The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors reorganizing diversified farming and farm management enlargement or scale expansion in Watari-town, Miyagi Prefecture. The diversified farmers have continuously restructured themselves reflecting the regional labor market and land ownership conditions in Watari-town. Specifically, the diversified farmers sustained their existence by expanding profitable crops or being a part-time farmer. On the other hand, since diversified farming mostly used household labor, there exist farm households expanding rice operations. The farm scale expansion and the farm management diversification contradict each other in the labor force distribution in individual management. Also, in terms of labor efficiency, we can observe the difficulty of land use adjustment at a local level.
However, as the time arrives to purchase new machinery and as the farming population ages, many farmers will stop farming and rent out their lands. Their existence may enable the stronger farm households to concentrate farmlands and to survive by enlargement.
In conclusion, the price decline of rice can be said to be narrowing the management conditions under which each family farm class can continue while the numbers of producers decrease.

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Membership within a residential group was not stable especially in highly migratory hunter-gatherer societies, such as those of the San(Bushman), Mbuti Pygmy, Hadza, Hare Indian, Inuit, and Orochon. It is also true even in the case of the Ainu which is one of the most sedentary fishermen in the world of hunter-gatherers. For what duration did a settlement stay in one location ? How often were individual settlement members replaced ? What is the connection between residential stability and fluidity of residential groupings ? These qustions have not exactly been answered up to now in the hunter-gatherers studies. The purpose of this study was to measure the degree of residential stability and to investigate the connection between the residential stability time and the degree of fluidity of residential groupings. The study focuses on the Ainu hunter-gatherers in the Mitsuishi district of Hokkaido, Japan, from 1856 to 1869.
So as to measure the degree of residential stability, the length of continuous durations of inhabited settlement in one location was used and is termed “settlement stability time”. Focusing on 27 settlements, settlement stability time was within the range of one to 14 years(mean 4.4 years). 37.0% of the 27 settlements continued to exist for more than 4.4 years, and 73.0% for less than 4.4 years. Eighteen settlements were formed at new locations, and 14 ceased to be inhabited, in addition three continued to exist in one location for 14 years.
Fluid residential groupings were based on two processes: the splitting process of the residential members to various residential groups and the joining process from various settlements. The former is termed “splitting fluidity” and the latter “joining fluidity”. The numerical value of the degree of splitting fluidity per settlement was within the range of 0 to 1(mean 0.82). Regardless of the length of settlement stability time, the degree of splitting fluidity was high(S<0.82) for many settlements. The numerical value of the degree of joining fluidity per settlement was within the range of 0 to 1(mean 0.79). Regardless of the length of settlement stability time, the degree of joining fluidity was also found to be high(J<0.79). Thus the degree of residential stability was not always in connection with the degree of fluidity per settlement, focusing at least for 14 years as settlement stability time.
In many cases when new settlements were formed at different locations or existing settlements were abandoned, the number of households per settlement was smaller. The degree of splitting fluidity of abandoned settlements was slightly low(S=0.82). While the degree of joining fluidity of newly-formed settlements was slightly high(J=0.71).
In the settlements of high splitting fluidity(S<0.82) and of high joining fluidity(J<0.79), many cases were the mixture of households of high residential stability and households of low one.

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To examine the distribution of physical weathering, field experiments were performed by weight-loss method at a snowpatch site in the Daisetsu Mountains, Japan. Soft, porous, weathering-susceptible tabular tuff-blocks were used in these experiments. Percentages of weight-loss were higher in the central and lower parts of the snowpatch rubble slopes. The valley bottom and wind-beaten rubble slopes had moderate weight-loss. On the other hand, the percentages were lower in the upper parts of the snowpatch rubble slopes. Weight-loss showed a significant rank correlation with rock moisture content on freeze-thaw days. Therefore, the weight-loss would be caused by frost weathering. However, wetting-drying weathering and snow creep may affect the weight-loss in the wind-beaten rubble slopes and the upper parts of the snowpatch rubble slopes.

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