For as long as half a century up to 1926, there existed 537 county offices in all Japanese prefectures excluding Hokkaido. Each of these was the peripheral organization of the bureaucratic centralized authoritarian local government system, which under the district system law in the Meiji and Taisho era made the national administrative influence permeate into the remotest corner of the country. The district office was not so large an organization but the town in which it was located, in any case, was the centre of its county. Naturally various official and non-official offices were established in its neighbourhood.
The seat of district office was not always the same as the most prosperous town in the district, nor was it in the middle of the county. In most cases, many hostorical factors and the will of prefectural government had to do with the decision of the county office site.
After the end of the official district system, the ground on which former district offices stood were generally taken over by some local agencies of the prefecture, city or town halls, etc. Some are absorbed in prosperous quarters of the town, but few have been reduced to ruins, and left unutilized.
Broadly speaking, the regional pattern of the district system era in Japan has not undergone great change except in the so-called the Tokaido-Pacific Belt, especially the Tokyo and Osaka area.
By forming the network which links the places where former district centers were located over the whole country we can with comparative ease revive the Japanesse politicogeographical structure in the first quarter of the present century and compare it with that of today.
An investigation into the former sites of county offices will provide us with a correct standpoint from which we may make an observation of the Japanese geographical pattern half a century or so ago.

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The Japanese government enforced the promotion law to reorganize towns and villages in 1953, The administrative conditions of towns and villages changed remarkably since then. regional plannings also were obliged to reshuffle with changing conditions.
The writer shows in this paper an example of the above conditions. The two cities, Takata and Naoetsu, in the southwest of Niigata Prefecture are to amalgamate in April of 1971. The two cities have the different characters each other. Takada was a fudal castle town and is now a local administrative and economic center. On the other hand, Naoetsu is a port with heavy industries on the Japan Sea coast and has mines of limestone and natural gas in the adjacent area. Although these two cities are substancially the twin cities combined by national highway along which are built manufacturing factories and settlments, people's disposition of tow cities are different.
It is desirable to amalgamate into one city in order to be the core city of the western district of Niigata Prefecture. Recently the common water works are built, and the united chamber of commerce and industry for two cities are promoted by the young industrial men. The new trend for amalgamation has gradually grown. Therfore, agreement of administrative management has arronged between two cities, and the amalgamated citiy is to be born in April of 1971.
The example mentioned above shows growth of transportation and common economic and administrative base make the twin cities with the different functions amalgamate.

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Pupil's ability to understand draw isometric lines is one of the fundamental elements for the basic geographical understanding.
For this investigation some tests were given to 235 seventh grade pupils, 218 eighth grade pupils, and 247 ninth grade pupils of urban and rural schools.
The results of our investigation offered us some interesting suggestions on how to teach geography.
(1) It is not always easy for even ninth grade pupils to understand isotherms and isohyets. It cannot say that it must be easy for pupils to understand many isometric lines, because we have already taught them how to read contour lines. Many atlases for a primary school contain climate maps which represent both isotherms and isohyets on one plate, but we doubt whether these maps are suitable for primary school pupils.
(2) The albility to draw isometric lines of lower secondary schol pupils is not so great, it may grow much greater if teachers could teach them well the way of drawing isometric lines, and it is desirable to begin with a simple model for training.
(3) Seventh grade pupils cannot read isometric lines wholly, but can only notice fragmentary parts of a map even though incompletely. Ninth grade pupils, however, can read isometric lines from a broader viewpoint.
(4) If the writers continue these investigations on and on, they might construct the programming system of teaching of distribution maps.

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The writers show in this papar application of ecological methods to a research on population movements in Japan.
Among various trends of population movements, that of the young generation includes some interesting aspects. The writers find out some remarkable trends in the research of the reginal movement of college entrants.
The patterns of college entrants are rather sharply classified as follows:
(a) those of high E.Q. (b) those of average or rarther low E.Q.
The candidates of high E.Q. prefer mostly the national or prefectural government college or university to the private one. On the other hand, those of average or low E.Q. hope to enter the private one. The national or prefectural college or university distribute in each prefecture. However, the private college or university centralize in some big cities, especially in Tokyo metroporitan area. Therefore, the entrants of high E.Q. show the movement of big scale.
Concentration of student population into Tokyo is a conspicuous aspect in Japan. It presents some socio-ecological problems different from in the case of Oxford or Cambridge of England.

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The method of sample study gives us a very effective principle for the establishment of a new method of geography teaching. It is especially effective for our careful selection and construction of the teaching material, and for our way of teaching. Teachers, however, cannot solve all the subjects and questions by this method. Therefore, the writer examines a new method of geography teaching in the light of some criticisms and opinions which give to the method of sample study. And the writer have been putting his theory in practice, and he shows in this paper the way of suitable application of the method in the lower secondary school curriculum of geography teaching.
The worst point in the past and the present way of teaching of regional geography is that teacher's main object consisto in pursuit of regional speciality or peculiarity and he does not pay much attention to its generality or universality. This exerts an evil influence upon geography teaching, and causes the swelling of the teaching materials. As a result, students were forced to learn many pieces of knowledge by heart. One of the best ways of reshuffle in such geography teaching is to lest students find out that an area has much in common among other similar places. When they study about an area finding these common characteristics in this way, they can apply what they learned to other areas. And teachers of geography can spend their time to select carefully the materials they should teach.
When they select the materials carefully as mentioned abore, they need not spend their time on teaching fragmentary knowledge. So they can give their pupils much time to think over openly. Then they must cope with the problems of how to choose the regions they are going to teach and what points they should take highly of. These problems have much to do with the aims of geography teaching of the lower secondary school. Geography teachers must choose the regions which are helpful for the pupils to recognize land of Japan. In other words, how to recognize and how to understand our land is important; geographical point of view and geographical way of thinking is to be cultivated. Which type of the method of sample study should they take up in order to carry out these aims? The writer is helped by the theories of Stenzel, Derbolav, Knubel, Buthe, and some others for this study; and he put his idea. into his study. As a result, he understands that the objects of studying geography are different by each school or by each grade and the method of sample study should be adopted.
The lower secondary school curriculum for teaching geography is most effective when it is organized as follows:
1. Studying the district nearby_… The district in which pupils live should. be taken up as to learn the way how to study a certain area. In other words, this unit is the model of regional study.
2. Pre-study_… On the bases of the knowledge acquired in elementary school, pupils should be lead to study regional geography in order to understand the world and Japan macroscopically.
3. Studing about various regions_… Some of the first themes are better to be taught in trial and discovery study, or in fixing the aim at Knubel's “third stage”. In the next stage, it is desirable for teachers to adopt Stenzel's “four stages” in order to let them recognize and think abstractly. Comparing a region with the other simllar districts, pupils can aquire its common features, they can understand what human life is and how a man should live, and teachers can expect their pupils to re-discover themselves.
4. Japan in the world_… To let them recognize geographically what Japan is in the world. They can think of Japan profoundly from the superior geographical points of view and ways of thinking. The writer believe this is what geography teachers should attain in the lower secondary school and this is the most

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