A pioneer contribution by Y. WATANABE (1955) in order to test the applicability of central place theory in Japan was carried out in Fukushima Prefecture. Twenty years have passed since this study was completed.
This study followed up aspects of WATANABE's work, its aim was to;
i) confirm the hierarchical system of central places existed in 1953, and to examine its transformation since then.
ii) clarify the social characteristics of the central place hierarchy from the viewpoint of the relationship between classes of central place and social attributes of consumers.
iii) compare the existing central place hierarchy with administrative planning areas, and to point out some problems regarding Regional city, town and village community planning (Koiki-Sichoson-Ken-Keikaku).
Firstly, it was confirmed through the author's investigation that the central place hierarchy in 1953 in the plains (some basins and Iwaki coastal plain) and their adjacent areas (Fig. 5) was composed of three strata (≈areal order), while in the mountainous areas, the hierarchy was composed of two strata. However in 1971, since the 1955 Community Consolidation new Rural Community-Office Settlements (yakuba-shuraku) have emerged to rank equally with Town (chiho-machi, Kawamata, Ishikawa, Bange, Tomioka, etc.), these have subordinated old Rural Community-Office Settlments (kyu-yakuba-shuraku, , stratum I). Of course, in the mountains new Rural Community-Office Settlements have been unable to subordinate old Settlements, and the Town still subordinates several Rural Community-Office Settlements. Generally speaking, however, the new Rural Community-Office Settlements have developed to become independent of the Town, and to be directly tied with the City (toshi, Fukushima, Koriyama, Sukagawa, Kitakata, Haramachi, etc.). These hierarchical relationships between the Rural Community-Office Settlement and the Town and the City could be inferred from WATANABE's “hierarchical systems in supposition” (Fig. 3).
Socondly, the central place hierarchy has been influenced not only by the functional differences of central functions, but also by some social groups. In rural area in Fukushima Prefecture, the Rural Community-Office Settlement class is mostly oriented towards peasantry, while the City class is oriented towards the white-collar workers. The Town has an intermediate character. This study is only the first step towards clarifying the social characteristics of central place hierarchies. In the future, the author hopes to connect the central place hierarchy with the rural community structure.
In the light of the author's findings, he has reconsidered the Regional city, town and village community planning. This has been sound to be out of relation with the central hierarchy. Consequently, this study reveals that its areal scale is wider than the actual area, and that the planner has neglected regional differences of central place hierarchies between plain and mountainous areas, and that finally, its areal scale is not the peasant's action space, but the whitecollar worker's one.

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Many studies have been published to deal with Japan's urban growth which began at the Meiji era, but there seems to be very few works which focus its examination on the urban functions and city and region relationship on a meso-scale, and have a scope to develop into macro-scale study of the whole region. Since a regon exists as a part of the whole, attention to such a direction will be urgently needed.
The writer intends to explain a historical change in the city and region structure in the Niigata Plain-the country's second largest plain-and its surroundings for the period of about seventy years since the early Meiji era. To this end the processes of forming the Ura Nippon Region must be unraveled dynamically and regionally, and location and the sphere of influence of urban functions, which may be classified into four categories-administrative, cultural, economic and transportational, are examined in relation to city size and distribution of cities. Parts of the results obtained are summarised as follows.
1. In 1879 there were thirty-three cities and towns in the objective region, and thirty-four in 1935. Cities in 1879 are classified into three, ie. a city in Class I, four in Class II, and twenty-eight in Class III (See Figure 1).
2. The four cities in Classes I and II were separated each other by 30 to 40 kilometres, and the distances between Class III cities were around 6 to 9 kilometres, the intervals being quite uniform. The outline of this structure had already been formed by the middle of the eighteenth century. Since that time most of those cities have had periodical fairs, and half of them were nuclei of textile and hardware industries which had been located at the rural settlements around them (See Figures 1 and 2).
3. On this foundation the administrative and cultural institutions such as government offices and schools began to be located corresponding to city size at the early years of Meiji. At the same time economic activities, especially of modern manufacturing industies which tend to be unevenly distributed, began to be accumulated around those cities. The framework of established orders among cities was therefore not broken down but was solidified more as the time passed.
4. Consequently larger cities genarally developed more in proportion to their scale. If the Zipf's rule is applied, the three largest cities had smaller scale than the rule's ideal value, and Class III cities larger than the same in 1887, and the case was reversed in 1935. As a result the difference in the scale of the largest and the smallest cities increased by 2.7 times during the period. This was also the process when the order among cities became rank-sized (Table 11).
5. After the middle of the Meiji era the objective region was gradually subordinate to Tokyo, and formed into a part of the Ura Nippon Region. The trend was definitely fixed at the mid-Taisho years. The cities developed only slowly in this region, and their influence over the countryside remained weak. Therefore the countryside began to be controlled by the cities outside this region and by the outer realm. The large-scale landlordship was the most important internal factor to keep the rural country into stagnation.
6. Another factor to bring about such change to the region was a drastic change in transportation: a shift from maritime and river-borne traffic to the modern railway. This should not be overlooked.

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This is a study of the historical transitions and the regional distribution of the arable land utilization ratios in the past 100 years in Japan, and this is to provide fundamental materials useful to reexamine the present agricultural conditions of Japan.
The author selected the following years fo view the change during the 100 years; 1877, 1887, 1897, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1965, and 1970. The arable land utilization ratio is calculated by using the following formula;
X(%)=total area planted/total arable land area×100
The results are shown in Table 1.
From this table, the following characteristics can be pointed out:
1) The average arable land utilization ratios in the past 100 years in Japan were about 130%.
2) The highest figure of the ratios in each prefecture during the 100 years has reached the level of 140%.
3) Disparity in the highest and the average ratios is caused by lower ratios in some prefectures like Hokkaido, where the figure before the 1930's was 50-80%.
4) The arable land utilization ratio, as a whole, has been falling rapidly in the last ten years (133% in 1960, and 109% in 1970).
5) From the viewpoint of the distribution it can be noticed that the ratios are higher in the southern prefectures than in the northern. This is due to different climatic conditions.
6) In the southernmost prefectures, for example, Kagoshima and Kôchi, the ratios had been lowest till the 1910's, though climatic conditions there are quite favorable.
7) Nowadays, these southernmost prefectures maintain the highest ratios in Japan.
8) In Hokkaido and the Tôhoku Province, the ratios have been low all the time in this period.

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