The purpose of this study is to clarify the image and its regional background of cities in the Hokuriku District, Central Japan. The methodological framework consists of three preparatory questionnaire surveys, semantic differential (SD) method combined with direct factor analysis, and step-wise multiple regression analysis.
Through the preparatory surveys, 18 municipalities (shi) were selected for the analysis as well-known Hokuriku cites in the Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa and Fukui Prefectures, and 12 pairs of bipolar adjective words were gathered as the rating scales of the image evaluation in the questionnaire of the SD method. Undergraduate students of Kanazawa University located in Kanazawa-shi, Ishikawa Prefecture are the subject for the SD questionnaire, as well as the three preparatory ones.
In order to extract the dimension of the city image, the evaluation data derived from the SD questionnaire was subjected to the factor analysis by the direct method, which does not standardize the data and thus starts with the cross-product matrix. Step-wise regression analysis was also utilized for searching the regional characteristics for the backgrounds of the image dimensions in the Hokuriku cities.
As a result, three image dimensions were obtained. The first can be interpreted as 'yearning' for city since it is concerned with the adjectives 'urban' and 'lively'. Commercial activity and population size affect this dimension. In the Hokuriku cities, the most desired cities are Niigata-shi and Kanazawa-shi, where commercial activities have been highly concentrated and the population are largest.
The second dimension is interpreted as psychological distance, or imaginary 'separation' for city. Real distance to a city increases this separation, and the population size of the city decreases it. The third is 'hesitation', which arises for far distant and industrial or transportation cities. On the other hand, the hesitation is less for Kanazawa-shi, the nearest city for the students, and Wajima-shi and Kaga-shi, which are tourist and spa resort places.

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The structure of the female local labor market has been studied from the viewpoint of firms or plants as employers, but housewives' role inside their household has not been analyzed. Housewives' working status has not been discussed in detail, on the other hand, at the level of the content of their working activities, using a time-geog-raphical approach. The purpose of this paper is to establish a system composed both of a plant as an employer and of a housewives as employees, and then to understand the female local labor market by coupling dialectically the plant's working and housewives' activities within a time-geographical perspective. The study area-Aonohara district, Tsukui-machi, Kanagawa Prefecture-is situated in the Greater Tokyo fringe area, where a plastic manufacturing plant was newly located and employed female parttimers.
It turns out that the plant's action on the inside- and outside-crisis which occured in the above-mentioned system is grouped into two categories: (1) emergency action and (2) radical reform. As a factor of reduction of product efficiency, immediately, the plant and the housewives cope with that crisis through a daily-rhythm. A crisis which cannot be solved through daily-rhythm, in turn, is solved by the monthly-rhythm schedule adjustment. In the case of a crisis which was not solved even by that adjustment, a radical reform has been required through yearly-rhythm. Further a relocation of the plant might be sometimes needed through life-rhythm.

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A city system is a comprehensive set of cities which are interdependent through economic fluctuations, diffusion and exchange of information, and flow of goods, capital, and people. All cities which contain the elements of this system do not randomly grow, stagnate, and decline independent of one another; instead, they change in response to growth or decline in other cities. The study of city systems seeks to understand neither a region which has undergone spatial urban expansion nor its internal structure; rather, it emphasizes interurban relationships by viewing cities as points. The study of systems of cities is also concerned with the reinforcement of interurban dependencies brought about by the expansion of economic activities over a wide area and the intensification of transportation and information networks because changes in cities can have a great impact on other urban systems. Since openness, or the dependency of cities on the outside, is increasing, we cannot gain a clear understanding of the functionality and growth of cities if we do not think of these systems as a combination of social and economic factors.
According to Vining, who first made the connection between systems of cities and urban growth, the terms “systems of cities” and “city systems” were already in use before 1940. However, it was not until the publication of the work of Duncan et al. that the national urban system of the United States was considered from the functionality of individual cities and their interdependent relationships. It was Berry who made geographers keenly aware of the effectiveness of studying urban systems by explaining the scale of urban population distribution and the hierarchical urban structure using general systems theory. Since Berry's study, research in systems of cities, which was influenced by the development of quantitative geography, has been rapidly progressing.
With the establishment of methodologies and analytical frameworks in the 1960s and 1970s, exhaustive corroborative research was conducted on rank size, functional classification, dimensional analysis, nodal and functional structures, diffusion processes, spatial interactions, and the wide-ranging effects of economic fluctuation. In the late 1970s, research was expanded to include international comparisons of urban systems, forecasts for the future, and proper control, management and even policy for the creation of urban systems in equilibrium. In the late 1980s, interdisciplinary research increased as data from related disciplines such as political science, sociology, and economics was incorporated into geographical research. More recently, research in international and global urban systems (which supersede a national system of cities) has been gaining attention. Thus, research into urban systems has become a very attractive undertaking.
In urban systems research, the rural area is excluded from the analysis. This is done because limiting study areas to cities reduces the relative economic impact of rural areas while confining important, economically stimulating functions to the small areas these cities occupy. The controlling forces of cities are increased while surrounding rural areas are brought into the urban sphere of economic dominance. Viewed from the perspective of population distribution, the dispersed population of rural areas stands out in stark spatial contrast to the concentrated population of cities. According to 1990 United Nations population estimates, the ratio of urban population (i. e., cities of at least 20, 000 inhabitants) to total world population. stood at 29.1% in 1950, but had increased to 45.2% by 1990. Furthermore, it was expected to reach 51.1% by the year 2000, and 64.6% by 2025. In any event, there has been a special focus on productive activity of the tertiary and quaternary (service and information) sectors which are currently driving the economy.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between the development of office space, the location of office renting floor space and the influences of the activities of private developers on business office districts in Hiroshima City. The following summarizes the main results of this study:
(1) The locational pattern of office buildings is mainly conditioned by the street car lines and main streets. Private developers whose headquarters are outside Hiroshima City, especially in Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas, own buildings in the higher land value district or the more accessible district Hiroshima Station than those whose headquarters are in Hiroshima.
(2) Private developers make decisions about their activities according to national and local monetary policy and city planning. Many larger and higher-storeyed office buildings have been constructed by larger capital developers. Recenly, however, private developers in Hiroshima have built the largest office building.
(3) The use of floor spaces in office buildings has a defined pattern which is set by private developers and connected with the land use pattern in the city, especially in the central area in Hiroshima.
(4) The rental fees for office space in office buildings is an important factor in the balance of supply and demand for office spaces. Fees depend mainly on the equipment of the building and/or land value; the rental fees reflect the activities of the private developers.
(5) The attributes of offices in office buildings are an important factor in the business district, because it corresponds to the character of offices in the office buildings, and affects the office location pattern in the city. For example, many branch offices in office buildings are owned developers outside Hiroshima, that by depend on rental fees.
(6) Although movements of offices by the construction of new office buildings is not dramatic in this study, the supply and demand of office spaces is balanced. But the spread of the business district in the city depends on the activities of private developers.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the locational pattern and locational process of manufacturers' head offices giving due consideration to the relation between head office and plants. The study area is the city of Nagoya.
Generally speaking, offices are agglomerated in the central business district of cities. In the case of the manufacturing industry, however, head offices have to control their plants as actual work-sites. Therefore it is better for the head offices to be located with their plants than separately. On the other hand, it is advantageous to locate head offices in the CBD to obtain information related to their business. That is to say, the locational pattern reflects each firm's decision.
In this paper, manufacturer's head offices are divided into two locational types, head offices which depend on their plants (D-type head offices) and head offices which are independent of plants (I-type head office).
The findings are summarized as follows:
1. In considering the location of manufacturer's head offices, it is significant to classify the office into two types (D-type and I-type head offices).
2. Concerning the locational pattern, it is true that there are many head offices in the CBD, but many are also located in a wider area of the city. In the CBD, I-type head offices are predominant. And it is evident that the ratio of D-type head officegoes up with distance.
3. The ratio of I-type head rises with magnification of their scale. Although the ratio of I-type head office rose between 1972 and 1992, more than 40% of head offices still are located with their plants.
4. The firms whose head offices are I-type have allocated their plants more widely in Japan than those whose head offices are D-type.
5. In the latter type of firms the plants located with head offices still perform an important role in their production activities.

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