The purpose of this paper is to revisit Christaller's central place theory in terms of the society and thought of Weimar Germany. This attempt will aim to provide another text-reading of the canon Central Places in Southern Germany. To that end, literary research was undertaken mainly using a biographical paper on Christaller (Hottes, R., 1981), an autobiographical paper (Christaller, 1968), Christaller's text (1933), and his papers and newspaper articles published until 1934. The results are summarized as follows.
Christaller, a child of a lower middle-class family, who spent his childhood in Jugenheim near Darmstadt, joined the Wandervogel movement before or after entering Realgymnasium. Although the Wandervogel was originally a hiking club of Gymnasium students, it aimed to return to nature and to the Middle Ages, and possessed a strong dislike for cities and modern civilization. Within Wandervogel, some people started various life reform movements-educational reform, clothes reform, vegetarianism, nudism, the Garden City movement, and land and housing reform-to regenerate decayed industrialized urban societies. When he was enrolled in Heidelberg University, Christaller took part in the German Youth movement that was more ideological than the Wandervogel movement. Christaller's paper (1921) on the proletarian youth movement certainly shows his commitment to that movement.
His personal experience of serving in the First World War, together with the influence of his fellow soldiers-Carlo Mierendorff, Theodor Haubach and Carl Zuckmayer, made him become socialistic. Following his discharge, he intended to bring about land and housing reform in order to provide low-price housing for the poor in Berlin, based on his own experience as a laborer during the postwar period-for example, as a miner in the Ruhr region. When Christaller worked as a secretary in the homesteading office of the Union of the German Civil Service in Berlin, with the help of Adolf Damaschke, the leader of the League of German Land Reformers, he was eager to bring about land reform and to facilitate the provision of public housing. This is illustrated by a report calling for approval of the Land Reform Act (Lubahn and Christaller, 1922), based on a questionnaire survey inquiring about the realities of the homestead system movement. Notably in a Berlin construction firm, where he was employed after his retirement from the homesteading office, his pioneering work of house construction with the introduction of the prefabrication method would have left its mark on German architectural history like those of famous architects such as Ernst May and Bruno Taut, if the work succeeded. Unfortunately, he was frustrated in these attempts partway, changed his mind, and resumed his discontinued undergraduate studies at the University of Erlangen. In the end, he completed a seminal geography dissertation dealing with the theoretical location of urban settlements.
With his knowledge from his undergraduate major in economics, Christaller sought to build a theory on how to distribute goods and services efficiently and equitably, which would result in bringing about social justice when the theory is applied in practice. Following the publication of his dissertation in 1933, he wrote two controversial papers on the issue of reorganizing German administrative areas which complemented the dissertation. Since sufficient time was unavailable for the already middle-aged Christaller, in the dissertation he fully expounded his ideas which he seems to have been developing in his mind for some years. For Christaller, this might imply an attempt to recover his youth lost on account of the setbacks he suffered in being involved with the problems of land and housing reform.

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Hideaki Ishikawa was one of the most important Japanese modern city planners. He was convinced that cities had to enrich people's lives, and he wanted to establish modern city planning as a discipline. Ishikawa was well-known as a man of unique ideas and he enthusiastically studied amusement places (sakari-ba). In this paper, I focus on how he developed his ideas on amusement places and how he put them into practice in designing amusement places for rich people's enjoyment during the period of time he worked in Nagoya (1920-1933).
To better understand Ishikawa's practices, I refer to H. Lefebvre's conception of recognition of space. Lefebvre's conception has three dimensions. "Representations of space": conceptualized space, the space of planners; "Space of representation": space as directly lived, the space of "inhabitants" and "users"; and, "Spatial practice": creation of space by the interaction of the other two dimensions. From this, therefore, city planning would be regarded as "representations of space", while amusement places in which people enjoyed their lives would be regarded as "space of representation." "Space of representation" has the possibility of creating a new movement of thought to counter the control of space by city planning.
Ishikawa always criticized Japanese city planning as being just a plan for land use which did not significantly consider people's lives. So he searched for a way to create a city planning for the people. He wrote a series of thirty-four articles on "The story of a Local City" in the magazine, Creation of the City (Toshi Sousaku). He explained his vision of the modern city and about how city planning should be conducted. Ishikawa was gradually able to create his own theory of amusement places in his planning.
The following four keywords characterize his modern city planning in his serial writing. The keywords are: "city planning for the night", "small city doctrine", "a bustling and lively square", and "hometown city". The first one, "city planning for the night", was an idea to restore the functional role of the night. Ishikawa thought that many planners made a plan for the "industrious time" when people worked during the daytime, but, at night, people were set free from their labors and relaxed. Ishikawa changed this idea and reorganized a plan for people to enjoy their leisure time at night. He paid attention to street lighting, especially lighting for buildings, the layout of amusement facilities, and so on.
The next idea is "small city doctrine". Ishikawa rejected the big city. He insisted that an ideal city should be within the scale where people could feel intimacy among neighbors. Though a city may be big, each town in a city should have a center which would be a psychological anchor for people, which should be combined organically, and in which the center should be a lively square.
The next idea is "bustling and lively square". Ishikawa recognized that people tend to gather in a square to look for closeness with one another, and also a square should offer people some way to satisfy their desires. Thus, he noted the importance of shopping and regarded shopping malls as "an casting vote". He therefore combined squares with shopping malls.
The last keyword is "hometown city". Ishikawa recognized the importance of the square in Western cities, but stressed that Japanese city planning should not blindly imitate Western cities without considering the character of each city. Ishikawa thus decided to transform the Western square into an amusement place (sakari-ba in Japanese) where people could enjoy flowing down the street.

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This paper represents the first Japanese review of gerontological geography and its primary emphasis is on American and British studies during the later part of the 20th century.
As the Japanese population has been aging, some geographers, including the authors of this article, have become drawn to the study of the spatial aspects of aging societies and the aged. In spite of our efforts, however, geographical studies about the aging society and the aged have received less attention in Japan than in Western countries. One of the reasons for this is that most Japanese studies have been undertaken on an ad-hoc basis. We need to be conscious of the framework of this field of study as a whole. An overview of American and British studies, two of the leading countries in this field, would greatly assist in the enhancement of a geographical contribution to aging societies and to the aged in Japan.
The outline of the history of this field is as follows.
In the 1970s, geographers and non-geographers undertook studies on the spatial aspects of aging society and the elderly. Numerous studies from a positivistic viewpoint were published. At the beginning of the 1980s, Warnes, one of the first reviewers of this field, categorized research into five areas: demography and distribution, migration of the elderly, socioeconomic and housing characteristics of the elderly, access to and delivery of services and facilities and activity patterns and mobility problems.
From the 1980s to the present, gerontological geography has experienced remarkable progress not only in quantity but also in quality. One of the changes was the introduction of a humanistic approach. Researchers like Rowles tried to describe the relationships between the elderly and their environments. Other changes can be seen in traditional positivistic studies. Researchers in this field noticed the necessity and expectation to make a contribution to policy.
In the 1990s, new approaches in social geography-feminism, political economy and postmodernism-were adopted, and that is why the "rethinking of gerntological geography" was initiated. Traditionally, the aging population was only a main concern for advanced countries, and not for developing countries. However, recently, it has become a major concern for both groups of states. Because of these changes, the urgency to study more about the aging population of third world countries has increased and comparative studies among all these countries are necessary. Clearly, gerontological geographers, especially in Japan, should make more progress in terms of research quantity and quality. We need to refine research and to gather data that are directly connected to policy making and evaluation. It is equally important to be sensitive to the concept of the welfare state and to the new paradigm.

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The aim of this paper is to systematize the study of children from a geographical viewpoint and to identify new perspectives in children's perception of the environment and education.
From the 1960s to the 1970s, studies of children in geography began with the introduction of a behavioral approach into geographical studies. Summing up the findings of the 1960s and 1970s, the area perceived by children, their action space, and the increase in perception of their environment as they grow older.
In 1979, Roger Hart argued that various constraints could explain children activities and children's life space was thus re-interpreted from the viewpoint of these constraints.
From the 1980s to the 1990s, the gender approach and postmodern geography developed. Gender geography's concern with children is that children are born and brought up by women, and that gender roles determined children's spatial activity range. Postmodern geography's concern is with children as "others" and the objection to the image of childhood made by modern society.
Until the 1990s, children's geography explained and interpreted children from an individual perspective. From the 1990s, children's behavior has been explained in relation to their socioeconomic and educational context.
The future direction which these studies should be taken, based on an empirical approach, is as follows: (1) more consideration should be given to children's living experience in the environment or in places; (2) children's life space and perceptional environment from a socioeconomic and educational context should be examined.

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In the suburban residential areas developed before World War II, some problems, such as the division of a housing lot, the rebuilding of a residence and the progress of aging, have been arising recently. Development of residential suburbs before the war is thought to be a part of urban development and to have produced the present life style, that is, the separation of home and workplace so that it has an important historical meaning from the viewpoint of the formation of city and urban life style.
We cannot ignore the private railway company, especially in Kansai region, when we consider the developments of residential suburbs. Therefore, in this paper, I study the private railway company that has influenced developments of residential suburbs. And I clarify its management strategy and the specific characteristics of the residential suburbs developed by the private railway company, Osaka Denki Kido Railway Company.
It was necessary for the private railway company to increase transportation demand by carrying out various activities, in order to secure stable income, because it had only one or a few short and local railway lines. But, since Osaka Denki Kido Railway Company had many sightseeing spots along its line, it first aimed for the stability of management not by developing any areas along its line, but by promoting its sightseeing areas and expanding its routes. However, it began to set about the developments along its lines gradually after the end of Taisho Period. It developed the residential areas along its lines, utilizing the advantage as a railway company, for example, preparation of a new station and offering a commuter pass as a gift to people who moved to residential areas along its lines. Some characteristic scenes such as little streams and roadside trees, some urban utilities and facilities such as electrical and gas equipment, some playing-around spaces such as parks or tennis courts, which the middle class who were aiming for a better life wanted, were prepared in these residential areas. It tried to obtain constant commuting demands by urging them to move to these suburbs.
For example, it connected its route to Yamamoto and built a station there consciously. And then, it developed the residential areas around Yamamoto Station in collaboration with the Sumitomo Company. Osaka Denki Kido Railway and Sumitomo produced the image of residential suburb as an education zone by inviting schools there, and tried to maintain the good habitation environment by imposing housing construction regulation on residents. In this way, many of the middle class families moved into the residential area at Yamamoto before the war. Moreover, Osaka Denki Kido Railway encouraged residential developments around that area, and consequently the suburbs were expanded.
After all, Osaka Denki Kido Railway produced some residential suburbs along its line for the middle class before the war, although that time was a little later compared with Hankyu Railway. The reason was that its management strategy was to secure stable demands of transport. As suburban life grew up gradually there, that increased the number of suburban residents, and the residential suburbs were developed around them further. In other words, Osaka Denki Kido Railway has been responsible for the expansion of the suburbs.

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