The economic conditions of Japanese agriculture have been transformed in the past ten years. These transformation are shown in food distribution and food consumption, in addition to farm production which is the main subject of traditional agricultural geography. And the influence of the former upon the latter is not small. Although a large number of studies have been made on agricultural geography, especially farm production, little is known about the importance of the former. The aim of this paper is to clarify the role of food distribution in the growth of agricultural production by adopting the food system approach.
The food system approach has been discussed since the latter half of the 1980's in agricultural geography of the West and in the agricultural economics of Japan. What has to be noted is that this approach deals with agricultural input, product processing, food distribution, and food consumption in addition to farm production as the system intermediated by food. And the same approach can hold in a geographical system. But only a few studies have so far been made using geographical or regional systems in agricultural geography of Japan. Therefore the food system approach is beneficial in examing the role of food distribution and in introducing the methods of geographical systems into agricultural geography of Japan.
This paper is concerned with vegetable production in Nishikagura, Asahikawa-shi, Hokkaido. The preceding studies have observed that Hokkaido is disadvantageous for vegetable cultivation. But on recent years vegetable production of Hokkaido has been increasing rapidly. Especially Asahikawa is a newly expanding district for shipping to Honshu. On account of these reasuns Asahikawa is selected as case study area.
The following results were obtained: First, two marketing strategies are considered to have important roles from the observation of the grown process of vegetable production in this case. One is shipping on a period of short supply and the other is selection of markets. Little attention has been given to these marketing strategies beside farm production. But the marketing strategies promotes the growth of production in Hokkaido which would otherwise be disadvantageous for vegetable cultivation. This accounts for the importance of distribution. And the agricultural cooperatives in Asahikawa have played an active role of these strategies. To put it another way this is the geographical system linking rural and urban (production and consumption) and it is intermedeated by foods.
Second, the author investigated farm side items for this growth of production. From the viewpoint of the physical environment, the next two factors became clear: farming methods for various kinds of vegetables, and the long range of the shipping period. The former was introduced to avoid injury from continuous corpping and the latter depends on the differences of soil and temperature in Nishikagura. But these are not unusual cases. Indeed the same observation applies to other districts. It is better to say that agricultural cooperatives have utilized the natural resources around Nishikagura under today's changeable conditions on the agricultural economy. The cost of transportation to Honshu has been a big problem for agriculture in Hokkaido. But the price margin between Hokkaido and Honshu is so much that it deals successfully with the problem of remoteness. However the shortage of agricultural labour in Asahikawa will be a difficult problem in the future and people have not found the solution to this problem.
There is one further role of agricultural cooperatives that we must not ignore. That is the regulation of shipping destinations among the marketing cooperatives around Asahikawa. It has been considered that production adjustments are available for the solution of formerly excessive competition.

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Many of studies of the Thai economy have so far had little concern for local cities on the premise that Thailand consists of a capital city, that is, Bangkok, and the rural area, that is, the rest of the country. Even when local cities are studied, they used to be regarded just as target areas for administrative control and regional development programs by the central government, and/or for exploitation by external big companies. In short, those studies paid little attention to actors within local economies.
In contrast to those studies mentioned above, the current studies increasingly make efforts to understand local economy from some internal viewpoint by putting emphasis on the active behavior of provincial businessmen, some of the most important economic actors in local cities. The aim of this paper is to review the current trends of these studies and to point out issues to be further studied. The results are summarized in the following three respects:
First, since the end of 1970's, not a few scholars belonging to the so-called“political economy school (Samnak Setthasat-kanmuang)”have published the results of their research on the history of development and political behavior of provincial businessmen who base their business activities upon local cities.
However, these studies statically considered provincial businessmen as merchant capitalists, dependent capitalists, or Jao Pho. As a result, they underestimated the dynamic aspect of their business expansion and the variety of their responses to the changing politico-economic situation.
To the contrary, it is necessary to make thoroughly positive researches of the active behavior of provincial businessmen in the changing conditions in the intra-national and international economy, political power structure, the government's economic and industrial policy, and in relation to external capital. At the same time, it is important to avoid defining a priori the existence, form and role of provincial businessmen.
Second, full attention should be also paid to the role and function of provincial business associations. It is true that as studies on Jao Pho have already shown, there are big businessmen at the provincial level who can exert great influence (itthiphon) upon provincial government officials and politicians as well as upon the local business world. But at the same time, it should be realized that there are not only such influential businessmen but also many provincial businessmen who make efforts to do business sometimes by cooperating with others through formal business associations at the provincial level (e.g. provincial chambers of commerce). Moreover, provincial business associations increasingly are expanding the scope of their activities.
However, those provincial business associations such as provincial chambers of commerce have a relatively short history and have played still limited roles in the policy-making process of the government. It is necessary, therefore, to conduct further research on the roles and limitation of provincial business associations in terms of their historical background of organizing themselves and the relative position of those associations in the local business world.
Third and lastly, comparative studies of local cities within Thailand are also necessary. Judging from some cases on which studies of Jao Pho are based, the arguments of those studies may be persuasive. However, studies of other cases indicate that there are at least some cities with a more pluralistic social form to which the Jao Pho model does not apply.
What socio-economic factors bring about such differences between areas? This is also one of the issues to be further studied.

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This paper attempts to clarify the actual features of the decentralizing trend of the software industry through the development of large corporations' software houses.
First, in order to confirm the decentralization of the software industry in Japan, changes in the distribution of employees after the 1980's were analyzed.
Second, with special reference to the five largest corporations mainly manufacturing computers and software, the development and distribution and the locational trend of their software plants are analyzed, using data from interviews and questionnaires.
Third, in order to clarify the locational trend of each software plant, the plants whose data can be used are classified in five categories. Then, the relationships between the distribution of software houses, regional labor markets and branch offices are examined.
The main findings obtained can be summarized as follows:
1) The Japanese software industry achieved rapid growth in the 1980's. In the process of growth, the employees of the software industry were concentrated in the Tokyo metropolitan area, but the growth rates of such regional central cities as Sapporo, Sendai, Hiroshima and Fukuoka were especially distinguished and in Japan a decentralizing trend in the software industry is in progress.
2) The software houses of the five largest corporations mainly have been located in the three metropolitan areas (Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya), and in the four regional central cities. These seven areas are very important regions as footholds for the software producing sectors of the corporations, as shown in Figure 3.
3) The software houses which mainly produce control systems for distribution, manufacture, and other systems and have been located in major metropolitan cities, while the houses which mainly produce special computer systems and services for the customer are usually specialised to the business for their customers and manufacture nothing else. Most of them have been located near the customers rather than in metropolitan cities.
4) In the eastern part of Japan, the employees of each software house mainly come from the Tokyo metropolitan area. However, in the western part of Japan, the employees are not brought from the Tokyo metropolitan area, but local areas, as shown in Figure 4.
5) Many software houses of the corporations have often been located in the cities where the branch offices organized by the same corporation have been also located.

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