Studies in Regional Science
Online ISSN : 1880-6465
Print ISSN : 0287-6256
ISSN-L : 0287-6256
Volume 14
Displaying 1-15 of 15 articles from this issue
  • A View from Systems Analysis Supporting Technologies
    Sachihiko HARASHINA
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 1-16
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The paper reports on methods of how to reflect citizen opinions for community level environmental planning. The author aims to organize the citizen involvement methods based on the empirical studies conducted by himself and others.
    In the process of the environmental planning, the three actors of the local government, planners, and citizen have to be taken into consideration. The role of citizen involvement in the planning process is information exchange among the citizen, the goverment and the planners. There are two kinds of citizen involvement technologies. The one is citizen opinions survey, and the other is citizen participation meetings for planning. Reviewing previous surveys conducted by Japanese researchers including the author, opinion surveys are considered to be useful especially for evaluating the state of the present environment. But it can not be applied directly to evaluate the future state of the environment altered by the proposed plans.
    There are two kinds of approaches to evaluate the future state of the environment for selecting appropriate planning alternatives. One is the approach which can reflect the public opinions indirectly utilizing opinion surveys partially in the systems analysis framework. The other is that reflects the public opinions directly by citizen participation meetings in the planning process.
    In the former approach, the state of the future environmental quality is evaluated in an analytical manner. The total quality of the environment, Vo, is descrived by combination of quality of divided aspect i of the environment, Vi, and its relative importance (weight), Wi. The public opinions will be reflected in the weight Wi chosen by some kinds of opinion surveys. Examining the previous studies of the authors and the others, the followings results are observed.
    (1) Many results supports that Vo can be described by an additive form of Vi and Wi.
    Vo=Wi Vi …(n is the number of aspects of environmental quality)
    (2) Wi could be chosen relatively well by applying the weighting methods of mathematical psycholpgy though more improvement is necessary.
    (3) Definning the form of function Vi=fi(Xi) is very difficult at this moment as a great deal of empirical knowledge required for it is lacking. Here, X denotes the objective measurement of an aspect of the environmental quality.
    The latter approach is utilizing citizen participation meetings for reflecting the public opinions directly in the planning porocess. This approach is possible in community level environmental planning as people can imagine the future state of their environmnt more easily than that of the wider area like city. In public meetings, group surveys are applied effectively. Especially, real time Delphi method is applied to evaluate the future state of the planned environment by utilizing electronic voting systems such as the Group Analyzer developed by the authors. The effectiveness of this approach for choosing the preference of the people in certain area has been shown in several empirical studies conducted by the authors in Tsukuba, Yamagata, and other places.
    It is also discussed that the effective use of citizen participation meetings in the planning process could be extended by applying new regional informationcommunication systems like CATV in an area.
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  • Kiyoko HAGIHARA, Osami NAKASUGI
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 17-30
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Effects of water quality on municipal water supply are considered from the viewpoint of both supply side and demand side.
    On the supply side the benefits of water quality improvement are measured by means of so-called cost saving approach. The annual data from 1973 to 1981 obtained from three municipal water supply plants which withdraw water from Lake Biwa and employ the water treatment of rapid sand treatment system. The cost function is statistically estimated in terms of the data on cost of chemical additives and water quality. Then a benefit is caluculated in terms of cost saving, which naturally understimates the true benefits of water quality improvement.
    On the demand side the decrease of the averting behavior of consumers are considered to be one indicator of the benefits of water quality improvement. So, survey questionaires are undertaken in two comparative regions; one region consists of the city of Tsuchiura and the town of Ami and the other region consists of the city of Ohts. The consumers in the first region receive the municipal water from Kasumigaura municipal water supply plant which withdraw water from Lake Kasumigaura and the comsumers of the second region receive the municipal water from Yanagasaki and Zeze municipal water supply plants which withdraw water from Lake Biwa.
    The survey results show that 1) the ratio of people taking various forms of averting behavior is higher in Tsuchiura and Ami than in Ohts and 2) the relationship between water quality and averting behavior is not judged to be significant in the first region.
    Moreover, first, there are various forms of averting behavior and consumers are likely to utilize several forms simultaneously, so the benefit of water quality improvement will be underestimated. Second, averting behaviors are not likely to be perfect substitutes for water quality. So the decrease in averting behavior costs will understate the benefit in water quality. Further, when consumers reduce water consumption as water quality deteriorates, it brings another problem to estimate the expenditure function and the demand price for water quality.
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  • Advocating Weakly Equivarent Variation (WEV)
    Hisayoshi MORISUGI
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 31-46
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The aim of this paper is to propose a new definition of social net benefits, called the weakly equivalent variation (WEV) in this paper, which is defined as the minimum amount of compensation that the society needs in order to give up a proposed transport project while remaining at the after-improvement welfare position.
    Although it has been recently advocated that the best index for measuring social net benefits is the so-called socially aggregated equivalent variation (ΣEV), this paper shows that our WEV is a better definition than ΣEV in the following two points: First, as well as ΣEV, the positivety of WEV is a sufficient condition for passing the Kaldor -Hicksian compensation test whenever the latter is meaningful. Second, Unlike ΣEV, WEV can be measured by a short-cut method to evaluate the overall impacts of transport project by analysing only the direct output of the project, i.e. transport market.
    The difference between our WEV and ΣEV lies in the treatment of prices other than the transport cost. For ΣEV case, these prices are exogenously fixed at the prechange level. For our WEV case, on the other hand, these prices are indogenously determined within the framework of the compensated equilibrium, which is invented in order to obtain the minimum amount of compensation that the society needs in order to give up that transport project while every household in the soceity remains at the post-improvement welfare position.
    By using the compensated market clearance conditions, for our WEV case, the incidence form of WEV can be transformed into its origin form, where the incidence form is an expression of WEV in terms of the consumer's good demand and factor supply functions, and lump sum income composed of the profit share endowment and tax burden. And the origin form is that in terms of the consumer's and producer's transport demand functions only, which makes us to have a shortcut measurement of WEV. For ΣEV case, on the other hand, because all prices are fixed at the preimprovement level, it cannot be transformed into its origin form.
    Finally, because even our origin form of WEV needs the compensated transport demand functions and compensated equilibrium prices, through the Taylor's expansion, this paper proposes an approximation measurement method which uses only the Marshallian transport demand functions and post-improvement equilibrium prices.
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  • A Case of Tomakomai City
    Etsuo YAMAMURA, Masaaki IWASA, Masayuki MITOBE
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 47-58
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the paper Yamamura and Murase [12], we could estimate how much the employment opportunities are repercussively generated in Tomakomai City by the Tomakomai-Tobu Industrial Development and tried to investigate the residential environments of Tomakomai City by using the urban financial model based on the impact of the industrial development.
    In this paper, we investigate the improvement planning of the residential environmental facilities arising from rapid increase of urban population of Tomakomai City by using the urban financial model mentioned above.
    The main results are as follows.
    (1) In the revenue and cost of Tomakomai City, the increase of revenue is 75% of the increase of the past decade and the finance of Tomakomai City becomes to stiffen according as the percentages of the fixed expenditure increase from 63.5% (1979) to 70.0% (1989).
    (2) The new improvement expenditures of the residential environmental facilities indicated at the peak in 1984 and decreased after, according to the increase of the improvement expenditures of the primary and secondary schools.
    (3) The percentages of revenue of fees in the operational costs of residential environmental facilities regulated by Tomakomai City decreased from 12.4% (1980) to 7.6% (1989).
    (4) In the future improvement planning of the residential environmental facilities, the fundamental residential environmental facilities such as the primary and secondary school and the juvenile welfare facilities were improve in a favorable condition, but the educationed and cultural facilities and the welfare facilities for the aged and the handicaped were improved in a unfavorable condition.
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  • Takao FUKUCHI, Makoto YAMAGUCHI, Sukehide KABAYAMA
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 59-77
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In big urban area like Tokyo Metropolitan region, the concentration of population causes several big urban issues like shortage of Social Overhead Capital and of housing and creates the great financial difficulty for local governments to match these social needs. One of the basic factors which accelerate the difficulty of solving these issues is the shortage of adequate land space and resulted high land price in central area.
    The purpose of this paper is to construct an econometric model about Tokyo Metropolis in narrow sense (23-ku or District at center of Tokyo Metropolitan Area) with special emphasis on interrelationships between tendencies of demography and of land price and resulting land use, and apply this model for simulation experiments to clarify the interlinkage of these factors and also to verify the effects of relevant urban policies.
    We constructed the model with 28 equations (19 estimated equations & 9 identities) based upon the time series data for 1965-78. The model consists of five blocks: (1) demography and employment, (2) land-use, (3) spaces of buildings and houses, (4) land price, (5) other indices of Tokyo prefecture. The central area is a part of and tightly connected with Tokyo prefecture, so we need to treat some important indices of Tokyo prefecture to close the model. Some important endogenous variables are residential population, social inflow and outflow, number of households, employment, land space for farming, industrial and commercial use, housing, public use, and roads, space of housing, space of inflammable construction, space of offices, land price of residential area. The result of final test showed good fitting to actual tendencies in general.
    We calculated five simulations in total within the observation period and compared with the controlled solution, that is, the final test. They are (1) increases the land price all through the period, (2) increase the suburb population throughout the period, (3) increase the residential population in central area all through the period, (4) increase the initial space of inflammable construction, (5) change the inner-city farming land to housing use initially. One of the remarkable observations in experiment (5) is that after initial increase of land space for housing the increases in residential population and office space follow and in the course of time the land price becomes higher than controlled solution pushed by increasing demand. Thus better environmental condition induces increase of population and makes the solution of urban issues more difficult. Another interesting observations are found in other simulations.
    We want to improve this urban econometric model by introducing financial sector, combining with another model of the suburb area or of Japanese economy, and by integrating with tools of another disciplines in the future.
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  • Y. Kitabatake, S. Nishioka
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 79-100
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Unlike the United States, natural parks including national parks in Japan are designated without affecting the private ownership of the lands in question and consequently in most natural park areas multiple use of land dominates. In recent years, several private organization as well as local government successfully initiate the movements to collect donation from citizens all over Japan in order to procure and replant private lands in natural park areas. One representative “National Trust” movement is the one started by the town of Shari since 1977 in order to purchase and replant some of the deforested land in Shiretoko National Park, which were originally cultivated and later deserted by farm settlers and some of which were bought by land developers. As of March 1984, 18409 persons donated the total sum of 187 million yen and about 68 percent of the land, 473 ha, has been purchased by the town, where the unit of donation is 8000 yen and corresponds to the price of 100m2 of the land.
    In this paper, economic aspects of donors' concern for nature conservation are analyzed, theoretically and empirically. On theoretical sides, we first reviewed the concept of option value based on the recent studies of Freeman III (1984) and Smith (1983), and then made a qualitative analysis of current consumption vs nature conservation in terms of an optimal control type model.
    On an empirical side, data on people's concern for nature conservation are gathered in two routes, one is a questionaire to donors of Shiretolo National Trust, the other the data related to actual behaviour which are the number of visits by donors of different regions to the reforestation festival held every year by the town of Shari. Based on these data, economic rationale for giving donation to Shiretoko National Trust are clarified within the theoretical framework.
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  • Byung Dong Lee
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 101-110
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    1. In 1960s, before the Saemaul Undong started, the rural youth did not consider the farming as a rewarding career, and they left the rural community very often. In 1980s, however, the increased number of young people with high educational standard have tried to settle in the rural community. The reasons are: The rural community has achieved a rapid development due to Saemaul Undong; the governmental policy providing the youth engaged in the farming with the financial aid; recession in other industries.
    2. The most favorite work for the rural youth is the raising of the cattle and the next is the cultivation of vegetables in winter, which need less labor than the traditional rice crop and yield more income. Furthurmore, the raising of the cattle enables them to take up a side job.
    3. The youth, given a chance, want to take up job out-of- farming such as mechanics and public servants to enhance the technology in the rural and to serve the rural community development.
    4. The problems in the rural development pointed out by the youth are: 1 the ground work for the promotion of the agricultural productivity, 2 the improvement of community environment for the betterment of the living condition, 3 the capital for the self-supply of the development finance.
    5. Their ideal rural community should be; 1 the welfare community free from poverty, 2 keeping up with the development of time with the establishment of the new rural morality and order.
    6. This change in the youth's view of rural community will enhance the self-supply of the food and contribute much toward the 2nd and 3rd industries and modernization of the rural community.
    7. The old generation seem to have some doubt about this change of the youth. They recognize the youth's will or desire for Saemaul Undong and the rural development, but they have the opinion that the youth lack experience, technology and judgement needed for these works.
    8. It is quite fortunate that the young generation who will succeed Saemaul Undong take a strong interest in the development and modernization of the rural community. They should develop the rural resources that the old generation failed to and make contribution toward the reduction of the foreign debt and overdependence of the national economy upon the foreign countries.
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  • Yuji ITAYA, Hiroshi TAKEDA
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 111-126
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Drastic urban growth and redevelopment have given rise to many housing problems. Dynamic analysis of urban residential location is indispensable to tackle them, and provides insights which cannot be gained solely from static models.
    This paper focuses on the changes of a durable housing market both in space and with time. In the market, suppliers construct or reconstruct housing inside a city or in an urban fringe whenever profitable, while consumers choose their most-preferred houses taking account of housing quality as well as housing space and distance from the city center. From the conditions of the partial equilibrium, the change of housing quality and density in space and with time and the change of the construction and reconstruction areas with time are examined. Moreover, the assumption that consumers are divided into two groups (a higher-income group and a lower-income group) makes possible the investigation of the change of each residential area with time.
    Under several assumptions, the market solutions such as the residential areas and urban renewal areas can be calculated from the set of linear functions of time into space, so patterns of the residential location can be easily obtained by inspecting the straight lines in a time-space diagram.
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  • Komei Sasaki
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 127-138
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper discusses the methodology for evaluating urban transportation system changes by means of the general spatial equilibrium approach within the framework of the Alonso-type city. It especially focuses on investigating whether or not Wheaton's assertion [1977] that only the information on trip demand is relevant to evaluate a transportation system change generally applies. For that purpose, two alternative models are analysed, each having its own hypothesis on an individual's behavior. By doing this, this paper demonstrates that Wheaton's statement does not necessarily apply in the evaluation of transportation system change other than a change in “fare”, and, on the contrary, any change in a transportation system can be exactly evaluated by the total change in land rent.
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  • —Growth Strategies for the Mammoth City—
    Hirotada KOHNO
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 139-153
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 23, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this paper is to clear up the cause of difficult problems remained to be solved in the mammoth cities, above all the Greater Tokyo, and to apply a policy model of the latest fashion for it.
    Ten years hence the resolution of the noise and traffic congestion problem will be a still more urgent need for the citizens in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (TMA). The quiet dwelling and comfortable smooth traffic flow are ‘services’ of the type of public goods, whose optimal supply can not be attained through a laissez-faire market mechanism. Improvement of the life quality by noise reduction and by supply of transport facilities of good quality is and will be just a most difficult subject which will be possible to be resolved when a centralized planning system is introduced, although that of the ‘material’ welfare will be gradually made as the Japanese economy grows.
    So, we firstly intend to survey briefly the contributions which have been made to the frontier of the New Urban Economics, that is the dynamic urban system molel; and then to construct the non-linear dynamic multi-region multi-industry programming model in which we have built, more nicely, most matters remained so far unsettled, i. e., (1) inclusion of capital stock, (2) not one point economy, but spatial one, (3) not mono-city, but system of cities, (4) not ‘one point allocation’ of space, but dynamic & endogenous inclusion of it, (5) not malleable capital but more realistic inclusion of durability, perfect non-malleability, and location inertia of capital, (6) discrete model suitable for the large-scale computer computation and analysis rather than continuous one, (7) not uniform space, but taking geographical properties into consideration, and (8) endogenous & explicit inclusion of formation process of scale economies and agglomeration economies, that is non-linear dynamic optimization model.
    We call this model the Socio-Economic Planning Model of Greater Tokyo (SEPMOGT).
    SEPMOGT is a non-linear dynamic programming model. Into this model an essential theoretical framework has been built concerning not only the insight of decentrists but also that of big-city-theorists that an immense scale and agglomeration merits generating system can be established in the Kanto Plain through the total reorganization and strengthening of the present economic functions of the TMA.
    Our ultimate purpose is to put an end to decentrists vs. ‘centrists’ or small-city (little Tokyo) vs. big-city-theorists (Greater Tokyo) controversies concerning the national system of cities, within the normative framework of the maximization of the social welfare, which is approximately represented by the function in the amount of goods consumption, the quality of transportation services and dwelling environment, etc., subject to the lower-bound constraints on the disasterproof, environmental conservation, urban amenities, etc.
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  • Isao ORISHIMO
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 155-160
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 23, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Though the concept of system analysis might be understood with wide range or some ambiguos meaning, but it is reasonably recognized that its main elements are composed from control theory and simulation by computor.
    Most of the recent rapid technical development is said to be related to the progress of the control theory as well as of the application of computer science in almost every field of not only physical but also of social phenomena nowadays. If we would review these aspects of recent historical development in the sense mentioned above, the system analysis theory developed in engineering should be regarded as strong and robust analytical tool for the mechanical systems as well as for the more extended systems as social and economic systems.
    Therefore, regional science, which is recognized as interdisciplinary research, should be strongly oriented to both of the system analytical field of engineering and economic theories in our opinion. Then, especially with respect to recent rapid technological advancement as mentioned above, we have to regard theory of system analysis as one of the most important theoretical element of regional science.
    However, at the same time, if we retrospect historical development of economic theories in much longer perspective, it contains apparently the analytical theory as well as historical or institutional approach as well known principally affected by the cultural movement of romanticism.
    In the sense, we would like to stress that it is necessary for us to acknowledge the relativity of the system analysis, in the long perspective, in its application to social phenomena such as in the case of regional science. Evolution of recent historical trend shows us that technical advancement in the areas of the world necessitates the adaptation of the other areas more or less in the world.
    The areas where are effected by the other area's technological development should have their own prediction and planning for them to adapt themselves to almost completely different technological system or environment.
    Therefore, in the meaning mentioned above, as regional scientists are facing with many keen issues brought by heterogeneous cultural composition such as in the case of so called developing areas in the long run, without studying sincerely both sides of historical as well as analytical way of research with respect to the highly technologically developed society as nowadays, regional scientists should be behind the times, in order to present some way of solution for developed areas and for developing areas in the world.
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  • —Problems We Face—
    Junjiro TAKAHASHI
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 161-176
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 23, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Over 20 years have passed since the introduction of regional science in Japan. In that time, much work has been done to enhance our understanding of the areas that surround us. This doesn't mean that there isn't anything wrong with the present state of regional science. There are a few issues to be dealt with when considering the future development of this field. Among these, the main issue is the trend toward specialization of the approaches to regional problems. In other words, there is too much reliance on the use of specialized discipline to gain scientific and general knowledge of the regions we study.
    It was Isard's intention at the time of the founding that regional science be an academic as well as scientific discipline in which we propose ways to shed light on and to deal with the many problems of a particular portion of the earth's surface. This field was originally characterized by its problem or subject orientation and the interdisciplinary approach that came along with it. After, the founding, however, the academic society's activities did not always live up to the original expectations; the field started to head in a different direction and follow more of a disciplinary than interdisciplinary approach. The dominance of specialized discipline has appeared in several forms but there are two points that are specially notable. They are,
    1) the dominance of the scientific approach, especially that of the mathematical and quantitative approaches, in contrast to the non-scientific approach
    2) Among the scientific approaches, we see the dominance of the social science approach and especially the economics approach.
    This trend toward specialization in regional science has led to a drop-off in the activities of those researchers affiliated in other fields, and this has led to a loss of interest in other fields by many members of the society.
    In terms of point No. 1, we should consider the rise of such so-called nonscientific approaches as phenomonology and hermeneutics in the '60s and '70s. This trend was one type of reaction to thwart the scienticism invasion of the 1950s that appeared in many fields: We can't ignore the existence of this trend to oppose the scientific approach in philosophy, art, sociology, cultural anthropology, and geography. If regional science is made up of philosophy, art, and other various disciplines, then we can't ignore thee intellectual evolution taking place in these fields.
    The same holds true for No. 2. The truth is that in the last 20 years we have been wrestling with many different regional problems-disorganization of the community, maldistribution of political representation, and the gradual destruction of the traditional lanscape and way of life. These problems can not be solved by economists (especially mathematical and quantitative economists) alone. The solutions to these varied and complex problems can only be found by incorporating the invaluable knowledge and know-how of sociologists, political scientists, cultural anthropologists, etc.. Moreover, the cooperation of natural scientists and technical engineers is necessary in solving such problems as environmental pollution, etc., and finding the optimum development of the infrastructure.
    The issue we are faced with is one of realising that a lack of intellectual balance exists in our academic society and one of responding in the proper manner to correct the situation so that a balance between disciplines can be struck. As I mentioned above, the large increase in the number of researchers joining a specific field has been the cause of a decline in the active participation of members in other fields. We are caught in a dilemma of positive feedback by which the expansion of a specific field causes the shrinking of the remaining fields.
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  • Hideo IGARASHI
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 177-188
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 23, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the present paper, the scientific models are classified by its characteristics and given the position on the natural and social science axis. (see fig. 2) Then two new types of the technological model for regional planning are proposed. The one is named the normalogical model and it bears a certain similarity in use to the legal proceedings. The other is named the attitudinal model since it is built with the attitudinal data. An actual example is given to each of the models.
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  • [in Japanese], [in Japanese]
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 189-198
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • [in Japanese], [in Japanese]
    1983 Volume 14 Pages 199-217
    Published: December 31, 1984
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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