In the southern half of the Yokote Basin, several masses of villages are distributed on the low land. In the northern half some castle-towns and villages are scattered with a fountain as its centre in the alluvial fan, while dotted villages and hamlets are a general feature. Among them are Rokugo and Yokobori, checkered castle-towns developed around the fountains and Hataya and Hondo-shiromawari, both a string of a village, grown across the contour line. They grew up along the water-route from the fountain and their ancient castle sites are traced now: their old origin can be proved by the monumental inscriptions of some hundred years ago. In some villages, which were usually supplied with drinking water at the lower land of the water-route, they used to build their dwellings at the head of a fan-shaped farm-land and let the used water flow into their own fields for fertilization. This economization in fertilizer makes it possible to retain the scattered aggregation of houses for divided farming. Scattered habitation can be seen yet in Mayama, which was cultivated so long ago that wooden halings were constructed for the conquest of Ezo. This shows that scattered habitation is not limited to a newly cultivated area.

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The remarkable progress made by the Ome forestry since the biginning of the modern times was due to the appearance of the Yedo market. Moreover, the fact that the Ome forestry could secure its position not only concerning the timber going down to Yedo but also concerning the timber for local consumption which could be sent by rafts, owed much to the River Tama, the shortest waterway between Ome and Yedo. In turning the water course to good account, the following three conditions contributed much, making the forestry economically profitable:
(1) the advantageous equipments and conventions for the rafts in passing through dams and sluices.
(2) the evolution in the technics of making and managing the rafts.
(3) the well-organized labour system such as cutting, carrying and transporting in floats.
The present article is the first report of my survey in the item (1) and (2) mentioned above.
(1) Among the dams and sluices in Ome dristrict, the Hamura Dam was for taking in the drinking water for the people of Yedo and was under the control of the authorities. They levied enough money for compensation. But as for the rest of the dams and sluices, which were private ones, they were not given enough reparations. The lumbering middlemen called “ikada-shi” paid money properly to the office of the association of them, while the association paid money to the private dams and sluices less than the half that had been agreed. A datum concerning the carrying down timber out of the Tabayama mountains in 1855, shows the details of the accounting as follows:
the cost of timber ……… 5.9%
expense for cutting woods ……… 16.5%
business tax ……… 1.0%
expense for carrying woods from the mountain to the ‘doba’ where the timber was made into rafts … 60.9%
expense for transportation ……… 15.5% Investigating the datum, I must conclude that the labour wager were too high, and this was made possible at the expense of the compensation and the cheap price of timber.
(2) In the expense for the transportation (15.8%), the money for compensation occupied only 1.0%, and the rest was the income of “ikada-shi” who employed reftsmen called “ikada-nori”, In the cost of the timber the wages occupied 92%. The high wages for the lumbering did not always mean much to the villagers, but they had little means other than that to get cash in the mountain life depending on the smallscaled agriculture. The high wages sucked up the agricultural labour from the village and this also caused the migration of labourers from the more advanced forestry districts such as Hida and Kiso. The migrators brought with them tecnics of high level, which the the native forest labourers soon learned. They began to make larger rafts and manage better and by saving up labour greatly increased the number of the rafts.
Thus in the development of the Ome forestry, the high wages, which were brought about by the sacrifice of the compensation and the cheap price of timber, attracted the forest labourers from the agricultural part of the districts and from other forestry districts technically more advanced, bringing about the prosperity of the Ome forestry.

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Science the middle of the seventeeth century, Varenius and other geographers have been engaged in researching for the scientific character of geography. Its essential points are as follows.
I Does geography belong to a science or not?
1. commonsense or an organized knowledge
2. what kind of learning
3. its level with scientific knowledge
4. its object and method
II Is geography an independent science?
5. its nature and quality 6. what kind of science
7. its position among sciences
8. its alloted work and collaboration
To these questions in the above several answers have been given, but they are rarely solutions satisfactory to us. Especially doultful are their concepts of the earth surface or the world and their methods of approch to it.
Human beings have been surrounded by the same time its whole surface is now occupied by them. Accordingly it should be studied not only from the standpoint of the third party, but also from that of the parties concerned.
Strange as it may sound, recent studies require a synthesis of subjectivity as ancient geographers did. And in the same sense a synthetic method is to be applied to the unification of chorological and global view.
We are much obliged to our former researchers for their endeavor in establishing geography as a modern science. Their work is really great, however, in the light of geography as an ancient science we are going to put it forward to a new age science.

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The settlement of “Nomugi” lies on a compound talus at the hight of 1320m above sea level. (Fig. II) This talus was constructed on the northern side of “River Mashita”, at the western foot of “Nomugi Pass” 1672 meters high). “Nomugi” was the most important pass in the “Northern Japanese Alps” in the days about 50 years ago, through which a highway was constructed in the feudal times from Takayama to Matsumoto (Fig. I). Every day about 70-80 “da” (one “da” is the cargo of one cattle) was conveyed through this pass.
In the settlement of “Nomugi” there are 29 houses now, but about 50 years ago were neary 50 houses. Among these houses, there were three inns, four doss houses and other shops such as bar, grocers, etc. But all these shops transformed their occupations to agricultural, pastral, or forestry. As the result of this change of trade, the prosperity of this village was declined. The reason of this decline was the construction of Chuo Line Railway from Nagoya to Tokyo, and then the opening of Hokuriku L.R.W. along the coast of Japan Sea and finally Takayama L.R.W. from Gifu to Toyama. All the communication through “Nomugi pass” was pillaged by these rail road traffic, and the number of “Nomugi” decreased gradually from about 50 to 30 since 50 years ago. Thus this settlement has turnd into a lonely mountain village and “Nomugi Pass” was almost closed to passengers. This village is a rare example in Japan which has no medical man and no electric lamp.
But this place would revive if a plan of construction of tourist bus road on the ridge line from “Nomugi Pass” to the top of Norikura Volcano only be realized in these years.
The meaning of the place name of “Nomugi” may be explained an old Japanese words, namely “no”=field, “mugi”=apparent place from every direction. This means the topographical feature of the talus on which this settlement stands.
The annual mean temperature of this place is 6.7°C.. This value coincides with that of the inner land type climate in the central part of Hokkaido. With the summer maximum temperature 28°C, and comparatively stronger sunshine with longer shining hour, these owe to the nature landform of talus on which this village stands, farmers can plant summer crops suitable to the low temperature such as buckwheat, barnyardgrass, soyabean, millet, corn etc.. Thus the production of crops. amounts to 90% of the whole agricultural products. But rice culture finds no place on account of the low temperature. As the result of the shorter period free from the frost (199 days), these crops frequently experienced the frost damage and diminished the yield.
Thus the length of self sustaining of food in this village is only 4…5 months in a year. (Average number of cultivated field per one house is one ha..) We can find a definite relationship between the distance from farm house and the species of crop; namely vegetable field near the house, fields of buckwheat, millet etc. apart from it. Because the former requires much more labour than the latter. Mulberry trees are planted on foot-path or on the escarpments of river terraces and their tall trees need a ladder to pick the leaves.
This village has 47 head of plough cattle by 27 farm houses. They breed them in the way of transhumance; grazing in summer, pen feeding in winter. Summer grazing is taken in the sloping pasture on the mountain side of Norikura Volcano (Its area is abont 800ha..). Mowing fields are found near the farm houses and so they lie on the place lower than the pasture. Its area is about 300ha.. From this mowing field farmers collect their hay, and by the labour efficiency of this colection the number of cattle can be bred in one farm house is defined. In this village the highest number is only 3.

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Between the borders of Kawachi and Izumi Provinces, there is Haze (or Ono) Reclaimed Land covering a diluvial fan-elevation. Originally reclaimed in the 4th year of Kambun (1664) by ten contractor's joint work, this is the first of the Ono-ga-hara Reclamation Projects.
Through maps and document found in the Yumyoji Temple, Branch of the Honkakuji Temple which was a reclamation partner and an owner of Haze Land by 37% until Meiji Period, the writer tried from viewpoint of historical geography to analize the nature of the land allotments and the partners in this project.
In this small treatise, the writer attest that a big difference is seen between the ordinary reclaimed land and the Haze, both of which are on the diluvial plateau. In the former case in which Musashino is most typical, a tract of farm land is seen streching at the back of a farmer's house, namely, farm land and residence site of a farm family are adjacent to each other.
In the latter, however, there is no such regularity. This is attributed by the writer not so much to topographical factors as to the social order then in existence in this part of the country.
Prior to land allotment, of course, they made combinations of parts of the land, and paid special attention to see that such a combination be equal in value to each of the rest. They attached importance to each sharing the the same conditions. Thus the writer went into further investigation of the fundamental nature of reclamation partners.

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