Over the decades since the 1970s, feminist geography has challenged the exclusion of women from the production of geographical knowledge. With the emergence of feminist geography, gender perspectives have attracted considerable attention. However, men who feel alienated by changing gender roles have not received much attention. The purpose of this article is to elucidate the empirical situation of the masculinity of geographical knowledge by highlighting the major characteristics of alienated middle-aged single men in contemporary Japan.
In the introductory section, an overview and the significance of feminist geography are discussed. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of men's studies within gender research in geography. The development of men's studies has enabled an interrogation of masculinity from varied angles.
The second section is devoted to an explanation of the interview method employed in the article and its limitations. The informants are ten single men, aged 35-64. Their narratives are quoted as evidence of their alienation.
The third section interprets the concrete places within which middle-aged single men feel alienated. The specific contents of these places of alienation are presented as follows:
1. In rural areas, where they do not play an important role within patriarchy, they are not regarded as 'full-fledged' men.
2. At the workplace, where they are unable to participate in male bonding which is a feature of homosocial workspaces.
3. At home, where the lack of women results in their homes being labelled as 'dirty', as men are considered to lack the ability to do housework.
4. In contemporary gendered urban spaces, where despite an image of these spaces allowing diversity, middle-aged single men feel suppressed.
The evidence from the research points to the above four factors being the main considerations underlying the alienation of single and middle-aged men.
Based upon the discussion of the preceding sections, the fourth section interprets the meanings of space and place from the standpoint of men who feel alienated, with reference to feminist geography. Firstly, it is noted that place in humanistic geography, which has been criticized by feminist geography as having a masculinist bias, alienates middle-aged single men, as well as women. Moreover, feminist geography points out that the notion of space in Marxist geography is also gendered. This paper draws attention to the fact that gendered space does not privilege all men, but just those men who meet certain conditions of masculinity.
The final section discusses the conclusion reached, that hegemonic masculinity in geographical knowledge oppresses not only women, but also men. Therefore, it follows that we need to elucidate differences among men.

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The author analyzes the historical change of agar's production area via a framework of study based on 'regional regulation (régulation régionale)'. This study deals with the development of Gifu and Shinshu agar's production areas by paying attention to the outbreak and collapse of local regulation mechanisms. The mode of regulation of the production areas that adheres to a structure of 'nestedness' in space is determined while mingling together with the coordination in spatial scale (global/national/regional/local and so on). However, the greatest impact on sustaining stable regimes of economic management (régimes économiques de fonctionnement) in production areas operates at the local level, since competition among industrial areas is coordinated by local institutional devices (dispositifs institutionnels).
The competition in Gifu agar's production area is coordinated by 'domestic industrial coordination (coordination domestique)'. This is a mechanism coordinated by negotiation among firms and wholesale dealers concerning decisions on quality and prices. In Shinshu agar's area, in terms of price, it is coordinated by 'civil coordination (coordination civique)', which is characterized by a 'convention' determined by the enterprise union. In addition, this form is understood as coordination beyond the pursuit of individual profits through the sharing of common interests. On the other hand, in terms of quality, competition was coordinated by 'industrial coordination (coordination dite industrielle)', which is accomplished by the coordination of national standards. In this mechanism, competition was coordinated and stimulates the development of the production area by the induction of local industrial devices.
In the meantime, there was great concern that agar's production area would decline because of an overseas production shift, competition, changes in the norms of consumption, decline in agricultural production, and the reluctance of agriculture to maintain business among young farmers.
These global and national changes made the mode of local regulation extremely unstable. Strictly speaking, the most significant component of this decline was destined to be in the form of the coordination of each production area, so that the crisis arose in the face of environmental change at the global and national levels.
In the case of the 'domestic coordination' of Gifu agar's production area, it was possible for the firms to keep their production stable. However, these firms have many problems such as the subordination to wholesale dealers, a lower rate of profit and the temporary business of the farmers. The existing crisis in this form was revealed in terms of decreases in income and the depletion of successors caused by the national decline of agriculture.
Considering Shinshu agar's production area, the quality of agar was controlled by 'industrial coordination', but its demand diminished. This change was brought about by the lack of a concern and convention for quality. Therefore, each firm was unable to cope with changes in the norms of consumption, or competition in production.
However, the coordination forms in this critical period began to change by struggling to grope for a new form of coordination, especially in the case of innovative firms.
In Gifu agar's production area, the firms have changed their production term into a year, and have specialized agar's production to enlarge business. In Shinshu agar's area, firms have successfully coped with the crisis by setting up more innovative operations and by making use of the large customer network. Thus, the agar's production areas are coordinated by each local institution. Faced with losing the validity of existing coordinations, they transformed their system to revive their production.

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Recently, beef cattle breeding has been gaining a growing importance in many peripheral regions in Japan and is expected to become one of the basic industries in those regions. This paper examines the development process and the significance of beef breeding in those regions by analyzing socio-ecological factors, and discusses the sustainability of the current production systems.
In Chiburi-Jima island, the recent development of beef breeding is being attributed to middle-aged people who were motivated to enter the business by the rise of calf prices in the late 1980s. However, some aspects of beef breeding, such as the great fluctuations in calf prices, the need for daily care, and the long periods required for recovering capital, served as barriers to some people who had a desire to raise cattle. Consequently, most of the new breeders had been self-employed as carpenters, plasterers, gasmen, and fishermen. They spend their work time first on their principal job, and only surplus labor time is spent on beef cattle breeding because the principal jobs are generally more profitable.
There are three main factors that have enabled the expansion of the beef herd: 1) the effective use of common pasture and the purchase of fodder, 2) the use of labor-saving measures by utilizing abandoned land borrowed from friends and relatives and by introducing new facilities, and 3) capital accumulation made possible by a breeder's principal job. It should be noted, however, that these production systems lack sustainability because they are based on an insecure procurement of pasture land, an unstable fodder price and a casual land rental agreement.
These facts have both positive and negative implications for the regional economy. On the one hand, beef breeding can contribute to self-employed businesses by adding extra income and an efficient local resource use is realized through local-specific social relations such as relatives and friends. On the other hand, beef breeding as an additional income source may lose its basis because primary businesses themselves are declining.

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This paper offers a retrospective study of the rural deprivation debate which is used as a policy concept to deal with rural social welfare problems collectively in UK and to compare the idea of rural deprivation and that of kaso in Japan. The term rural deprivation emerged as a slogan for gaining additional regional policies by policy circles in rural areas that were motivated by the 1974 Rate Support Grant reform that favored the London metropolitan area.
In the 1970's many studies concerning rural deprivation were presented. Most early studies applied multivariable analysis using social indicators. But these studies were criticized as insufficient to determine the real figures of rural deprivation owing to the lack of usable statistical data and offer inadequate analysis of subjective aspects of the inhabitants and their conditions. Afterwards, two intensive and large-scale household surveys were carried out. They were Deprivation in Rural Areas(DR) in the 1980's and Rural Lifestyles Project(RLP) in 90's. These surveys clarified the realities of deprivation problems in rural areas and had the effect of changing the public perception of rural problems.
The causes of rural deprivation were theoretically explained with the help of two different models. Planning theory sees that the provision of opportunities in particular places leads to deprivation. Sociological theory sees that power relations within social structures bring about deprivation.
The findings of DR and RLP showed the importance of social structures as causes of rural deprivation. Additionally, the Thatcher government's drastic reforms and the prevalence of idyllic view of rural areas in the 1980's greatly changed rural social structures and made deprivation problems within rural areas more severe. But the policy circles continued to cling to planning theory because of its convenience for policy appeal.
We can admit many similarities in policy concepts between rural deprivation and kaso in the emerging process, logic and the stances of policy circles. We also find clear differences between them in the way they recognized the problem. The fundamental cause of rural deprivation is considered to lie in poverty, but that of kaso is not. Therefore, in the case of kaso, the impact of the shift from welfarism to New Right Policies or post-welfarism in the 1980's was much slighter than in the case of rural deprivation.

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