Since the mid 1990s, production in the Japanese ceramic industry has been rapidly declining. One of the characteristics of the ceramic industry is that many medium-and small-sized companies agglomerate and form production areas. This paper, through considering the ceramic production areas’ production and shipping structures, discusses how production areas respond to the decline in production.

This study examined production scale as well as product structure, and compared three production areas: Mino (Gifu prefecture), Yokkaichi (Mie prefecture), and Kutani (Ishikawa prefecture). Mino is a large-scale production area that produces various pottery and porcelain products. Yokkaichi is a specialized production area that produces a few specialty products. Kutani is a production area that produces high-quality products. Recently, all three production areas are experiencing a rapid decline in the volume of production.

The results of the study can be summarized as follows.

Each area of production has three elements: “distinctive technology” (products characteristic of the region and the technology to create them), “innovativeness” (new products that will be accepted by the market and the technology to create them), and “sales ability” (the ability to sell products on a nationwide scale). The method of development of these three elements creates each production area's characteristic system of production and shipping.

In the Mino production area, in addition to distinctive technology that has existed continuously since the sixteenth century, innovativeness was established after World War II to mass produce a variety of ceramic products. These goods are sold nationwide and overseas through the sales ability of wholesalers. The Yokkaichi production area possesses distinctive technology to produce kyuusu (teapots). Unrelated to this, innovativeness was established in 1959 to mass produce donabe (earthenware pots). The Kutani production area relies mainly on distinctive technology to decorate porcelain with lavish designs, but innovativeness has not been established. Both Yokkaichi and Kutani have weaker sales ability than Mino does.

With the above-mentioned production and shipping structures as the background, each production area is responding differently to the decline in production. In Mino, wholesalers are focused on the problem, and measures such as product changes are being carried out. In Yokkaichi, measures such as product changes in regards to individual businesses are taking place. However, product changes are not being considered in Kutani.

At present, no production areas can stop the decline in production. The main reasons are thought to be: 1) new “innovativeness” based on “distinctive technology” is not being created; 2) a lack of originality in current “innovativeness” makes products easily copied in other production areas; 3) because business-wise measures are the norm, little use is made of inter-industry relationships, leading to the breakdown of inter-industry relationships; 4) wholesalers, who are responsible for “sales ability,” are experiencing a decline in their ability to plan and gather information; 5) wholesalers and production areas are not engaging in collaborative activities.

It is thought that development of production areas could occur if a structure was created for “innovativeness” based on “distinctive technologies”, followed by the establishment of a cycle of continuous creation of “innovativeness,” which was then supported by “sales ability.”

There is a recognizable “genealogy boom” in contemporary Western countries. Although at one time genealogy or family history that explores ancestors progressed with the heraldry of royalty and nobility, today, genealogy has become the hobby of the middle class, which has led to the establishment of the “genealogy market.”

In Japan, only a few studies have mentioned this genealogy boom. Anthropologist Paul Basu and geographer Catherine Nash studied the personal practices of amateur genealogists, particularly diasporic “New World” genealogists, with emigrant ancestors. However, thus far, precedent studies have not always considered the institutional aspects and meanings of the collective practices of genealogy.

This paper aims to grasp the historical development of the genealogical institutions that assist amateur genealogists in their ancestral search in the United Kingdom, especially in Scotland. The paper also aims to understand the collective meaning of the genealogical imagination that is awakened by these entirely personal practices. In other words, this paper presents the historical changes that have occurred in genealogy in Scotland from both broad foreign and domestic perspectives and demonstrates that the personal practices of researching one's ancestors influence the representation of the Scottish “nation.”

The contemporary genealogy boom has occurred against various backgrounds: the arrangement of genealogical information in register offices and libraries, establishment of genealogy / family history societies at the national and local levels, worldwide active collection of genealogy information by the Mormon Church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), technological progress (e. g., the creation of a digital database of genealogical information, and proliferation of the Internet, etc.). Chapter IV of this paper particularly examines the numerous family history societies that have been established since the 1960s and 1970s in Scotland and England. The establishment of these societies was influenced by the legislation of the Local Government Act, covering the entire United Kingdom, and the efforts of the Scottish Genealogy Society in Scotland.

Genealogy as the personal practice of researching one’s ancestors is actually associated with collective institutions such as ScotlandsPeople. Various similar institutions for genealogical research can enable the Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Scottish governmental tourist board, VisitScotland, to strongly enhance their “Ancestral Tourism Initiative.” Particularly after the 1999 devolution in Scotland, genealogical imagination has been roused by the growth of genealogy tourism. Since then, the worldwide Scottish diaspora has been viewed as a part of the “New Scots.” In this paper, the transnational genealogically imagined community including the diaspora is referred to as a “trans-nation.”

In another dimension, the contemporary progress of genetics has begun to produce interesting results: (a) leading biologists are now attempting to rewrite the genealogy of all of humankind, and (b) amateur genealogists can use DNA profiling to search for their own ancestors. If these movements were coordinated, many people could imagine and gain a sense of the whole history of humankind. In any case, the fundamental circumstances for imagining “humankind as a nation” may have been gradually prepared in this genealogy boom.

This paper gives a synoptic view of the distribution of places mentioned in the setsuwa stories compiled in the late Heian and early Kamakura periods (the 12th and first half of the 13th centuries). The author deals with places that were described as the staging areas for various events occurring during the Heian period, in and around Heian-kyo (present-day Kyoto).

The author presents a geographical analysis of classical Japanese literature. Existing studies of the field have tended to focus on individual works or authors. In this paper, various stories including similar contents from different compilations are classified and analyzed in temporal and spatial dimensions.

The category of setsuwa literature consists of many stories that include miracles and reasoning based on Buddhist teachings. Those stories were collected and resulted in several compilations (setsuwa-shu) in the late Heian and early Kamakura periods. The events told in the stories were distinguished ‘desirable’ from ‘undesirable’ for the people described. Then the locations of the events were plotted on maps of different times during the Heian period.

By examining such maps, we can see that the locations of those events were familiar to the inhabitants of Heian-kyo. We can also see that residences and Buddhist temples related to the ruling people of the time were mentioned frequently. This suggests that the events in the stories were told as occurring in reality, reflecting the nature of setsuwa literature.

In analyzing the contents of the stories, we can see that undesirable events often occur within the city boundary, whereas desirable events tend to happen in the peripheral zone. This peripheral zone can be associated with Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines which were religious foci for people of that time. Several events were described as having occurred just outside the city boundary, suggesting that the city area was not clearly circumscribed.

The author concludes that the locational nature of events mentioned in the setsuwa literature can be considered to reflect the spatial structure of the metropolis of the Heian period. Further research should analyze factual records in diaries written by noblemen for comparative studies with literary materials.