This paper is an investigation of the development and maintenance of tradition in a small pottery village, Onta Sarayama, in Kyushu, Japan. Onta pottery gained broad recognition when it was "discovered" by non-locals in the early part of the twentieth century, and these "outsiders" have been influential in fixing the image of traditional pottery from Onta since that time. However, potters in Onta have not always given in to external pressures with regard to their work, but rather subjectively select those aspects of tradition which they feel will be beneficial to them in the long-term. As a result, the contemporary pottery tradition of Onta is an amalgamation of influences from both internal and external sources. Using Onta as an example, I describe the processes through which local people subjectively insert images from outsiders into their own traditions and especially focus on how they regard authenticity.
In the early 1930s, a member of the Japanese Folk Craft Movement visited Onta for the first time. Since then, the great value of its traditional potters and their works has been widely recognized and Onta has became one of the most famous folk craft pottery villages in Japan. The Onta pottery tradition has four important characteristics: 1. The number of pottery households within the community is fixed. 2. Potters produce clay themselves from raw materials. 3. Pots are made on kick wheels and fired in traditional kilns which use wood for fuel. Electric kilns, wheels, and clay processing mills are not used. 4. Work is done collectively, not by individual artists. Today, Onta is the only pottery village maintaining such a community-wide traditional production system in Japan.
However, during the Mingei boom of 1960-70s, Onta experienced a period of transition. The popularity of the village and the demand for the pottery made there became very high. At that time, potters in Onta considered introducing electric machines, and some sought their own way as individual artists. However, in the end, they decided to continue with the traditional method outlined by the Folk Craft Movement above. At that time, in many Japanese potteries, the production system was changing and machines were introduced. I consider why only Onta maintained the traditional method.
In the paper, I argue that the potters of Onta recognized the value of the external folkcraft ideals and employed them positively for their own purposes. This is one example of how local people act in such a situation, specifically the interaction between potters and members of the folk craft movement.
In summary, this interaction helped potters recognize the images which outsiders have of them and their work and influenced them in shaping the direction their work has taken. Clearly, the tradition of Onta pottery has been produced and maintained through the interaction between outsiders and the local people.

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This study aims to explain why offices relocate from the central city of Tokyo to surrounding suburban areas and analyzes the costs associated with such relocations. The relocation of offices occurred as a reaction by companies to contemporary and predominant changes in socio-economic conditions, such as globalization, the growth in knowledge-based economies and the development of large office parks by local governments as a means of industrial restructuring. The drastic increase in rents for office buildings from the late 1980s is another major contributor to the office relocation movement.
Given these negative conditions, companies decided to relocate their offices according to their individual needs and financial capacity. Accordingly, many firms began to move out of high-rise office locations like the CBD and the sub-business center of Tokyo. Many companies tried to strike a happy medium between convenience and affordability. Another important factor leading to the relocation of companies outside of Tokyo is the plan to integrate scattered offices from the CBD to construct a global-national information center based on a positive management strategy.
The relocation process always entails drastic changes in operation costs. The change in costs can be categorized by: set up costs, transaction costs and location-specific factor efficiency costs. These costs are integral to an understanding of the relocation of offices, both in theory and in reality. Until now, based on the theory of agglomeration economies in the CBD, increasing transaction costs by relocating offices from the central city to suburban centers were considered to be an important barrier toward office decentralization.
However, in this survey, we found that many businesses have little need to locate their offices in the CBD of the central city, as McCann has explained. The primary reason for this is that many of the companies located in the CBD have very little interaction with other firms in the area. Furthermore, transaction costs for the companies that relocate to suburban areas do net significantly increase.
From these results, it is clear that office relocation was not just a temporary response to an increase in rent in the central City of Tokyo in the late 1980s, but was also a structural trend originating from specific management strategies.

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Since the mid 1980's, many Western economic geographers, especially in new industrial geography, have shown great interest in the Just-in-Time system (JIT). The core of their interests is not in the problem of logistics, but rather in the definition of the JIT in the Regulation Approach and its spatial implications from the viewpoints of labour control and subcontracting.
Regulationists, Lipietz and Leborgne have considered the JIT is a part of the process leading to Post-Fordism, because the JIT is different from Fordism and Taylorism, workers on shop- floors can participate in quality control, partially improve their working conditions, and engage in multiple working process. Accordingly, they say the JIT raises functional flexibility in the firm and effectively orders subcontractors to enhance numerical flexibility. So, they have boldly set forth the hypothesis that the introduction of the JIT will make the region surrounding the assembler an ideal democratic society of Post-Fordism. In that place, regional society consists of consensus and collaboration of workers, managers, various scale corporations, labour unions, and other social institutions for the purpose of administration, education, investigation, and welfare.
However, many new industrial geographers have criticized this hypothesis from theoretical perspectives and results based on examplary studies, especially about the case of Japanese automobile factories transplanted in the West. In conclusion, they say the JIT is not Post-Fordism, but has rather strengthened the regime of Fordism and the mass production system. In other words, it can be defined as Neo-Fordism, Neo-Taylorism, ‘structured flexibility’, or quasi-vertical integration which aims to effectively utilize both the merits of in-house production and contracting out to subcontractors.
Therefore, many new industrial geographers have debated about the spatial implications of the JIT, namely whether the JIT causes agglomeration of suppliers around the assembler or not.
First, the overarching spatial tendency is towards some form of agglomeration through the introduction of the JIT, because of the need for suppliers to be proximate to assemblers to deliver frequently, smoothly exchange information about quality control and development of new products, and reduce their transaction costs.
Second, the JIT is not necessarily accompanied by agglomeration because of rapid development of transportation and communication between assemblers and suppliers. The restriction according to the laws of local contents makes the assembler order existing suppliers. In the case of standard parts, the supplier can concentrate production in one factory to pursue scale economics and deliver to each assembler. The suppliers also prefer to locate in rural areas, a little away from large assemblers to avoid the rise of labour costs and reinforcement of the labour movement.
In the latter half of the 90's, Boyer, a Regulationist, has insisted that the accumulation regime has not unilinearly evolved from Fordism to Toyotism (JIT) or Volvoism in Sweden. He has allegedly criticized the doctrine of the convergence of a single social system of production. These models are not exclusive alternatives but rather coexisting multiple hybrid models. Therefore, it will be necessary to elucidate how the path-dependency or historical contingency of individual firms, especially Japanese transplants and major first-layer suppliers in the West, and conventions, institutions, and cultural backgrounds in Japan or the West affects the embeddedness of the JIT in the region and the spatial structure of industrial organization.
In the results, some economic geographers, for example, Lung or Sadler, have insisted that there are no necessary conditions on spatial form of production owing to the introduction of JIT. It causes the decline of geograpohical studies about the JIT since the latter half of 90's.

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This paper attempts to explain the transition and sustainability of a fishing community by tracing the relations of fishery households and the reproduction mechanism of fishermen.
In Japan, the number of coastal fishermen decreased after World War II. Consequently, many fishing communities moved on to other production activities. However, some fishing communities have survived. Naga-shima, one of the surviving fishing communities, has been selected as the study area.
The results of the research can be summarized as follows.
1. The production activities of the households in Naga-shima changed from fishing supplemented by farming or farming supplemented by fishing to fishing alone during the rapid economic growth era after World War II. Consequently, three types of fishery households appeared: Type 1) squid fishing, Type 2) angling, and Type 3) diving apparatus fishery. Each fishery household adapted to management circumstances under such constraints as fishing skills and labor composition, which is dependent upon the family life cycle.
2. Each fishery household has sustained its fishing activity by flexibly using kinship or communal relationships. However, these relationships have always been informal.
3. The reproduction mechanism of fishermen has worked well. From an economic perspective, the successor has played an important role in terms of household income. From a social viewpoint, friendship and social customs have influenced successors.
4. The economic aspect of the reproduction mechanism in Naga-shima is more precarious than that in Oro-noshima community, which has the same geographical conditions. Consequently, it is uncertain whether successors will engage in fishing.

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