I. There is a concentrated sand-pear growing area-about 410 acres in area only in Noda-Mura, and about 860 acres including that in its neighbouring villages on the Matsukawa Fan in the south-east of the Fukushima Basin. In this report, the author intends to describe a sand-pear growing area which has been newly formed and developed centering around the middle part of the Matsukawa Fan.
II. The description of the real circumstance of the sand-pear growing area on the Matsukawa Fan reveals that the core of the sand-pear raising area exists in the middle part of the fan, and the lower part is in the transitional stage. And this agricultural area has more advanced characters than that of paddy-field area. They are examined in Table 1-3.
III. The problem proposedhere, in a word, is that the above mentioned situation of the fan is different from the general form that the clearing of fan area has been gegun earlier in its lower part neighbouring paddy-field area, consequently the economic level of farmers living there is higher in paddy-rice area. In this way, the reason why the difference is derived from should be revealed, and the forming process and the significance of physical features in each part of the area should be investigated.
IV. The surface of the fan consists of thick deposits of gravels and sand, and the level of groundwater is very low showing 15-20 m in depth in its middle part, so that it is well drained for sand-pear growing. Paddy-culture is impossible here on account of poor irrigation and poor soil. Mulberries are the only plants that can be grown with difficulty. Such areas have been left uncultivated as “Kaya” plants (a kind of natural grass) growing places, or red pine woods, where no settlement was brought into being, until sand-pear growing has rapidly developed in groups since 1886.
The Fukushima area, the eastern side of the fan, shows 11.8°C of annual air temperature and 1196.4 mm of precipitation, and has less rainfall in spring (April-June 400 mm), so that the fan area is favoured with climatic conditions suitable for the growing of sand-pear, in spite of occasional damages from strong wind, drought, and frost. Fortunately, the middle part of the fan is least suffered from damage of frost of all the parts of it. Furthermore, it is favoured with the period of shipment than other sand-pear producing regions, owing to its earlier maturing season of sand-pear (Fig. 8).
V. A). In this area, the lower part of the fan could be cultivated as paddy-field 1, 000 years ago, whilethe middle part was left as an uncultivated land with bad physical conditions. Since 1850's, the increase of population, and the development of commodity economy have compelled the farmers there to adopt other farming systems or to be engaged in other occupations, and the depression of seri-culture and failure in rice growing have also afforded them the opportunities to introduce money crops, This is the background of the introduction and popularization of sand-pear growing. B). It is in 1880' s when sand-pear raising was adopted as a main farming or a kind of supplementary farming, Since 1893, the depression of seri-culutre and the higher maiket price of sand-pears had encouraged some of the farmers to culture sand-pears. They were poor farmers' second or third sons, tand abou 80 of them moved to the middle part of the fan from its neighbouring areas to clear the land for the purpose of culturing sand-pears. Thus sand-pear raising developed into the most favourable farming and its fields spread over the middle part showing 147 acres in extent in 1905, bearng no relation to the progress of paddy-fields in its lower part. C). Spurred by the good business conditions during 1918-19 and the higher price of sand-pears, the farmers in lower part of the fan converted mulberry fields to sand-pear fields, or brought waste-lands under cultivation for sand-pear raising.

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