The sable (Mustella zibellina L.) is an inhabitant of the forests in the northern part of the Eurasian Continent and the adjacent islands. Its fur is of the highest quality, and, the best prize of the dwellers in the boreal regions of the Continent. Especially the activities of the Slavs aimed at gaining the sable caused a great commotion in the communities of the Northern Asia together with the changes in the outlooks of the forests, also affecting the political geography of the Far East.
The population density of the sables in Siberia under the forty-year program of the conservation of natural resources by the Soviet Union is as shown in Fig. The ecology of the sables is closely connected with the kinds of trees in, and the vegetation phase of, the taiga, the place of production for the natives who are the hunters and the gatherers of herbs. The taiga is the feeding and the breeding place of squirrels and ptarmigans which are the staple food of the sables. This is a part of the food chain of the sables, and the degree of the thickness of the forest which offers them hiding places makes another condition for their distribution.
The number of the sables has been on the decrease, throughout the age of Imperial Russia when they were hunted recklessly, until they are protected in the recent 30 years of conservation by the Soviet Union. The decrease was especially conspicuous in the period of the immigration of the Russian farmers into the forest-steppe of Siberia. The incineration of the forests for the purpose of grazing and hunting destroyed the taiga. In addition to this, the rampancy of the Russian usurers among the aborigines caused the devastation of the natural resources and the communities of the taiga. The population of the natives accordingly has lessened for a century or more. And the advance of the Russian adventurers who sought after the sables into the Far East has also caused great confusion to the peoples and the nations in this area.

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In Hachinohe, a prosperous city with its manufacturing and fishery, the conversion of agricultural land to urban area started with a leap in 1958, when the thermal plant of Tohoku Electric Company and the steel mills of Nisso Company were constructed. Various factories related to them were erected one after another in the former paddy fields to the north of the city.
In accordance with the construction of these factories the number of the workers increased rapidly, which brought the increase of population in services, and as the result caused the shortage of housing. The city and the companies built dwelling houses on the hillsides in the southern part of the city, converting the unirrigated fields into residential quarter. Development of fishery brought many processing factories on the hillside in Minato and Same areas, also converted from the unirrigated fields. In Yamagata and Akita Cities, the converted areas are limited in the unirrigated fields compared to paddy fields, but in Hachinohe City both the unirrigated fields and the paddy fields are converted, and the fronts of built-up areas are concentric.
At the conversion the small-scale farmers turned their surplus labour to manufacturing or fishery and were liable to abandon farming, while the farmers with large farms mainly in the paddy field area had great attachment to the land, and when they were obliged to sell their lands, they rarely fail to purchase other lands a little off the urban area, trying to maintain the size of their farms.

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The author studied the changes into residential areas concerning the rice fields and the vegetable gardens in the southeastern suburbs of Sendai. There are some different types in the changes, though it may be too early to generalize the types, as the areas of the survey are not too extensive.
1) The vegetable gardens close to built-up areas were changed into residential areas earlier than the rice fields. Most of the vegetable gardens have been converted into building lots by individual home builders and the rice fields have largely been converted by the real estate enterprisers. At present, the rice fields are changed into residential areas in large scale.
2) In areas converted from rice fields, dwellings are built along the main roads like belts. In areas converted from vegetable gardens, dwellings are built in groups here and there.
3) In the vacant areas which were formerly rice fields, many shops appeared in rows along main roads. But in the vegetable gardens, some shops are built scattered within residential areas.

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There are various districts in Tokyo which heavily depend on barge transportation, as are shown in the table.
1) The main areas of barge transportation (District No. 1·2·3) are located near the water-front.
2) These areas have developed in accordance with the growth of Tokyo port.
3) The use of inland canals is declining gradually while the Sumida River is still in use.
4) The cargo in districts formed in old days are more general, but in the new districts steel and petroleum are mainly handled.
5) The tendency is a part of the general changes in the transportation to the increasing proportion of steel and petroleum.

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On the charcoal making industry in Japan, there are researches, especially on the seasons and areas of the production. In order to analyze the regional structure of charcoal making, the relationship between the supply regions and the consuming regions, and the influence of decreased demand on the charcoal making regions were studied especially.
Each prefecture has much increased output of charcoal, depending upon more or less fixed market. In Tohoku district, the character of the central area in the charcoal production has the dependence on the Kanto market. However, in the Shikoku, Chugoku and Kyushu districts, it has dispersive connection with individual and local markets.
According to different production-market relations, the industry made a fast decline after 1953 in Tohoku district, and the slow one in the Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu districts.
In Tohoku district depending on the great consuming market, the influence of the decreased charcoal demand on Iwate Prefecture was extremely characteristic. The influence was more obvious in the outer parts of the region but substantially it was heavier in the central area.

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The writer carried out a granulometric study of beach sediments in Hakodate Bay area, Hokkaido, to make clear the mechanism of littoral transport and direction of prevailing beach drift.
26 sampling stations were selected along the stretch of beach, and the samples were analyzed concerning the size distribution, properties of roundness and shape, and so on. There is a close connection between the direction of prevailing beach drift and the gravel content of beach sediments.
Then the writer examined the terrace deposits of Moheji marine terrace, and he surmised the direction of ancient beach drift which related to Noheji marine terrace, by the result above mentioned.
He made a comparison between the sediments of beach and Moheji terrace, and he presumed the ancient environments which made the terrace deposits.

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The Chokai Volcano, which lies on the coast of the Japan Sea, is one of the famous volcanoes of the northeast Japan, and Tori-no-umi is the crater lake near the top of this volcano. This is a report of the limnological survey of this lake.
1) This lake has an elliptical shape as is shown by the bathymetric map (Fig. 2).
2) As seen from Figs. 4 and 9, the vertical distribution of the water temperature and the chemical quality shows typical features at the periods of the summer stagnation and the autumnal circulation.
3) The result of the chemical analysis (Tables 2-4) generally reveals that Tori-no-umi is poor in dissolved substances.
4) This lake is characterized by rather high concentration of Na⁺ and Cl^-. (These features are not seen in the several lakes in the Zao and the Shirataka Volcano areas distant from the Japan Sea coast.) The writers inferred that the chemical quality of Tori-no-umi lake is originated from the atmospheric salt in the remaining snow around the lake.

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Under the winter monsoon, the distribution of precipitation in Japan is hardly influenced by topography. Therefore, the distribution of daily amount is different according to the flow-pattern over the region.
The distribution of average precipitation (Fig. 1) and of the frequency of precipitation above 5mm (Fig. 2) are classified according to the wind direction of 850mb level. In both figures, the patterns of the distribution are different according to the wind direction different.
From these facts, the author concluded that the effect of topography to precipitation could be represented by the wind direction on which the maximum of precipitation or of its frequency appears. A regional division of Tohoku district based on the wind direction is shown in Fig. 3 regarding average precipitation, and in Fig. 4 regarding the frequency.

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There is a Mercator's globe in the collection of Tenri Library, Nara Prefecture. This was made at Louvain, Belgium, in 1541, and the following two points are worthy of notice.
1) Loxodromic lines were drawn, which later was developed into the Mercator Projection.
2) Several stars in the main constellations were indicated, which had been the original idea of his teacher, Gemma Frisius.

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Annual and monthly statistics of average family expenditures for principal commodities in 28 cities in Japan various in size have been published regularly by the Bureau of Statistics. Based on these statistics (1955-62), seasonally changing patterns of family expenditures for about 200 commodities have been checked and classified into the following groups:
I) Non-seasonal commodities—staple foods etc.
II) Seasonal commodities A) Bonus-month type—expensive & durable commodities, such as electric refrigerator, tailored suits, furnitures etc. B) Non-bonus month type B1-Summer type: beer, external application, insecticide, toilet soap, cotton cloth, umbrella etc. B2-Winter type: sake, toilet cream, fuel & light B3-Spring & Autumn type: silk for kimono, wollen yarn.
Distribution maps of annual consumptions of typical summer-type commodities and those of winter-type ones were prepared, but their patterns were not simple and might need detailed geographical analyses.

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The writers observed the submarine structure from the contour line map of the base of the Alluvium and the geological cross sections from boring data of 21 points in Tokyo port. They conclude as follows. 8 valleys are traceable as is shown in Fig. 1. They are considered as former erosional valleys, and they merge into one river system off Haneda. There are two terraces at the levels of -10m and -30m. These two Surfaces extend in long and narrow shapes. The -10m Surface and the -30m Surface are devided by the Asakusa-Fukagawa line. The deposits in this area mainly consist of sand, mud and clay. The upper sand formation scattered off Haneda and Fukagawa, are seemingly the delta deposits formed by the Arakawa and the Rokugo-gawa. The N value by the standard penetration test is very different by formation (Table).

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In the coastal plain of the Inawashiro Lake and on the southern foot of Bantai Volcano, there were canal systems for drinking water, which had already been reported by Y. Watanabe (Ann. Tohoku Geogr. Assoc., Vol. 3, No. 3-4, 1951, pp. 29-32). This custom is not good from hygienic point-of-view. In 1954 to 1958 several simple runningwater systems were constructed, and as the result the use of the stream water disappeared and a few of the old water courses remain as ruins. The source of water for these systems is the springs along the margins of the lava flows of Mt. Bantai and Mt. Akahani.

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The delta of the Nagase river was reclaimed by a pioneer in 1943 for the purpose of using the land as rice fields. However, because of ill-feeling on the side of neighbouring farmers, it was difficult to use the fields for rice and barley.
After the Land Reform, the land was confiscated by the prefectural authorities and were distributed to the farmers who did not own farm land. Most part of the fields was planted to tobacco, but part of them returned to waste land because of the lack of labour. Tobacco is raised in a “pilot farm” type management, which is different from the ordinary farming by the neighbouring farmers.

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More accurate informations on fathograms and bottom sediments were obtained off Aji Island by the survey for the purpose of building submarine cable and water pipe line, they suggest the existence of a drowned river terrace ranging from -10m to -25m. The author assumes that the terrace and the shallow valley of Aji Island (Wako 1964) are correlated and the sea level at that stage is shown by -20--30m abrasion platform lying under the Sendai coastal plain (Hase 1963).

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La surface du sol des terrains défrichés à l'est des volcans Zao consiste en deux classes de cendres volcaniques: noire et brune. L'auteur a découvert des poteries de la culture Jomon au bord d'un cône de déjection dans une couche de cendre volcanique brune du dessous d'une couche de cendre noire. Ce fait sera utilisé pour l'étude de la téphrochronologie de cette région.
L'auteur a fait l'essai de la culture en pot Bans les deux sortes de cendres avec le treffle, la carotte, la betterave rouge, le radis, le haricot, etc. Les résultats obtenus par la culture dans la cendre noire ont été plus satisfaisants que ceux obtenus dans la cendre brune.

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