The writer (Oguri) covered, in the previous reports, the dissolution of common forest after the Meiji Restoration, especially after the reorganization of towns and villages. Dissolution, however, did not always start after the Restoration or under the new village system. In the late Shogunate Era, increases of population required development of new fields for food. Those newly developed fields were formerly forests, grasslands or shallow waters. And reclaimed forests and grasslands belonged, in many cases, to common forests. But reclamation of common forests brought on grass fertilizer shortages. Therefore, resistance to reclamation often occured among people of villages concerned. Popularization of fish and mixed fertilizer in the late Shogunate Era could have relieved fertilizer shortages. But farmers who use them must purchase them in cash. They were generally poor and fish or mixed fertilizer were often expensive for them. Therefore, reclamation of common forests was pushed under the balance between food demand and farmers' economic power.
Yugi and Tadao, located in the Tama Hills in the western suburbs of Tokyo, consist of 17 buraku which were old villages in the Shogunate Era. Large parts of forest area in the late Shogunate were under private ownership while common forests were distributed in a small scale. Farmers used rice-bran and ash for fertilizer besides grass from common forests.
When the common forest which belonged to 3 buraku was partly reclaimed in 1779, two of them did not join in the reclamation in order to keep their fertilizer source, one buraku alone which held another common forest in Sagamino terrace reclaimed forest area adjoing the buraku. At that time the rejection of reclamation was expressed in the opinion of all farmers of the two villages. Although reclamation owing to population pressure had to be pushed, the significance of common forest as a fertilizer source did not change. In the late Shogunate Era, however, the significance was rather different. When some other buraku reclamed their communal forest within their buraku area in 1856, some farmers did not agree with it. Their excuse for rejection did not originate from lossing a fertilizer source, but from much expense and overload to them to carry on; they were afraid of labour shortage for old fields, then, in general, they were poor.
As above mentioned, farmers used rice-bran and ash as fertilizer, but when those fertilizer were not sufficient, they had to depend upon fish fertilizer, although they wanted the larger food supply which could be obtained from developed fields. In short, the key of reclamation was dependent upon economic power of farmers, not solely upon demand and supply of grass for fertilizer.
Hilly lands like Tama Hills were almost completely reclaimed before the Restoration and only narrow stripes of common forest remain on the top of hills.

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Fields used for shifting cultivation in Japan were called sasu or sori and these terms still remain in many districts as place-names. The writer shows in this paper distribution of such names and their relation to geographical location in the Chichibu district, Saitama Prefecture.
Place-names indicating shifting cultivation-sori, sasu, hata and yaki-are to be found in this district, in general they are prefixed by the names of farmers, landforms and the like. Almost all of them are found in areas below about 1000m above sea level.
As a place-name, sori is found in flat areas below about 400m above sea level, that is, in the Chichibu basin, at foot of mountains and on river terraces, while sasu and hata are found on the slopes of mountains between 400-800m above sea level. Sori is generally used in areas of older shifting cultivation than are the others.

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Human Geography in the Upper Secondary School Curriculum is an obvious topic of interest for most persons concerned with geography education. In this connection, the enthusiasts for geography education may overlook some pertinent materials, especially the latest report of Offering and Enrollments in Upper Secondary School Subjects, published by the Ministry of Education, Japanese Government in 1959, based on the data in the school year 1958. This survey by the Ministry of Education was conducted on a very broad scale. Questionnaires were distributed to all the Upper Secondary School in Japan.
Upper Secondary Schools consist of Full-time course and Parttime course both of which are divided into General Course and Vocational Courses. General Courses have several Types, and Vocational Courses have many courses-Agricultural, Fishery, Engineering, Commercial, Homemaking etc..
Human Geography is offered with the following modes of credits: 5 credits in General Course of Full-time Schools, 4 credits in General Course of Part-time Schools and 3 credits in Vocational Courses. Human Geography is offered in a different length of school year.
The Per-centage of pupils who take Human Geography at one time or another during their Upper Secondary School Course is as follows:
General Course of Full-time Schools 69.1%
General Course of Part-time Schools 73.8%
Vocational Course of Full-time Schools 78.3%
Vocational Course of Part-time Schools 66.4%
Total: 72.4%
Generally speaking, Human Geography is more popular among the pupils than Japanese History or World History in Vocational Courses, especially in Agricultural, Fishery, Commercial and Mercantile marine courses, but less popular in General Courses. This fact will be chiefly owing to the tradition of our secondary vocational education and to the character of Geography.
The Per-centage of pupils taking Geography in Upper Secondary Schools of Japan is about four times as large as that of U.S. High Schools.

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