It is said that in the village communities of the Shima Peninsula, though they have similarity in natural conditions and historical background, their traditional folk-customs are varied in all aspects. I also had my own experience when I was a member of the research committee for folk-customs in the district. For instance, the customary abdication system of the headship of a family, found at Kou Village, in the eastern end of the Peninsula and famous in its separate type of each household, has not found its resemblance in any other place in the vicinity.
I have been interested in this problem from the geographical standpoint, and here present a preliminary essay which will explain some of it. I think that the regional differences in various phases of these customs have been made in comparatively recent times, and that before that they had been alike in any village of this Peninsula, because the fragments of the ancient customs in some villages have the common features with the other Japanese folk-customs. One of the causations would be the destructions of frequent typhoons and tsunamis. The detailed explanation will be given in my future report when I get more certain data. In this introductory report, accordingly, I have explained those which have been regarded as the instances of the compultion of the community are, in fact, those of the transformation of the age class system which was characteristic of the ancient community, by seeing the following examples: the abdication system in Kou Village, the ceremonies of the contracts between formal fathers and formal sons in Matsuo Community and the system of theocratic self-government in Tategami Village Block Association.
The origin of the age class system in this Peninsula is a historical problem still to be elucidated. But it may be an important geographical factor that these folk-customs passed through the Meiji Era, an age of great reforms, and was affected by the governing classes of the villages because of their remote locations.

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In Japan, farmers of the small landownership are mainly attended to their vegetable productions with diligence. Even vegetables produced at a long-distance are also provided for the supply of cities (city dwellers). During the winter season, above all, venyle-house stands side by side at the warmer villages along the Pacific coast than Tokyo and Osaka, and there lots of greens are prepared for by means of the forcing culture. As a representative of these districts, the author has investigated Kochi prefecture and the facts obtained are as follows:
1) In Kochi prefecture, forcing culture of vegitables begins in the 1920's, this is a producing area of an early truck-farming in Japan. A mild winter and the long sunshine mainly brought production of forcing-vegetables on a largescale. Another different ground of this prosperity is better service at the window (route): Products and their producers in Kochi prefecture banded together to make selling to each big city. Vegetables appended on the trade-mark label of Kochi have got the credit of the market-places, by supplying of constant large quantity of greens for the marketing.
2) Though forcing vegetables can maintain business relation with high price in each market, all the same, net profit per farm-house is not so much. Because it took farmer much time and cost him a great deal of money for production facilities to continue the work. In Kochi prefecture, recompense per hour of farmers is equivalent to 49% (in case of cucumber culture) as compared with the income of farmers in the suburban districts of Osaka city. It showed that, that is to say, they sell their labour cheaper than farmers close to cities.
3) At the village of To-no-Hama in Yasuda-cho situated near the Cape Muroto, according to the author's searching inquiry, the farmers' average acreage under cultivation is 0.7 hectare. In summer they try to cultivate paddy rice and grow greens in winter in the same cultivated field. The earnest farmers to raise vegetables have 0.7-1.0 hectare area of plowed land for their cultivation. Compared with the farmers owning 1.0-1.4 hectare area, they have unfavorable conditions with their land under cultivation: this arable land is at a long distance from their residence, more humid, and lower temperature in winter than land owned belonging to a large-scale farmer. Notwithstanding the disadvantageous condition for growing vegetables, they carry on cultivating greens with the bigger extent under crop area than the other classes of farmers. Curiously enough, farmers having over 1.0 hectare held their cultivation of greens for fear of being cursed by soil fatigue.
4) Recently, it has been found, forcing culture of vegetables even in the villages of the inland area situated at the eastern district in the Kochi plain. Farmers having over 1.5 hectare land under cultivation are mostly engaged in cultivation of forcing vegetable. This is due to needing the capital for the green-house heated by boiler-steam.
Farmers along the coastal villages moved first to this eastern area, and made a start on their forcing culture. It is caused that they cannot trust any longer in the plowed land, because of small and unsystematic land readjustment, scanty water for irrigation (in needy circumstances) and plenty of soil fatigues. Dwellers in these areas follow these farming techniques to try to grow the forcing culture by use of the giant-sized venyle-house, and are introducing many farming machines for their land under cultivation in these villages. They have a promising future, as it trys hard to enhance the labour to efficiency value, though net-profit of farmers per hour are lower than that of them in the suburban districts of big cities.

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In Japan, the motorization of fishing boat started in the late years of Meiji Era. It was the most important motive on the recent development of Japanese fishing: the process of motorization of fishing boat was not only attended with the development of off-shore fishery, such as bonito angling, tuna long-line fishing, trawling, KISENSOKOBIKI-a kind of trawling by wooden boat-, and purse seine fishing etc, but with the great much increase of fishing production. On the other hand, it brought much prosperity in the coastal fishery, although it started far later in the middle years of Taisho Era at the small boat which employed to.
The writer much inquired into the process of motorization of fishing boat in regional differenciation to draw some regional aspects of Japanese Fishing, and was led to the conclusions as follows:
(1) Central Pacific Coast (from Wakayama Prefecture to Chiba Prefecture)-it marked much advantage of the motorization of fishing boats, both bigger which employed to off-shore fishery and coastal smaller, and forms the most advanced region. By the preceding development of bonito angling, the motorization of fishing boat started in this region, and cover the all times it has led the development of off-shore fishery, which are bonito angling and tuna long-line fishing. The advantage in this region in fishing has been supported with the facilities of transportation to the great market, with demand for fish by the abandance of municipal population, and with the facilities of penetration to fertile off-shore fishing ground.
(2) Northern (from Ibaraki Pref. to Aomori Pref.) and Southern (from Tokushima Pref. to Kagoshima Pref.) Pacific Coast-it marked much advantage of the motorization of big boat but considerable disadvantage of small coastal boat, in these regions. These regions have no advantages of the facilities of transportation to the great market, and have not much demand for fish due to luck of large cities, but the big boats employing off-shore fishery can land the fish they caught at the large markets, on the other hand, smaller coastal boats can not.
(3) Western Coast of Sea of Japan (from Ishikawa Pref. to Shimane Pref.)-it marked considerable disadvantage of big boat and small coastal boat in this region. Off-shore fishery is not so prosperous due to poverty of Sea of Japan, and this region has only middle class boats in scale. On the other hand, coastal fishery is considerably prosperous due to conciderable facilities of transportation to market.
(4) Eastern Coast of Sea of Japan (from Toyama Pref. to Aomori Pref.)-it marked much disadvantage of both big and small boat in this region, and formed the most disadvanced region in fishing.
(5) Inland Sea Coast-it marked much advantage of only small boat in this region. The Inland Sea has no room to develop off-shore fishery, then big boats are quite absent. But its coast has many cities with much demand for fish, coastal fishery is much prosperous, and the transportation is quite convenient through the water way.

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About in last twenty years, geography of population has been developed in the Soviet Union. At the biginning, it started from the geographical study of cities and then has extended to that of rural settlement, but it was backward to study the internal migration of population relating the location of production till the most recent period.
In last a few years, this subject began to be taken up and the study on the migration of population which is connected with Siberian exploitation was published by a few writers. On the basis of these treatises and other materials, this report considered the migration of population and the problems between labor force and production in the Eastern Siberia.
As a result of the lack of labor caused by economic development in Siberia, many people has flowed into this region from western parts of the Soviet Union. But at the same time, we observed the tendency that population has been flowing out of eastern parts (espesially in Siberia) to western parts in the Soviet Union. This is brought about by severe natural conditions (paticularly climate condition) and the low standard of living in Eastern parts in comparison with that of westernparts in the Soviet Union. Consequently, labor is not settled in this region and the Eastern Siberia is worried about remarkable migration of population in spite of the lack of labor force.
On the other haud, in the European Russia, the Caucasia and the Central Asia of the Soviet Union, there are surplus labor forces in the branch of agriculture and middle and small cities. In addition, in the Eastern Siberia we can recognize the insufficient use of labor force, especially women labors.
From such a situation, in the U.S.S.R. paticular attention should be focused on the distributive plan of labor force viewed from all over the country in order to plan further economic development, though there is no doubt to consider material incentives to induce migration of population. At the same time, in the Eastern Siberia which has areas with very different natural and socio-economical conditions, they need to make the distributive plan of population considerring the differences between various areas. But now these considerations seem to be still insufficient.
Generally, in the present Soviet Union geografy of population is defined as special branch of economic geography and then as special branch whichi sdifferent from other branches of economic geography, since it includes “non productive branches which belong to the consumer's side of social production process” (Pokshishevskii). From such a point, there is an opinion to make population geography independent from economic geography and divide geography into three branches: physical, economic and population geography. So, after this, the geographical studies on the migration of population and the distribution of population appears to be given with their studies from more broad scope than ever.

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