines, and its labour productivity is low and the cost of agricultural products is high. In order to raise labour productivity and reduce the cost of agricultural products, it is necessary to promote mechanization, to carry out rational plans of cultivation, rapidly to expand forage reserve, to abolish the dispersion of cultivated land and farm and so on.
Therefore, for further agricultural development in Yakutskaya ASSR the following measures must be taken: sufficiently to supply agricultultural machines, to increase agricultural labour force and to invest large funds for measures of raising the labour productivity.

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The purpose of this article is to classify the characteristics of the distribution of Japanese towns before the industrial revolution. To qualify such towns, the author uses “Kyomhseihyo” (1880), the national statistics on population and products, and limits as town the settlements with over 2, 000 persons, but some fishing villages may be exceptionally contained among them.
The author thinks that the distribution of those towns is analogous to that “alten Kulturländer” called by G. Schwarz, which roughly speaking is related to the density of rural population (Fig. 1.) There was a dense net of towns with much urban populatin in coastal and basin regions (densely populated), where there were also large towns like Tokyo (725, 000), Osaka (363, 000), Kyoto (136, 000), Nagoya (117, 000), Kanazawa (108, 000) etc. (Fig. 2 and 3). Of course, the agglomeration of towns and urban population in those days were not in so large scale as in the present day.
But the distribution of towns in those days can not be explained by population density only. The ratio of urban population per Kuni, regional division in those days (Fig. 4) and the hierarchical structure of towns were related more closely to scale of regional centres than to economic richness of the areas. For example, the large regional centre Toitori (36, 000) and some small towns (2-3, 000) lay in Inaba-Kuni, so that the ratio of urban population per Kuni was raised (exclusively) by the urban population of Tottori.
Most of such regional contres were castle towns in feudal age, and their scale was in proportion to that of territories of “Daimyoes”, feudal lords. The origin of small towns was mosily market towns, coaching towns, and port-towns, which had grown in proportion to regional economic development.
Therefore, the distribution of towns in early Meiji-era was related to hitstorical conditions in feudal age everywhere.

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