The functions of fishing ports include the function as market of fish, the function as the base for going-out-fishing-boasts, and the function of supervision of the ports.
In this study, the function of supervision of fishing port is excluded as it is subordinate to the functions as a market and as a base. The function in respect to processing of products such as freezing, cold storage and ice-manufacture is treated separately from above mentioned categories.
In a fishing port, there are many establishments, the existence of which is attributed to the functions of the fishing port. The criteria of the establishments the author selected to classify fishing ports are as follows :
1) : Amount of dealings in wholesale trade of fishing products.
2) : Capacity of freezing, cold storage and ice-manufacture, and number of fish-processing plants.
3) : Number of employees in fishing gear shops, capacity of oil supply, shipbuilding capacity and number of iron-works for shipbuilding.
It is the author's intention, that the size of the fishing ports in Tohoku will be indicated with indices showing their ratios to the average concerning each criterion. The indices are classified into following grades ; A) : more than 10, B) : 10-5, C) : 5-1, D) : 1-0.5, E) : 0.5-0.1, F) : less than 0.1 and G) : zero. Next, the grades of three categories of function in respective fishing ports are summarized, and fishing ports are finally classified into four ; large scale, medium scale, small scale and minute scale.
Generally speaking, fishing ports are differentiated from minute to large in their scale, corresponding to the difference of the nature of fishery. For example, the overseas fishery are tied with special fishing ports of large scale, and the coastal fishery by fishermen operating on a minor scale are connected to special fishing ports of small and minute scale.
The pattern of distribution of fishing ports in Tohoku is different between the Japan Sea coast and the Pacific coast. On the Pacific coast, there are many ports with all sorts of scales, in contrast with the dispersed distribution of small and minute scale fishing ports on the Japan Sea coast, except a few ports of large scale, situated at river mouths, e.g. Niigata, Sakata etc.

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Many geographers have been concerned about the development of the ports of overseas fisheries and the decline of coastal fishing villages by the spread of powered boat. This report is a study on the development of a base of overseas fisheries.
Ishinomaki is located near Ojika peninsula and at the mouth of the Kitakami river. It was opened by Date Masamune as a port for communication between the various feudal domains in the 17th century. But this port as a trading center declined since the end of Meiji era when the Tohoku railway line was opened and the ocean-going ships changed from sail boats to powered ones. Ishinomaki was gradually changed to fish-landing port in accordance with the development of fisheries along the coast of Ojika peninsula and neighboring islands and became one of the important fishing ports of northeast Japan.
Long-line fishing and bonito angling have been extensively carried on with the villages along the east coast of the peninsula, as it bases, while drag net and sink gill-net fisheries were developed at the villages along the southern sandy coast from Edo period.
Ishinomaki flourished as a fishing port of landing from ships with bases at neighboring villages. The wholesale dealers in fish and fish processors at Ishinomaki provided the fishermen with funds for the construction of ships in exchange of the sale of catches. Although the fisheries in neighboring villages was prosperous, the fisheries in Ishinomaki itself was in a poor condition. In 1916, for example, there were only 5 powered boats and 120 unpowered boats. Most of these were used in fresh water fishing.
Development of Ishinomaki as the base of overseas fishery depends mainly on the advance of the marine product processors into the fishery after the war, the trasfer from drag net boat to catcher boat of salmon fishery and the conversion of the bonito fishing boat to long-line tuna ship after the Peace Treaty in 1952. The owners of these boats extended their management by diversification of fishery and enlargement of ships, and they themselves migrated to Ishinomaki city from neighboring villages in pursuit of the plentiful labor and advantage of communication.

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The aquiculture along the Sanriku coast was heavily damaged by destructive high waves, tsunami, especially in Miyako bay, caused by the Tokachi-oki earthquake on May 16th 1968. In Miyako bay, facilities to raise crops (oysters, lavers, wakame and so on) were entirely destructed. They were not only washed away by the waves but were also drifted against lumbers which flowed out from the port to the bay.
In spite of such heavy damages, farmers began to restore the destructed facilities and tried to reopen the raising of crops. The main factors which enabled the reconstruction are as follows. 1) Aquiculturists were consisted of small scale farmers, which bears the instability of production caused by natural disasters and by fluctuation of prices. For example, they are engaged in part-time jobs other than aquicultrure, facilities are evenly distributed among them, farms are exchanged every year, and so on. 2) A part of cost necessary to buy new facilities was subsidized by national and prefectural governments but it is not always sufficient. As it is very difficult to protect aquiculture from tsunami under present economic and technical conditions, it is especially important for national and local governments to take reconstruction measures effectively.

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The destruction by the Tokachi-oki Earthquake in Towada City on the Sambongi-hara fan, eastern Aomori Prefecture, was concentrated at the northeastern quarter of the built up area. Here, the main irrigation canal on the fan had acted as a supply origin of ground water, because of the lack of water-proof lining 800m long.
The heavy rain of 3 days before the earthquake added the supply of ground water, and the building grounds were soaked and getting fragile against any shake.
The fact that the distribution of severe damage coincides with the flow direction of ground water tells us the influence of ground water in bringing the earthquake damages.
The destruction in Misawa City to the east of Towada City was concentrated at the reclaimed land of Furumagi area, where houses were crowded on the soft reclaimed ground.

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There are small mounds near the lake Tashiro-ike in the Kamikochi Valley of Central Mountain National Park. These mounds, over fifty in number, scattered across the valley from west to east on the north side of the lake. Fifty years ago, late Professor K. Oseki, a pioneer of Japanese glaciology, suggested that the mounds may possibly be glacial deposit, but it had not been examined since by any student. The distribution of the mounds is shown in Fig. 2.
The author made a survey of the erosion process and alluvial deposits of this valley, and observed these mounds in autumn of 1968. Fortunately, he saw some cutting places of the mounds by a newly opened path, and collected many andesite gravels which in the same facies of rocks from Yake-dake Volcano. Thus, it will be concluded that the mounds are the landforms made by a mudflow from Yake-dake Volcano, because there are no sources of andesite in this valley except this volcano. The arrangement of are the mounds and the vegetation on them are other evidences. This mudflow once would have dammed the Azusagawa making a small lake. The-remains of this geomorphic episode are found in the shape of longitudinal profile of Azusa-gawa, which is shown in Fig. 1.

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The distribution of population within an urban area changes in accordance with the concentration of industries and population into the city. In this paper, the author analysed the changes in the distribution of population within urban areas in ten years from 1955 to 1965, taking several cities with different size as examples. Following cities in Tohoku were selected ; Sendai, Morioka, Yamagata, Hirosaki, Odate, Yokote and Furukawa. The populations of these cities in 1965 ranged from 481, 000 to 44, 000. The urban area of each city was divided by concentric cricles with intervals of 250 meters from the point with the highest land value as its center. At the same time, these circles were divided into sixteen sectors. Next, population and the number of households based on the Population Census for the year 1955 and 1965 were counted to analyse the changes in each unit area, which is common in size to all sample cities.
The results are summarized as follows ;
The changes in the distribution of population and the number of households show different tendencies in accordance with the population size of cities. At the central areas in larger cities such as Sendai, Morioka and Yamagata, population has been decreased with considerably high rates, while the number of households has been changed with low decrease rate. Owing to the decrease of population in the central areas, the population density is lower there than in areas somewhat apart from the central areas, where population has been decreased a little, although its density is the highest in the cities. The urban fringe areas of these cities show extremely high rates of population increase.
At the central areas in smaller cities such as Hirosaki, Odate, Yokote and Furukawa, the number of households has been increased a little, in spite of a slight decrease of population, and these areas maitnain the highest population density in the cities. In these cities, increasing rates are considerably high only at areas somewhat apart from the central areas.

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“Okama” is a crater lake at Mt. Goshiki-dake (1, 674m), which is a central cone in the Uma-no-se caldera, at the top of Mt. Zao, Miyagi Prefecture.
There is a shallow depression in contact with the east side of the Okama crater. A disturbance of the alternation of volcanic ash and sand is seen on the eastern wall of its crater as is shown in the sketch.
Thus it is confirmed that the depression is an older crater.

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At any station, the yearly variation of the last frost day is not always in a close correlation with the average minimum air temperature in the spring of each year (Fig. 1). Climatologically speaking, however, it is clear that the lower the climatic minimum air temperature in the spring, the later the last frost day tends to appear. This relation is shown in Fig. 2 based on the data at 121 stations in Japan. The stations with large deviation on the graph (Fig. 2) are seen in basins (+), islands (-), mountain-tops (-) or coastal areas (-).

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