Generally speaking, machinery production activities in Japan center in large city areas holding great indusitral labor and yielding the major portion of nation's added value. Industries in rural districts in small towns are comparatively small in scale, with the exception of mining and war supplies business. Before 1900. preceding business and other specific condition were contributing factors in deciding the seat of industries, most of which were mining, textle, war supplies, and fishing industries ; but things have, since 1900. been changing and plants under the control of the large enterprises, electric machinery plants and monopolitic undertakings are losing their regional characteristics.
Tokyo-Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka-Kobe districts, with their excellent transpotation facilities, lend themselves to collaboration among related plants, and so they are characterized by an army of sub-contrac factories gathering together around large assembling plants. Since these sub-contract or co-operating plants have to deal with production setups other than their respective parent companies, it can be said that parent organizations are interdependent through these small factories.
Plants built in rural district, for the purpose of avoiding various disadvantages arising from plant concentration in large cities, are not successful in turning out products of high accuracy because of poor labor quality. Hence they are mostly engaged in production of electric machine parts or simple speciality goods.
Industrial accumulation is going on with rapid speed in large city areas keeping pace with the growth of production durable goods. Simultaneously new industrial investments are being made in rural districts, though small in value as compared with those in city areas. But large assembly plants in city area can not produce excellent goods as long as they use parts manufactured by rural factries employing poor quality labor. Accordingly, Japan has to import high precision macine tools or similar products requiring highly trained skill. This deplorable situation will not be remedied in an immediate future.

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The administrative area of Yamagata-City was enlarged in the consequence of the amalgamation of adjacent towns and villages, which took place in 1954. Following the annexation, the arable land around the city has changed remarkably for urban utilization, resulting the decrease of the acreage of agricultural land-use. The most remarkable decrease of the arable land changed into urban utilization is seen within the circle of 4 km around the center of the city of Yamagata, which is located in the center of an alluvial fan formed by the River Mamigasaki.
The second decreasing area of the arable land is seen on the fan or the mud-flow which is about 6 km far from the center of the city, along the main roads, Ushiu-Kaido and Sangyo-doro.
Such newly urbanized areas are changed into residential sites, in its greater part, and next into factory sites and school sites; latter two uses are not so large in their percentages of area. In the case of Yamagata city, the changes from upland farms took place earlier than the changes from paddy fields, and this is different from the characteristics which we usually see in the changes of arable land into the suburbs of other cities.
In the upland farms, arable land which was changed newly into the urban utilization had belonged mainly to farmers with small farms, and most of the farmers who had lived there gave up the agriculture after the change.
Compared to upland farms, the urbanization of paddy field areas did not take place so quickly; but in accordance with the process of urbanization, when the land value of such arable land becomes higher, the paddy fields are also sold and urbanized. In such cases, many of the owners of the paddy fields are wealthy farmers with larger farms, and they do not like to give up farming, having a tendency to continue the job. They usually sell their arable land when the price becomes higher, and buy cheaper farms for the paddy fields even if they are situated in distant places, from their houses. And to go to the newly bought fields, far from their houses, they can afford to buy such machines as autocycles and autotricycles. They cultivate such paddy fields in the way of intensive farming.
The development of urbanization causes more intensive use of arable lands around the city area in the first stage. And the competition for the ownership of paddy fields around the former, comes in the second stage. Thus, the enlargement of the newly urbanized area continuously proceeds the reaction on the farming areas nearer to the center and then to those farther from the center.

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The Makino and Mirumeno areas lie on the river terraces on the bank of the Miyakawa to the south-east of Kaminoyama City, In 1821 the headman of Namai Village (Narazaki Sukezaemon) planned to build a dam to develop the areas into paddy fields. He aimed to get irrigation water from the Yokokawa which has its source in Mt. Katta and runs into the Kayataira-gawa running in Yamagata Prefecture. His work was suspended halfway because some of the related area belonged to another feudal domain. Again in 1869, his son applied for the continuation of the work but was not successful.
Eventually the dam was completed under the governorship of Tsuyo Mishima in 1879. His main aim was to help the ex-samurai if Kaminoyama Han get chance to become farmers, but no one followed his advice in effect. The whole effort resulted only in acquisition of some area of paddy fields. Under the feudal administration, it was not an easy attempt to get water from another feudal domain. The water has since been of much use for the 150 cho of paddy fields to the south of Kaminoyama City, which were suffering from mine pollution.
It is the purpose of my essay to elucidate how the construction of the dam was carried out, and what significance it has now for the people concerned.

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Recently, the percentage of timber consumption for pulp has been increasing in the total consumption of timber. In Japan, the chief sources of pulp, EZOMATSU (Picea alba) and TODOMATSU (Abies sachalinensis), has been decreased since the war due to overlumbering, They had to be replaced by other kinds of timber. For this purpose, red-pine has been used, More recently, broad-leaf trees have been increasingly used as the result of the introduction of new techniques, Broadleaf trees can be found everywhere in Japan, and accordingly the possibility of increased selfsufficiency is obtained in various regions of this country.

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