‘Mura’　is a fundamental organization in Japanese rural society. In the aspect of politics, Japanese centralization of conservative power has been formed on the basis of Mura. On the other hand, in the aspect of economy, farming sector in Mura has been destructed by the free trade policy under WTO. Against these political and economic power structure, a new movement for the reconstruction of relations between urban and rural residents is starting. Both residents try to combine the living manner each other, for example, organic farm products, direct marketing, citizens garden and so on. However, the reform of conservative structure in rural area is not rapid yet, in spite of urban aggressiveness. This gap between urban and rural residents would be filled up by ‘the new citizens society’ as ‘soft network system’ , supporting ‘weak individuals’ against the pressure of the politically economic globalism. In this process Mura structure would be refreshed and reconstructed gradually. In this paper we describe some examples as for these changing process of rural society.

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　　　Using the social system theory as a basis, we can derive the following propositions. First, if economic or non-economic social relations are maintained, then the social group will persist. Second, if both economic and non-economic social relations are lost, the social group will disintegrate, as it no longer satisfies functional requisites.
　　　The target of our study was the village community and Ie in northern Akita Prefecture. The data shows that despite numerous changes and the disintegration of many functional groups with a village community, both Ie and the village community as such are surviving. This is because formal organizations outside of the village community provide functional requisites under new conditions.

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　　　This paper aims to find the function and the characteristics of the rural family in modern Japan from the point view of the rural women’s position and role. We have called Japanese pattern of the rural family as IE. IE has been regarded as patriarchal or feudalistic because of women’s low position in the family and a head’s absolute authority over family members. According to this understanding , the rise of women’s independence has a probability of disorganization IE. But IE can be given a definition as the small organization of management run by family members’ labour force integrated for subsistence. According to this definition, IE’s logic should coexist with individual’s one. This paper examines the tendency of women’s independence in IE as the small organization of management, analyzing a research of women in full-time farm households in Shonai District, Yamagata Prefecture in 1998.

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　　　The improvement of rural environment was oriented toward raising the level of living conditions for rural inhabitants after the high economic growth since 1970’s. The economic growth caused some issues such as the surplus of farm products, the air and water pollutions, heavy traffics on roads, and nature destructions in rural areas. And these issues brought about the dirtiness and the ugliness to the rural landscape.
　　　The movement for beautification of rural environment has risen since 1980, affected by the German movement to “make our village beautiful”. Two steps can be processed in the movement of environmental beautification. The first step is to “acquire beauty of life” which can be display for the harmonization of environmental elements to get rid of such issues, and the second one is to “create new beauty” which can bring up to love to the community.
　　　I illustrate the activities for beautification movement in a case study of Niiyama Shuraku of Kanzaki Town in Saga Prefecture. The movement of making beautiful environment started in order to protect going to school of village children from traffic accidents by the women group at first. Next, it grew up to the activity for creating beauty of their community. Finally it has developed to bring up the love for their own homeland.

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　　　Traditional events in rural communities have been considered as functions that have a role to strengthen communal ties of residents and to promote village revitalization. Residents’ participation, however, has decreased due to recent reorganization of a hamlet group that had sponsored those events, and due to diversification of religious and amusing activities of residents. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the transition process based on a case study of Kosyogatu Event, which is held by a neighbourhood organization in the rural community of Kitakami City, Iwate prefecture.
　　　The results are summarized as follows:
　　　 (1) Socioeconomic supporters and audience of the event tend to be limited to certain people, typically officers of the hamlet organizations, so it does not function to strengthen communal ties of residents.
　　　 (2) However, there is latent function of the event. That is, through attending to the event, residents refresh their expectations to the hamlet as the basis of communal ties and joint collaboration among themselves.
　　　These results indicate that it is necessary to encourage residents’ participation in traditional events in order to strengthen communal ties. Furthermore, understanding actual functions of the events is required to study their effectiveness to village revitalization.

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