The urban system is always changing. The importance of studying the changing process of the urban system has been emphasised in Japan and also in Western countries from the 1990s. However, studies about the urban system of non-Western countries are still insufficient. In this article, we investigate the changing process of the urban system in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule mainly through the location of central managerial functions and the railway network. We compare its urban system with that of Korea which was also under Japanese colonial rule for almost the same period.
At the end of the 19th century, the urban system of Taiwan was a mixture of elements of both Japanese colonial rule and that of the Qing Dynasty. In the 1920s, the economy of Taiwan was stabilized due to an increase in agricultural production, especially sugar, and the number of companies significantly increased. T'aipei strengthened its position as the capital under Japanese colonial rule, and other cities, such as T'ainan, T'aichung, and Chiai also accumulated central managerial functions. Chilung strengthened its function dramatically while Danshui and An-ping declined under the influence of the colonial policy to strengthen the economic link with Japan.
After the latter half of the 1930s, Taiwan was incorporated into the wartime system as a base for South-East Asia. In this period, T'aipei consolidated its absolute superiority. On the other hand, most of the local cities, except Kaohsiung and Hualiengang, declined. We can also view these changing processes from an analysis of railway passenger revenue. This process resembles that of Korea in the same period. We can say that the latter half of the 1930s was one of the most important periods for the urban system of East Asian countries because the same trends were also evident in Japan.
However, judging from the structure of the main railway network, there was a clear difference between Taiwan and Korea. In the case of Korea, short railway lines, which link traditional large cities in the inner area and new port cities, had largely developed. Further, before the 1930s, these lines had a more important role than the main trunk lines which crossed over the peninsula. In Taiwan, however, the railway network mainly consisted of trunk lines which linked large cities along the coast, and short lines had not sufficiently developed. In the case of Korea, there was also a great difference between the locational pattern of economic and administrative central managerial functions. It was difficult to distinguish such a difference in Taiwan, however.
There were some important reasons to explain these differences. In Korea, the commercial economy had not developed well under the Lee Dynasty because of the policy of national isolation and the influence of Confucianism. Therefore, most of the traditional cities were located in the inner area as administrative centers, and did not possess sufficient economic functions except for Hansong (Seoul). On the other hand, most of the cities in Taiwan developed on the basis of cultivation or trade with mainland China. As a result, they originally had a balance of both economic and administrative central managerial functions. After that, new port cities were formed in both Korea and Taiwan. In Korea, most of them maintained their relative position during colonial rule. However, in Taiwan, trade was gradually limited to Chilung and Kaohsiung, both of which were much extended by the colonial government, because they were afraid that Taiwan would experience a significant economic impact from Western countries by trade through Shanghai and Hong Kong. However, it is also true that there were many cities which had almost the same position in each urban system of Taiwan and Korea under the same Japanese colonial rule.

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Based on existing studies of migration focused on Japan, retirement migration (particularly, international retirement migration) has thus far been regarded as nonexistent. The purpose of this paper is thus to find cases of international retirement migration (IRM hereafter) from Japan and to examine their destination choice and migration characteristics. Findings obtained from a magazine-headed investigation, questionnaire survey and in-depth interview are summarized as follows. Factors such as an amenity-rich environment, a low cost of living, a satisfying new social life, related information collection, links to potential destination and family type are found to be important for the destination choice. With respect to migration characteristics, whereas on average it takes about 2.5 years from decision-making of IRM to fulfillment, the migrants' period-of-duration at the destination is relatively short and most contemplate a final return to Japan.
Furthermore, since our investigation was greatly influenced by their study on British retirement migration to the Mediterranean, our findings are compared to the well-known research of R. King, T. Warnes, A. Williams and V. Rodríguez. However, it should be noted that this comparison is tentative because our research is based on a much smaller sample size (only 31 respondents for the questionnaire survey and 14 respondents for the interview).
Most respondents of both studies were in their sixties and held white-collar occupations before retirement. Japanese migrants, however, were more educated, on the whole, than their British counterparts. With regard to important factors for destination choice, an amenity-rich environment was common to the respondents of both countries. However, Japanese migrants were more sensitive to economic factors such as low living cost and were less sensitive to visiting experience at possible destinations as tourists. Additionally, they tended, to have a diverse link with them before migrating. In respect of migration characteristics, Japanese migrants remained at the destinations for shorter periods than their British counterparts, implying that the former assumed a seasonal movement due to a relatively frequent return to Japan.
Incidentally, IRM is a category of international migration about which migrants feel a great relief after retiring and dream of a full life at a foreign destination. Such migration should be a search for 'paradise' that fits the retirees' new life. However, the narratives of the respondents referred to in this paper suggest that contemporary Japanese society has not been a 'paradise' for retirees. This is because Japanese society is now filled with economic anxiety, social obligations such as attending ceremonial occasions, as well as feelings of a lack of purpose in life. We have to recognize this ambivalence in the Japanese IRM; these features function to urge IRM from Japan, yet they also restrain its occurrence.

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Pastoralism or stock farming is a livelihood difficult to explore in terms of its past practices and situations since ruins and relics seldom remain due to the rare use of tools and facilities. Therefore, pastoralism in the past has been investigated especially by geographers and anthropologists based on present techniques. They have tended to use a small number of case studies of pastoralism as representative characteristics of an entire area and to discuss the distribution and spread of pastoralism.
This study aims to pose questions regarding the conventional methods of investigating the past situation based on present pastoralism techniques, and of establishing, a priori, the cultural geographic spheres based on only a small number of case studies-that is, whether current pastoralism techniques are static and remain unchanged, and whether the conventional categorization of cultural geographic spheres of pastoralism is relevant.
A field survey was conducted in the southeastern part of Tibet, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, for 15 months, from 2000 to 2002, to examine the distribution and transformation of the dairy processing technique, a crucial technique of pastoralism, since it is believed to make this livelihood long-standing and stable.
Regarding the dairy processing technique, Tibet is categorized into the Indo-and West Asia cultural geographic sphere, where the churning process is practiced after lactic acid fermentation. On the contrary, in Shanggelila county, where the field survey was intensively conducted, the distinctive feature of milk processing is that the churning process is carried out without lactic acid fermentation. The omission of the fermentation process is found to be practiced all over Tibet. This fact suggests that the milk processing technique that originated in South or West Asia, has been gradually transformed into a process adapted to the cool and arid environment of Tibet. Three milk processing techniques employed in Tibet, which had not been cited in previous works, could be identified.
Thus, it is necessary to consider the transformation of techniques while investigating the distribution and spread of pastoralism. Accumulating case studies is also required for a thorough examination. The regional differences among pastoralism techniques need to be closely examined before arriving at an agreement on the a priori categorization of geographic spheres.

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