The purpose of this study is to discuss the ways of natural disaster risk reduction based on the traditional local knowledge. In this study, we focused on the location of 398 shrines in Wakayama Prefecture in order to uncover the profile of space accumulated in the community. More specifically, a survey about the location of shrines and the risk potential of tsunami, floods and sediment disaster showed that many shrines escaped disaster hazard area. And by the investigation of the history and origin of each shrines, we have extracted that majority of Engi-Shikinaisha（shrines listed in Engishiki laws）, Kumano shrines, Isotakeru shrines and Ohji shrines are located at out of the disaster hazard area.

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In recent years, completion becomes a reality of new Shinkansen projects based on Act for Construction of Shinkansen Railway Across the Country. But start of further construction of high-speed lines in the master plan might be criticized from the point of view of cost-effectiveness. Interim construction scheme of Shinkansen, such as mini Shinkansen and superexpress formula has been proposed as low-cost bullet train system. Mini Shinkansen runs at low-speed and often makes cessation of operation or delay from the schedule, because it travels on the conventional lines of the old style. So, it has become less reliable system. Superexpress formula forces travellers to transfer from normal Shinkansen lines. Its construction cost is not much different from the full standard high-speed line and it makes trains operate at low-speed as Seikan Tunnel. So, Superexpress formula has only low usability. In addition, the line except brand-new part is just a conventional line and the system has also a low reliability. In this study, single track Shinkansen system is proposed, which is characterized by low-cost construction, high-speed operation, and direct through service to the normal Shinkansen with wider track gauge. The system configuration has been built in consideration of the technical aspects and operation plan and its basic performance has been confirmed through a case study. As a result, it has been specified that the new system can reduce the total length of the track by about 40 % as compared with the whole double track line and that it also can ensure a service level of two trains per hour per way with scheduled speed of almost 150km/h.

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By the public activity of inhabitants in Sumiyoshi-dai in Kobe, community bus was inaugurated in 2005. The public activity of inhabitants had following three contents. (1) Experimental bus service by the NPO ,2003-2004, (2) Platform meeting for community bus of the activity, 2004-2005, (3) Management organization of bus service, 2005-. After the bus service opening in 2005, they achieved such a stable number of passengers, an increase of new inhabitants, and modal shift. This is because there were (3) Management organization and their communication-design for relationship of inhabitants.

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Gansu province is a poverty area located in the northwest of China. It was once on the wayside of the Silk Road and has left many Buddhist ruins. Maijishan Cave is the object of this project that is one of the four major caves in China. In recent years, research institutions and experts promoted studies and academic researches as well as developing nature resources. For a long time, differences of speculation between the government and the local citizens concerning the handling of profits have remained in parallel lines. The focus of this project was “building a relationship of trust between the government and the citizens.” “Doing together” was quite important for this project. At the middle and final stages of the project, local citizens and tourists developed their identity gradually as the stakeholders.

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Japan has ever been equipped with some Shinkansen lines as Tokaido, Sanyo, and so on. Other Shinkansen as Hokuriku or Linear-Chuo is planned to be built in the near future. These high-speed rails were designed under Act for Construction of Shinkansen Railway Across the Country. Five of all the planned lines start from Tokyo (Tokaido, Joetsu, Tohoku, Hokuriku, and Linear-Chuo Shinkansen lines), which are in business or under construction. On the other hand, six lines start from Osaka (Tokaido, Sanyo, Linear-Chuo, Sanin and Shikoku Shinkansen lines), while only two lines got in open. Linear-Chuo Shinkansen will be built, which will be completed after 18 years later than the east section between Tokyo and Nagoya. Furthermore, no one knows the open date of the other projects with Osaka. Such imbalance between eastern and western Shinkansen networks might expand the economic gap in these regions. In this research, the main forecast system is named MasRAC (macro economic simulation model system), which is an improved model from the previous macro economic simulations, and which can calculate the effect of nationwide high-speed network on each region. Some economic simulations were made with conditions that Shinkansen network centered on Osaka is built up and the imbalance is disappeared.

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In this paper, we considered factors of the news bias which had been revealed in existing researches. The media coverage could not have a few influence on the directionality of the Japanese public policy. Therefore, it contributes toward appropriate democracy to clarify factors of the news bias. Based on books, we considered the factors. The books are written by journalists or which contains what journalists said. In these books, journalists explain the actual condition of the press and we used these information. As a result, it was suggested that the media could be pressured from political offices, the ministry of finance in particular. It was also suggested that the media might change their tone by considering their sponsor companies. Or the media seemed to follow the opinion of their audience who required simple stories. In addition, it was suggested that they could be affected easily from outside factors because they seemed to be salaried workers rather than journalists.

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Japan has faced a lot of risks including deflation, recession and huge disasters. Therefore, it seems that infrastructure plays a big role in order to increase the national benefit by developing the national economy and managing these risks. However, Japan has reduced the governmental investment for a long time and Japanese people does not seem to understand precisely importance of developing infrastructure from the perspective of the national benefit. In this paper, the object is to get some base knowledge from the international comparison data regarding effectiveness of infrastructure. We performed empirical analysis about the relation of the level of infrastructure development and national performance indexes including economic growth. The results showed that in developed countries, the higher the level of the road and rail infrastructure development is, the higher the economic growth rate in the medium-term and long-term is. This indicates that development of the transportation infrastructure such as roads and railways would contribute increase of economic growth.

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This thesis considers the effective method for transforming drama workshops into policy. Several cases are picked up as examples of drama workshops such as “Math with Drama”, “Environment with Drama”, and “Disaster Prevention with Drama”. These cases are related to education and drama which work effectively to nurture the participants’ interest or knowledge. The drama workshops succeeded not only in an educational sense but also in creating a sense of trust and promoting multi-generational exchange. However, their actual success cannot be sufficiently evaluated for two main reasons. First, drama workshops have a long-term effect so that it is difficult to focus specifically on what needs to be evaluated. Second, owing to the style of drama workshops it is difficult to determine who will be their beneficiaries. That is why it is also difficult to decide who should bear the cost in relation to the benefit. In order to deal with such a situation, a sample of cash flow is presented in this thesis. The effect of drama workshops should be considered in small groups first, then gradually expanded to bigger groups. If the effect is recognized in each case, the drama workshops would naturally be accepted by others and subsequently accepted as policy in the future.

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In this study, authors implemented a WEB questionnaire survey targeting Tokyo metropolitan area (23 wards) and Ibaraki prefecture with the aim to investigate which element of bus service have an attractiveness by categorizing and classification service quality of route bus service based on Kano’s Quality Model. As a result, bus service quality elements of which “the existence of bus route to be able to go wherever one want to”, “the existence of bus stops close to departure place and destination”, “being able to sit on a seat” were evaluated as “attractive”. Next to these components, service component of which “lower and reasonable fare” “time reliability” “frequency” were important as well as primaries. In addition, “amenity of bus stop” was evaluated as important equal to these basic service element. The evaluation for “politeness to customers” was different as “attractive” or “must be” or “one-dimensional”, it would depend on the individual. The result also showed that people regard bus safety as “must be”. Bus non-users were “Indifferent” with bus service elements even though the same service quality of private vehicle such as “ability to go everywhere as you want” “ability to sit down every time”. These results showed that it needs great effort to induce non-bus-user’s travel behaviour change, and will need to combine improvements of bus service quality and mobility management as an active involvement of them.

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