The author's purpose was to elucidate the mechanisms of the location and transfer of the headquarters of an enterprise.
The author did a case study on an enterprise and used several kinds of numerical indicators and written statements from annual financial reports, corporate history book and other materials about the enterprise to explain the reasons for and the processes of the location and transfer of functional departments of its corporate headquarters, including those for purchasing, production control, sales, personnel, finance, general accounting, planning, general affairs, and the strategic decision making, with the help of theories of business management.
For example, the transition of the financial ratios and the spatial distribution of financial sources of the enterprise were used to explain the location and transfer of its Finance Dept. and the transition of the spatial distribution of labor was used to explain those of its Personnel Dept.
The implications resulting from the analysis of the differences and similarities between the transferring processes of those functional departments greatly helped to extract some common and important rules for the location and transfer of functional departments of the corporate headquarters.
In this empirical analysis, Snow Brand Milk Products Co., Ltd. (founded in 1925), Japan's largest dairy products company, was selected as a case study.
The main reasons for choosing this enterprise were the abundant data concerning its financing and location since its foundation, and its experience in transferring its headquarters from the city of Sapporo, the largest city of Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands, to the capital city of Tokyo, the location of the nation's largest money market, most of the headquarters of the nation's largest banks and of other private and/or public organizations, the most important market for selling products, and the location with the most efficient access for transportation, communication and information processing.
The facts found in the empirical study are summarized as follows:
1. Until the company established its management base in the Hokkaido area, its financing depended on the local financial institutions and its Finance Dept. was located in Sapporo. But, as the company gradually expanded its operational space nationally, the volume of financial demand dramatically increased and came to depend on large financial institutions based in Tokyo and finally the Finance Dept. was transferred to Tokyo. Its gradual transfer started in 1958, just before the company started its nation-wide expansion, and took about two years to finish. Simultaneously, the transfer of the General Accounting Dept., the Planning Dept., and the Board of Directors occurred.
2. As the locations of its plants and sales offices expanded nationally, the distribution of its labor also dispersed nationally. Accordingly the Production Control Dept. and the Personnel Dept., transferred to Tokyo, seeking for the most efficient access infrastructure to secure a national scale of transportation, telecommunication and information processing. As for the Personnel Dept., its gradual transfer started in 1958 and took more than seven years to finish and for Production Dept. about 10years, while the Sales Dept. had been located in Tokyo since the foundation of the enterprise.
3. The General Affairs Dept. transferred following the locational shift of other departments.
4. These transferring processes all involved a gradual transfer of authority from Sapporo to Tokyo and a spatial division of business management/administration both between and within functional departments was observed.
Possible rules for the location of the functional departments based on the facts above are as follows:
1. The location of a corporate headquarters is subject to the location of its functional departments.

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In recent years Japanese vegetable growers tend to employ women who work to make up crops to finished products by arranging and packing. On the other hand it is seen in the same district that the oldmen and women specialize in growing the vegetables without the help of younger men. This cannot be adequately expanded from the available statistical data. The author attended to analyse horticulture districts which have various vegetable growers, and so selected Kitano-cho, Fukuoka Prefecture as a research field.
The findings about the vegetable growing groups are as follows: There are 3 types of vegetable growing farms formed from mainly farming-labor family members: (1) The vegetable growers who manage the plastic green houses under fixed structures. They employ usually women, and sell the vegetables to chiefly the agricultural cooperative. (2) The full-time farm households (except above (1) type farms) consisting of young or middle-aged men, lacking fixed green houses. (3) The powerless labor group which consists of oldmen and women. This group's farmhouses sell the vegetables to merchants instead of the agricultural cooperative.
In spite of being a small district, Kitano-cho has a large vegetable output which we can measure in the statistical data. Kitano-cho stands in the fertile alluvial plain on the Chikugo River. The common explanation for the large vegetable output comes on the good soil conditions of Kitano-cho. The author points out that Kitano-cho owes the recent development of vegetable production to many employed women. They work to make up the reaped vegetables to finished products by sorting out, putting in order, packing into boxes. Most of them are 40∼60 year-old housewives whose husbands work the offices or factories. As a result, we can interpret of the employed women promoting to increase the agricultural earnings in whole Kitano-cho town. But, the author emphasizes: there may be a hidden distinction between the two sexes in the lower wages for the employed women. Though the Japanese law prohibits to make the sexual distinction any working condition, not all the women can easily find work on favorable terms.
In the above (3) group, the powerless growers tend to cultivate usually light weight and small-sized vegetables such as spinach, because of their powerless muscles. After reaping the vegetables, the powerless family members, the old or the women, make up the crops carefully into finished products by sorting out, putting in order, and packing into boxes.
There are two land use types in the vegetable culture from the late fall to the spring. The first type is lightweight vegetale culture in plastic greenhouses either fixed structures or temporary small huts. The second type is heavy vegetable culture such as cabbage growing on open land. Just before the second group of vegetables mature, most growers sell them to merchants, leaving them to stand on the land. Then, the merchants harvest and take away them. As this way of trade saves the harvest labor of farmers themselves and improves effectively the land use productivity, many vegetable growers want to sell the crops standing while they work in the plastic greenhouses.

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Social geographical studies concerned with rural societies in Japan until the 1970's dealt almost exclusively with the relationship between settlement forms and social structure (distribution of social groups or strength of social unity). Although religious landscape as place has attracted new attention since the 1980's in order to elucidate the symbolic meaning of space, most of the existing literature has not taken relation between landscape and social structure into consideration so far. Keeping such a drawback in mind, this article seeks to clarify the relation by grouping social functions of constituents of rural landscape, which are represented by religious objects, for instance, shrines, jizo (guardian deity statues) and graveyards. Note that the term social structure in this study concerns comprehensive relations associated with intra-settlement social groups and traditional rural households.
To pursue this aim, Aso, a mountain village located in the western part of Shiga Prefecture, Japan, was selected as the study field. With respect to the time span, the period from the Edo period to the present is taken up to examine historical changes of landscape. Based on remarkable changes in the local municipality's boundary and landscape, the four periods were established. There are various possible subjects associated with rural landscape, but the main focus here is restricted to social groups in the village.
The second section is devoted to an investigation of relationships between social group systems and social structure in the village under consideration. Social groups of hongo (formerly influential hamlets) are classified into the three different hierarchical levels: mura (self-government organizations), Kami/Shimo (organizations for supporting agricultural and Buddhist-temple activities) and kumi (mutual aid organizations). The social groups Kami/Shimo, as well as the four kumis check each other. The three edago (hamlets formerly subordinated to hongo) generally belonged to the kumi level, but it is considered that an edago evolved to the mura level. Moreover, there was a strict social hierarchy of households, especially until the prewar period. This is an outline of the social structure in the study field.
In the third and fourth sections, specific functions of social landscape constituents are identified in relation to social life, social structure-mentioned in the second section-and location of constituents themselves concerned with these. The term “social landscape constituent” here is used to denote landscape elements owned, managed and used by a social group. The functions of the constituents can be classified into five categories: mental unification, self-assertion, mutual understanding, territory declaration and memorial services for the dead. Due attention is not paid to such functions as community properties, production facilities and infrastructure, because of lack of enough information. From this procedure, however, the matrices of social landscape constituents are prepared for every period defined earlier.
Interrelations between social change and the matrices are explored in the fifth section. 1) the Edo period (1605-1873): edago seldom had social landscape constituents, suggesting their subordination to hongo. 2) the prewar period (1874-1946): the matrix shows that an edago, a Rokuro-kumi, strengthened its social unification, and became so competitive as to be regarded as an independent community. 3) the postwar period (1947-1964): Rokuro-kumi and Kumanobata-kumi were separated from the hongo and formed the new Kijiyama district. The appearance of war monuments represented the defeat and decline of the communities under analysis. 4) after the period of high economic growth (1965-1993): this period witnessed the most drastic change among the four.

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Recently, interest in physical distribution has increased in economic geography.
The author has submitted a paper entitled ‘Physical Distribution Studies in Japanese Geography’ to Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 18 with Prof. Yoshitaka Ishikawa.
In the conclusion, we find many Japanese studies of physical distribution are mainly empirical case studies. Their interests are the confirmation of dispatching and catching areas of particular locations of production and consumption and their spatial hierarchy.
In the last five decades, the Japanese economy has experienced drastic changes. Geographers have accumulated many studies of regional or interregional patterns of freight flows. However, they have not fully shown concern for industrial organization and corporate behaviour.
Have as the characteristic of Japanese physical distribution system, Just-in-Time, keiretsu and so on organized the spatial patterns of freight flows truly efficiently or? This important problem remains unexplored by Japanese geographers. Moreover, the author reviewed physical distribution studies of Anglo-Saxon countries in recent years to look for useful viewpoints to advance Japanese physical distribution studies in this paper. Their main themes are as follows;
1. In addition to quantitative studies on the structure of freight flows, studies about spatial patterns of physical distribution systems have developed. Both must not be mutually exclusive, but complementary.
2. The existing concept of transport cost is monetary cost incurred in overcoming geographical distance. However, today, in the analysis of location and agglomeration of industries, the Anglo-Saxon geographers must consider the notion of transaction costs between corporations.
3. Geographers' concern about international trade and freight flows has increased. In studies of international trade, the notion of general equilibrium has been reexamined. So, both in economics and geography, great importance has been placed on the notions of external economies and agglomeration of industries in studying the international trade. In the studies of international freight flow, containerization and multimodal transportation have become main subjects as well.
4. In order to explain the restructuring of industries, the key words of regulation approach, flexible production system and flexible accumulation have become popular among Anglo-Saxon geographers. Many geographers have shown great interests in Just-in-Time and Toyotism. The spatial division of flexible production systems and labour is called vertical disintegration. However, the wider the spatial dispersion of producers, the more expensive the transport, information exchange costs and so on will be. Then, the selected sets of producers are organized in the system called Just-in-Time.
The subject we have to explore is whether Just-in-Time is comprehended as a flexible production system or Post-Fordism.
Adding to these subjects, spatial patterns of physical distribution system have to be reexamined from the viewpoints of environmental pollution and social costs.

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Singapore has a small population-2.8 million, as well as a tiny territory and poor natural resources. Moreover it achieved independence in 1965, so its history as an independent nation is only 30 years. In spite of these handicaps Singapore has achieved a high economic performaance, and today thanks to it, Singapore has become a leading member of the NIES.
On the other hand Singapore is well known as an attractive destination which draws the second largest number of tourists in Asia. The main purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of tourism in Singapore, from the view point of human movements. In this respect, this paper especially focuses on languages and ethnic groups.
Since Singapore is located at a refueling point from Britain to Australia and vice versa, there has been a large number of tourists from these countries. Above all the ratio of stop-over and transit passengers from these countries is higher than any other countries. This is mainly due to the influence of the British Commonwealth and the location as a node, which is the first characteristic of tourism in Singapore.
Second the ratio of business trips to Singapore from North America is higher than any other countries. And Singapore is the top Asian city in terms of the frequency of conventions. This is basically due to the language envieonment English is the common language both as business and conventions Singapole has as well the most developed infrastructure in South-East Asia.
Third the major ethnic group in Singapore is Chinese, who exceed 70% of the total population. Above all Fujian Chinese are in the majority. In Malaysia and Indonesia they are also the major Chinese group. And their visits to Singapore indicate high ratio compared with that of other countries. Visits from Taiwan and Hong Kong show high ratio too. In addition, nowadays visits of Chinese from China (mainland) are increasing rapidly owing to its open policy. This is a recent conspicuous phenomenon. Thus inbound statistics show that the major ethnic tourist group consists of Chinese.
As long as the open policy continues in China and an active economy continues in Asia, Singapore will attract those Chinese groups for the reason that there is a tight bond among members of the Chicnese community.
These findings lead to the conclusion that in the background of successful tourism in Singapore there are historical and ethnological factors based on language.

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