Today some kinds of vegetables are produced all the year round. Even in winter they are grown and harvested with the aid of hot houses. Because of the fine winter climate, there are many hot houses on the Pacific coast of Japan. Even though Kochi Prefecture was far from the urban market, truck gardening has been practiced there since about 1907. Today, Kochi Prefecture ranks first in Japan in supplying a winter hot house vegetables.
The author studied the areal type of vegetable production, especially in hot houses. The farmer who operates a hot house holds a small amount of arable land, about 0.1 to 1.0ha. 50 years ago, many fishing villages changed to horticulture, and there, today, on the sandy beach, hot houses stand side by side. These villages have ranked first in truck farming in Kochi Prefecture since this type of production began. Where the horticulture began earlier, almost all farmers usually engage in hot house production. The hot houses are not so large; each one of which is 1 to 5 are. The unit of co-operative which has been organized for the shipment of vegetables has been small; each co-operative is based on one hamlet.
After 1960, some changes have been observed in truck farming of Kochi Prefecture. Above all, oil rubbed paper was rapidly replaced by vinyl film as house cover material. As a result, the truck gardening region has spaced all over the plains of the prefecture. Even far from the coast numerous vinyl houses have been built. In the district where horticulture was recently began to be carried on, we find some new aspects of production in contrast to the older methods of production. For example, a large sized hot house is equipped with automatic oil heater keeping warmth at night, irrigation pipes, and a fan for ventilation. Such a hot house requires from 10 to 20 are of floor space; thus a large amount of capital and skilled man power is also necessary in a hot house production. Therefore every farmer doesn't always operate a big sized house for vegetable growing. Standing on the hills in spring, we can see that the paddy fields are dotted with the big houses. In the newly developed horticultural districts, the agricultural co-operatives have more extensive areas under their control than in the older horticultural districts. In Japan local administrative units have had the tendency to unite with each other since 1954. This has resulted in the smaller co-operatives being incorporated into the bigger ones. By way of example the author has intensively researched into the areal formation of horticulture in Noichi-cho (town). In that town, while the production of vegetables has recently increased, the number of the farmers engaging in tobacco planting, dairying, chicken raising, as well as biannual harvesting of paddy fields has been decreasing. In the hot house of big size such crops as pimientos or peppers, cucumbers, and eggplants are raised. Moreover we can see new practices of growing vegetables using the easier means of keeping warmth, such as small vinyl honses or vinyl tunnels or hot frames or vinyl mulching only. Thus a gynmigit (Japanese; nira), sweet poteto, taro, garlic, kidney bean, celery, and garden asparagus are available for sale in the season when vegetables are scarce. Farmer who operates the large sized house with the heater differs from the farmer who produces the vegetables by lower cost equipment. The former, mostly young men, engage in farming as a regular occupation, while the latter, being old or female workers in many cases, are part-time farmers.
Although the farmers in this district choose various kinds of crops and means of production, the region as a whole appears as a densely concentrated area of vegetable production.

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Several epochs can be perceived in the process of modernization of the salt industry in Japan, which had been conducted entirely through authorized guidances since the enforcement of governmental monopoly system in 1905. This paper is to depict and consider what changes in the economical mechanism of regional salt industry took place as the consequence of switching-over from the “percolating method” to the newly-deviced “falling-down system”. The reform was executed mostly during the years before and after 1955.
Here on the stage appear two salt making areas at Sakaide and Utazu as typical examples to be discussed. During the period in which the old-fashioned percolating method prevailed, both of them boasted their being ranked highest in pruductivity per area. Utazu was especially featured by a fact that all the salt fields were tenanted without exception. Most of the fields there had been developed through the local small and medium sized capital funds since Meiji era. These capitalists established a joint salt field company owning all the salt fields and it levied high rate of rental upon the tenants, to each of whom one salt paddy as wide as about 1.5ha or one half of that was allotted.
In 1913 tenanted salt fields were equivalent to 86% of the whole in Kagawa prefecture. The nationwide land reform was executed immediately after the termination of the World War II. Salt fields were exempted from it, but the increased taxation levied upon the land owners began to make it economically difficult for the tenanted fields to be maintained. Out of Sakaide salt fields, as wide as 86ha in all, 30ha was tenanted in 1950, but 1954 saw only 20ha tenanted.
Transition from the old method into the new “falling-down method” caused a lot of troubles, among which tenancy liquidation was the one having to be carried out. That's because under the new system the unit of productive labor had got to be enlarged, obliging the management leadership of the salt industry to be transmitted to the newly-settled salt production union which was an executing body made up of whole salt makers, including tenants as well as land owners. Incidentally enough, in 1951 at Sakaide a land owner brought up a law-suit against one of his tenants, claiming return of the rented land. The first trial was closed in favor of the land owner. Five years later, however, the decision was overturned in the second trial, which told that as far as the ownership was concerned, 40% should belong to the former owner while the rest should remain in the tenant's posession. This court decision provided a kind of pattern in liquidating tenancy relation on the occasion of transforming the salt making method and it prevailed in Sakaide area in the form that there were three types of settlement as follows: firstly purchase by the owner, secondly purchase by the tenant, and thirdly partition between the two parties. At Utazu, mentioned first, several years previously whole stocks of the salt field company had been bought up by the tenants union. Therefore, as a matter of fact, at this time there existed very few tenants. It meant that no troubles of the same kind as at Sakaide could be heard of there.
It required that nearly 2 million yen per ha to convert a field into falling-down typed one. The cost was paid mostly by running in to a vast amount of debt. Production method conversion brought about productivity increased more than threefold and amount of lessened to only one fifth when compared with the past. Strange enough, it happened that income from the salt industry decreased. The culprit was payment of the debt, an inevital result of huge investment. Side jobs such as office working, commerce, civil engineering, etc. became very common among employers of the salt field companies. At Sakaide, as partitioned inheritance and releasing of salt field went on, area of the fields owned by each individual got less and less wide.

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