A new subject “Modern Society” will be introduced in senior high school education from 1982 as a requisite one. This new subject would provoke much debates whether geography will survive as a “large” subject in social studies as has been. Some of the themes in this new subject such as “Humankind and environment” and “Population problems and resources-energy” could be taught by geography teachers. Nevertheless, we must be aware of the likely challenge from the other subjects. For years to come, geography should play an important role in implementing “Modern Society, ” otherwise geography should loose much popularity.
Coping properly with the change of Japanese society toward an international one is an urgent topic the geographical education in Japan has to tackle. Education for international/intercultural understanding should be treated more in geography. Since time is not enough, it ought to focus on selected countries as objects of comparison. A comparative method is very useful for a bilateral or multilateral cooperation. An experiment was taken between Japan and USA concerning the promotion of international/intercultural understanding in primary and secondary education, for which the author participated as a member.
Geographical education will have to put more emphasis on environment and resources. Very few geography teachers are reluctant to teach these topics; however, other subjects also treat them with emphasis as in the case of ethics, economics and politics, and further “Modern Society.”
The 58th Annual Meeting of the National Council for the Social Studies (US) held at Houston in Nov. 1978 demonstrates some important trends. Aside from methods and philosophy of social studies education, culture and ethnicity attracted more attention than any others despite the fact that the main themes were “Skills for Societal Survival” and “Building A Sense of Community.” Indeed, 37 out of the 176 Sections and 41 Workshops were focused on either culture or ethnic groups. If Japan's social studies education or geography education intends to concern international/intercultural understanding more, the present US education for social studied should be studied carefully.
Master-degree Program in Area Studies of the University of Tsukuba will demonstrate an interesting trend as to teacher training. This graduate program is to train students to become company workers, government officials and high school teachers; and in-service training is welcomed. A student should know various aspects of world's major areas such as USA, SE Asia or Latin America. He may specialize in discipline-oriented topics such as geography, history, anthropology, economics, political science and others, together with world's major areas. Some students have found jobs in teaching geography, but they seem or are expected to be able to teach “Modern Society.”

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A series of lecture titled “Regional Science” is in progress by the author's group in Chiba University. The objects of the lecture is in understanding and analyzing of “region”. They are, (1) the analyzing of regions as a fundamental element of our human activity, (2) the establishing of models or patterns by measurement of the quantity of human activities in human life and industry, and (3) the studying of distribution and movement of human activities. We have two methods of study in “Regional Science”, morphological and ecological. The emphasis on this lecture are on the cultivating students' integrated comprehensive ability for understanding regions through many cases of regional problem. Various kinds of “Science” have to coordinate for analyzing the regional problems.
In the lecture of “Regional Science”, the following elements are required as the fundamental, i.s., (1) theoretical study for synthesis of regional structure, (2) comparative study for a regional problem between various kinds of “Science” or “academic speciality”, and (3) theoretical history of individual “science”. We have three sections in our lectures, fundamental (the scientific approaches and theory for regions), regional (regional problems in the Tokyo Metropolitan Region), and applicative (transfiguration of region by natural disaster).
The lecturers may use their own investigations for their lectures and for training of students.

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