This paper investigates the geographical thoughts and practices of Takeshi Kawada, a figure almost unknown among present Japanese geographers, by situating them in the various spaces of knowledge in which he lived and worked. The author, while approving "critical history", which examines the relationships between nationalism and geography, would rather present a chain of "small stories" associated with the particularities of the spaces of knowledge than conform to the "grand narrative" of modern nationalism.
Takeshi Kawada was born in 1842 as the fourth son of Tekisai Kawada, a Confucian scholar. Takeshi developed his own Confucian scholarship in such spaces of knowledge as Rinkejuku, the private Confucian academy of the Hayashi family, and Shoheizaka Gakumonjo, the official academy of the Tokugawa Shogunate. His career as a functionary of Gaikokugata, the foreign department of the later Tokugawa Shogunate, urged him to reconsider the Japanese governance system, which potentially led him to recognize the urgent necessity to collect detailed data about the whole of the Japanese territory. It was, however, Kawada's contingent encounter with Akikata Tsukamoto at Shizuoka Academy, which had been established by the Tokugawa family and at which Kawada taught Chinese learning, that determined his involvement in the Meiji Government's project to compile regional geographies. At that time, Tsukamoto held the position of the head of the Numazu Military Academy that the Tokugawa family had also established.
Kawada engaged himself in compiling regional geographies and mapmaking at the Department of Topography of the Council of State and later at the Geographical Bureau of the Home Ministry. At the same time, he elaborated his own views on regional geography through re-search presentations and publications at the Tokyo Geographical Society, founded in 1879, and through contact at the Ministry of Education with Bunjiro Koto, a geology professor at the College of Science of the Imperial University. Kawada applied the word tairei, a concept meaning the chorographic framework itself, and originating from the Ching school of topography, to his own framework presumably resulting from the German concept "länderkundliches Schema". On the other hand, he had been influenced by kosho shigaku, or an empirical historiography, advocated by Yasutsugu Shigeno, one of the pioneers of modern Japanese historiography. Kawada's short-term affiliation with the Historiographical and Topographical Institute of the College of Humanities of the Imperial University, of which Shigeno was the head, allowed him to join Shigakukai, the first Japanese academic society for historical studies. A certain kind of geographical imagination pervaded Shigakukai under the supervision of Ludwig Riess, a German historian employed by the Meiji Government. The sudden discontinuation of the governmental project for compiling regional geographies prompted Kawada's inclination towards empirical research on historical geography. The geographical imagination of Shigakukai brought about the establishment of a new academic society devoted to historical geography in 1899 (Nihon Rekishi Chiri Kenkyukai, later Nihon Rekishi Chiri Gakkai), to which Kawada gradually shifted his academic allegiance. Although Kawada insisted on the importance of geography as the setting for historical events, he also had a form of probabilistic thinking in which environmental factors were not to be exaggerated. However, his former commitment to state interests and his concern with contemporary issues led him to practice historico-geographical research sympathetic to the Tennoist ideology of the day.

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss methods of geographical research of fishing communities from the viewpoint of economic geography.
The problem of the use of sustainable resources is now one of global concern. Japanese coastal fisheries are noteworthy examples of the success of natural resource management, as supported by the following two facts. One is the unique Japanese fishery policy called gyogyo-ken, that is the system of fishery rights. The other is the stability of the fishing yield by the coastal fisheries, which has been around 2 billion tons from the 1910s to the 1990s, with the exception of the period of the Second World War.
However, there has not been a great deal of geographical research on fishing communities. One of the major reasons for this is the obsolescence of conventional research methods. To overcome these problems and succeed in advancing our empirical studies, research methods should be evaluated.
This paper has three main sections. The first is related to regional and economic change in Japanese rural areas and the effects that these have had on fishing communities compared with agricultural communities. The second major section reviews existing research on fishing communities conducted by geographers, economists, and sociologists. In particular, the development of research methods in each of these fields is the focus of this study. The third section evaluates differences among geographic, economic and sociologic studies and identifies the distinctive features of geographical research, and explores ways to research fishing communities.
After WWII, the economy of Japan developed remarkably. In rural areas, agriculture and fisheries, which were the main industries before the era of rapid economic growth, became a depressed sector, and the number of people involved in agriculture and fishing decreased. However, it is considered that the processes which took place in fishing communities are not the same as those which occurred in agricultural ones, because the conditions were different in each. People who worked in fishing did not have the opportunity to engage in a subsidiary business; on the other hand, people engaged in agriculture did.
The major concern of geographical research of fishing communities has been to understand the processes of change and explain the spatial differences in fishery communities. Its distinctive feature since the early studies is that geographers regard a local phenomenon as being specific to time and space. Until the 1970s, however, their analyses were provided at the aggregated level and paid little attention to the concrete actions of people living in fishery communities. After the 1980s, the behavioral approach was introduced and clarified what former studies had ignored. However, this new study, depending on the behavioral approach, also needs to be evaluated. First, there are problems with time. This new research was analyzed based on temporal data. The use of longitudinal data is needed to understand the process of changes in fishery communities. A second problem is that they paid little attention to social relations. To understand the process of change in fishery communities, it is also important to explore social relations because these relations influence individual actions.
The geographical methods used to study fishing communities are then classified into four categories as follows:
1. Temporal and individual: individual behaviors in a fishing community are analyzed using temporal data.
2. Temporal and organizational: organizational behaviors in a fishing community are analyzed using temporal data.
3. Dynamic and individual: individual behaviors in a fishing community are analyzed using longitudinal data.
4. Dynamic and organizational: organizational behaviors in a fishing community are analyzed using longitudinal data.

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Today, Kaso has gained a prominent position as a popular policy concept for less favored problems in the rural areas of Japan. At the same time, many commentators have criticized the concept for its inadequacy as an academic term thus far. Nevertheless, the reason why Kaso gained such popularity in both central and local governments so quickly or why a Kaso area come to be operationally defined by the municipal depopulation rate has rarely been discussed. The purpose of this paper is to present a thesis that addresses these questions from the viewpoint of local public finance problems, focusing especially on local allocation taxes, a Japanese fiscal equalization scheme.
Kaso emerged as an appealing catchphrase to describe rural social problems in the mid 1960s. This term is the opposite of "kamitsu" which represents the overpopulation problems experienced in metropolitan areas. The opportunity for this term's gaining popularity came after the release of the 1965 census data, which clarified the quantitative realities of severe depopulation in peripheral areas.
Previous studies argued that the release of census data had a strong impact on the populace in regard to the severity of the depopulation problem and this led to the quick permeation of this term. The author believes this to be partly true but thinks that it is insufficient to explain the outcomes. It is argued that this situation has had the most significant impact on national and local government officers since the announcement of the latest census results requires the renewal of statistics used for the fiscal demand calculation of local allocation taxes. According to an estimation using a weighted regression model, given an unchanged local allocation tax system and assuming price constancy, about one third of municipalities with less than 5, 000 inhabitants were anticipated to face more than a 10% decrease of standard fiscal demand. This figure represents the amount of resources ensured by the local allocation tax for each local government as an operationally calculated cost for executing standard administrative activities.
This dysfunction of the fiscal equation scheme in severely depopulated municipalities is thought to be the most important factor for the permeation of Kaso into central and local governments. The central government quickly established a severe depopulation modification coefficient (jinkou kyugen hosei) in standard fiscal demand calculations in 1966. In addition, Shimane Prefecture, an area facing this problem, started to develop a Kaso Special Area Act for the national government in cooperation with the Prefectures concerned.
At the beginning, the area name in the proposed Act is known as a "severe depopulation area", not a "Kaso" area because severe depopulation is directly connected with the local allocation tax problem. However, the national government started to stress the solving of regional disparities and responded by shifting target areas in resource allocation from metropolitan areas and industrial districts to peripheral areas after the mid 1960s. Following this shift, the Special Area Act movement sought not only to maintain the status quo but also to make the rest of the country catch up, and changed the area name to Kaso for its popularity and comprehensiveness.
In this change, an operational definition of a Kaso area had to be defined. Considering that the starting point of this movement exists in a dysfunctional problem of local allocation tax, it seemed natural to define a Kaso area in the proposed Act using the municipal depopulation rate. Finally, the Emergency Kaso Area Revitalization Act, which designates its target area by the municipal depopulation rate, came into effect as a members' bill in 1970.

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This paper analyzes the processes and effects of migration in a community based on an interview survey using a life-history methodology of persons who migrated to the Osumi-shoto Islands. The Osumi-shoto Islands were selected as a study area and include: Yakushima, which has seen a rise in the number of tourists after it was registered as a World Natural Heritage Site in 1993; Tanegashima, which has received nationwide attention as mecca for surfing in recent years; and Mishima-mura, which has seen a remarkable decrease in population and substantial efforts to reverse that trend in three small isolated islands (Take-shima/Iwo-jima/Kuro-shima).
The islands are near each other, but differ greatly, so I focus on the differences among migrants to each island. Though each migrant has his or her own history to tell, I was able to find some common characteristics.
(1) There are many people selecting these remote islands as a place to live after retirement. For example, in Yakushima, retirement migrants are attracted to the island because they are longing for nature and because of residential development by real estate agents. However, the retirement generation requires medical care and other facilities, and this problem has influenced migration patterns. In addition, local reception differs greatly in terms of how people enter the local community.
(2) Tanegashima is long and narrow from north to south, and it is a suitable environment for surfing because people can go to a beach in a short time and the wind blows from the east or west. "Surfer migrants", who came to live as a part of a life of surfing, are scattered throughout the island, and the migration processes are various. Because the local inhabitants have a negative image of the surfers, the latter have tried to overcome this negative image and to contribute to the community. There is a local non-profit organization which connects migrant surfers with local surfers and which helps strengthen relations with the local inhabitants.
(3) The number of tourists increased after Yakushima Island was registered as a World Natural Heritage Site. Among the managers of eco-tour guide businesses, more than two-thirds are migrants. In addition, most of the employees are migrants. They do migrate easily because they can find work and it becomes clear that there is a low possibility of migration if there is no employment.
(4) I found that each migration often triggers a chain movement of migration in families. How-ever, in the case of island migrants, it may be said that the freedom of migration is high. This paper is only a beginning since it is based on a limited sample. However, the method of analyzing migration though life-story interviews can elucidate the migration process and influence on the area. Life-story interviews provide a deeper insight into the motivations for and processes of migration than is possible through an analysis based on general statistics and questionnaire surveys. In attempting to analyze migration from a micro-viewpoint, life-story interviews that focus on the effects of migration on a small local community provide a broader view of migration as a social phenomenon. However, in analyzing such data, researchers need to pay attention to the problem of privacy.

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The Kumatsugi district of Sekinomiya Town, Hyogo Prefecture, is a depopulated ski area which is located on the East of Chugoku Mountains. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the developing process of domestic water supply and drainage systems in the Kumatsugi district, and to make clear the factors which affected the process.
In the second half of the 1950s, the residents of each settlement in the Kumatsugi district constructed their own small-scale water supply facilities. The purpose was to improve their standard of living.
From the first half of the 1960s to the first half of the 1970s, ski tourism developed in the Kumatsugi district and tourist accommodation increased in many settlements. The residents reinforced their water supply as the need for accommodation increased. The settlements which had no proper water source were given water supply facilities by the Sekinomiya municipal government or were eventually included in one of the facilities of other districts.
From the second half of the 1970s to the second half of the 1980s, the flush toilet replaced the older Japanese toilets in the developed settlements. Sewage was treated by means of a household purification tank (johkasou) for night soil. The sources of water supply in these settlements were reinforced for the increasing use of flush toilets. However, water pollution in the Kumatsugi district became more serious because untreated wastewater was being discharged and the treatment ability of the household purification tank (johkasou) for night soil was unsatisfactory.
Since the first half of the 1990s, many businesses have gone bankrupt. In the settlement in which the ski business is declining, residents accepted a proposal to construct a municipal water supply and sewage facility. In the most developed settlement, a small-scale sewage system was constructed by the municipal government as water pollution became serious. There is no municipal water supply now. The settlements, where most of the tourist accommodation businesses closed down, had to depend on the municipal water supply and sewage facilities were constructed.
In short, due to the development of ski tourism in many settlements of the Kumatsugi district, the water supply and drainage systems in those settlements are superior to the others. That is, the development of ski tourism contributed to the progress of those systems. However, this interrupted the introduction of municipal water supplies and sewerage facilities in all settlements. Consequently, the water was more polluted in the Kumatsugi district than in other districts.

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