Nowadays most Japanese municipalities tend to merge into larger units with the purpose of strengthening their administrative and financial capacity. However, I have seen no information about countries executing or planning such a merger in mainland Western Europe. I therefore felt a great interest in making clear the reasons why these countries can maintain municipalities with small populations and why they do not need to merge municipalities.
In this paper I show the present situation of municipalities in Germany. As is generally known, however, Germany is a federal republic with different systems of municipalities in each state so that it is not possible to show all systems in a short paper. Therefore, I will try to describe the situation of only two states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Lower Saxony with twofold structured municipalities: that is, Verbandsgemeinde and Samtgemeinde, in addition to the normal-type municipalities (Einheitsgemeinde).
Due to administrative reform executed in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, twofold structured municipalities were introduced in these states; the combined municipalities with a population of 5, 000-7, 500 were formed by merging small municipalities or by keeping the original small municipalities as independent local municipalities. In such a municipal system, not only the combined municipalities but also the local municipalities have their own mayors and assemblies, respectively. The citizens elect a mayor and members of the assembly directly in both combined and local municipalities.
The merit of this system exists in the fact that it combines the maintenance of the authority of small municipalities with an administration capacity of high quality. The combined municipalities undertake the specific tasks of administration entrusted from local municipalities and the state. They are supported financially by the Umlage (tax payment) paid by local municipalities and the Schlüsselzuweisungen (state subsidy) supplied from the state. Although the total cost of the twofold structured municipalities tends to be a little higher than the normal-type municipalities, the citizens do not consider it to be a heavy burden. A mayor of a local municipality does his work gratis only a few hours per week using his house as an office and visits the town hall once a week.
In comparison with the systems of Amt and Verwaltungsgemeinschaft, Verbandsgemeinde and Samtgemeinde have a more powerful system of combined municipalities. They are very similar, but not the same. A Samtgemeinde must contain a maximum of 10 local municipalities with more than 400 inhabitants, whereas there is no such rule for a Verbandsgemeinde. However, in the case of the latter, the population of the largest local municipality must not surpass half of the total population. Most municipalities in Rhineland-Palatinate form Verbandsgemeinde, while in Lower Saxony the municipalities forming Samtgemeinde are not in a majority and they tend to be distributed in the peripheral area of the state. In Rhineland-Palastinate, both Verbandsgemeinde and local municipalities receive Schlüsselzuweisungen, while this is the case in Lower Saxony only for Samtgemeinde. It seems that a Samtgemeinde seems to have broader powers and to be more autonomous than a Verbandsgemeinde.
The conflicts between combined and local municipalities or between local municipalities are, even if they do not exist in the system, actually observable, owing to the complicated system of administration. Compared to the normal-type municipalities it takes longer for the combined municipalities to make a decision because of the existence of various local municipalities with various population scales and financial situations.

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Kamagasaki, located in Nishinari Ward, Osaka city, is a daily-hire laborer's concentration area, and is the space where poverty and discrimination converge. Kamagasaki, as a supply ground of the daily-hire labor force (Yoseba), was 'produced' between the 1960s and the early 1970s when policies for Kamagasaki (Airin) were developed in order to cope with a series of protests by the day laborers following the "first riot" in August 1961. This paper employs discourse analysis based on the concept of the construction of place and institutional practice and examines the construction of exclusionary boundaries enclosing daily-hire laborers in the process of the 'production' of Kamagasaki as Yoseba.
The mass media began to represent Sanno-cho as a "violence zone" focusing on the prostitution problem after the enforcement of the Anti-Prostitution Law in 1958. In this context, the mass media represented adjoining Kamagasaki as a slum, focusing on the problem of poor families. Nishinari became a place name to signify these areas as a whole. When the "first riot" took place in this context in August 1961, these representations were repeated and the "first riot" was reported as "violence".
Moreover, the process of constructing place intensified the confrontation between daily-hire laborers and their neighbors. The neighbors also felt discrimination because these place names and their representations were extensively circulated by the media reports about the "riot" and the resultant policies. Therefore, it became necessary to stop using these symbols, and a new place name, Airin, was created and given to the place that was formerly called Nishinari or Kamagasaki.
After 1960, institutional practices followed such discursive transformation. In the first stage (1960-1961), the objective of policy was to improve the living conditions of poor families. In the second stage (1961-1966), it became the objective of policy to distribute families and to institutionalize and to supervise the daily-hire labor market, because it was necessary to cope with the "riot". In the third stage after 1966, when Kamagasaki was specified as the Airin District, comprehensive planning to make Kamagasaki a supply ground of the daily-hire labor force was instituted. At this stage, the state promoted the policies and assessed the existence of day laborers positively from the viewpoint of the necessity to secure a labor force. The Airin General Center and The City Rehabilitation Clinic were embodied as the objective of such policies.
Meanwhile, the cheap inns, as the habitation space of the daily-hire laborers, were renewed in the 1960s, in expectation of an inflow of the labor force which was needed to build the site of the International Exposition in 1970. That increased the capacity of the inns and narrowed their size. On the other hand, day payment apartments and squatter huts decreased in number at that time and, therefore, the habitation space for families was reduced. This change of space transformed Kamagasaki into a space exclusively for single daily-hire laborers.
The boundaries of the Airin District reflected the representation of Kamagasaki created by discursive formation. It became institutionalized, which reproduced severe exploitation and poverty by being defined as a supply ground of the daily-hire labor force. This spatial boundary construction reproduced itself socially between the daily-hire laborers and their neighbors.

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In the Edo era, the counties were ordered to submit the kuni-ezu (the county maps) to the Shogunate Government as many as four times. The muragata in the kuni-ezu, are the village symbols. In this paper, however the ezumura is a general term referring to the village, the edamura (the branch village), the umatsugi (the inn) etc.
The aim of this paper is to explicate the characteristic of the ezumura. Through this explication, we can obtain a glimpse into the difference of opinions between the Shogunate and the feudal clans.
Several types of edamura are found on Suoh and Nagato kuni-ezu compiled both in the Keicho and Shoho period. On these maps, we can also find some symbols indicating non-availability of information on the payment of tax (the edamura symbol similar to a bean grain which signifies the mametsubu-komuragata). On the Shoho kuni-ezu, there was the umatsugi.
On the Genroku maps, some of these do not appear. According to old manuscripts and previous research, the edamura on the Genroku maps were substituted for the edamura and the umatsugi on the Shoho maps. As for the edamura, they were isolated from the parent villages by mountains, rivers and roads. It is clear, however, that the isolation as such is never described on the Genroku kuni-ezu. They can be broadly classified into three types: (1) the umatsugi bearing the parent village name and the edamura name. (2) The island, which was more than 16 kilometers square, and had some houses. (3) The edamura placed near the county borders and the district borders on the Shoho kuni-ezu.
It is also clear that many branch villages were placed near these borders, and that this manner of drawing was followed in the Keicho, Shoho, and Genroku periods. The district areas were highlighted by applying the same color to the ezumura within the district and by stating the district name. In short, the trend that intends to show boundaries visually became clear in these maps.
It is obvious from the distribution pattern and contents of the ezumura entries that the interest of the Shogunate shifted from the coastal regions to the inland regions on the Genroku maps.
From the foregoing observations, we can conclude that the ezumura was an expression of much information on politics, military, economy, society and general location. By creating and presenting the kuni-ezu to the Tokugawa Shogunate, this signified that these counties were under the rule of the Shogunate. It was very important for the Shogunate to have sound knowledge of the counties in order to defend them from the feudal lords (the daimyo). From these maps one can obtain information such as the payment of tax, the umatsugi, outcaste areas and so on. Geographic location played a vital role in the selection of edamura. For example, on the map, the edamura near the border represents the boundary of the territory.

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The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between the existence of centrality in market towns and the landscape of the market place on the Echigo Plain since the 18th century. In recent years, academic debate on the landscape of market places and market towns has focused on reconstructing the spatial structure of particular objects. However, trade interactions also created networks among towns. Therefore, in discussing the landscape of market towns, it is useful to explore individual objects while at the same time discussing the idea of centrality.
In section one, the relation between the existence of Gangi, a structure which is shaped like an arcade with the eaves of adjacent buildings stretching over the pavement to form a street village, and the idea of centrality was made clear by making the landscape of market places a model for further investigation. As the result of the analysis, it was concluded that market towns where Gangi had been constructed had a high degree of centrality and that those without had a low degree of centrality in the early Meiji Era. Market towns on the Echigo Plain are separated into the following two types. One had a high degree of centrality, owing to the presence of Gangi. The others, without the structures necessary for clearing centrality, were unable to continue to hold periodic markets.
In section two, I analyze in detail how the space under the Gangi was used by reconstructing the spatial structure of the market place as it appeared in the market town of Kamo. This analysis aims to examine the causal relationship between centrality and the historical process under which the Gangi developed, a relationship about which historical records are scarce. As the result of the analysis, I explain that the Gangi was actively used as a show space in the periodic market in Kamo. I suggest that the advantages in terms of show space offered by the Gangi were critical in producing the relationship between the existence of the Gangi and the presence of periodic markets.
I conclude that the Gangi is a characteristic formation of centrality.

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