It is known that the cloudy or snowy weather expands from the Japan Sea side to the Pacific side through the pass in the backbone range of Japan. Visiting all the villages in piedmont district of Miyagi prefecture, leeside of Ou mountains, the authors collected the data of maximum snow depth in their villages by means of hearing from residents. The distribution of the depths thus obtained is shown in Fig. 2.
There are discontinuities in the distribution which indicate the boundaries of deep snow areas as is shown in Figs. 3 and 4. It will be summarized that the deep snow areas are not found on the leeside of the pass of the range but are found on the leeside slope of mountain masses with higher altitudes.

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A study of the spheres of living is promoted by means of the analysis of behaviour patterns of inhabitants like embodied in such phenomena as retail trade and commuting zones. Recently, the deterioration of environment is going on in rural areas as a result of the rapid decrease of population due to general urbanization and industrialization. It is a matter of urgent need to prevent the deterioration and to stop the decrease of population. For that purpose, it is necessary to furnish various public facilities in rural areas to improve the environment.
Viewed from the point above mentioned, the writer considered the relations between the spheres of living and the location of the public facilities in the southern part of Iwate prefecture.
He classified the centers of spheres of living into three different orders as in shown in Fig. 2. The three centers of the highest order namely, Ofunato, Rikuzentakada and Sakari belong to the first class. In these three centers, Ofunato has dominant functions of commerce and industry. Concerning the public facilities, the cities of this class are equipped with multi-branch hospitals. The cities of the second class, including Setamai, Hirota and Okkirai, have total pupulations of about 5, 000 in their spheres of living. The cities of this class are equipped with high schools, offices of agricultural and fishermen's cooperatives. The lowest centers of the cities of the third class have total pupulations of about 3, 000. There are three or four centers of this class in a town or a village. The centers of this third class are equipped with many public facilities such as primary, junior high schools, and clinics, and post offices.

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In this area, the characters seen in present landscape are the product of certain past reclamation processes. For the study of landscape, therefore it is important to analyse the landscape forming process caused by such a reclamation process. In this paper, the author tries to analyse the landscape forming process caused by Tazawa-Sosui and the Second Tazawa Reclamation Work in Akita Prefecture, considering the progress of the work in relation with physical, social and economic conditions in this area. In order to analyse the complex process, the author classified three categories concerning each of the elements which may be interpreted to have a nature of surface, line or point respectively in landscape change.
In the category of surfaces, the landscape in this area has almost changed from forests, grass lands and vegetable fields to rice fields. And corresponding to this change, in the category of lines, the road-, irrigation canal- and ridge between rice fields-networks are newly constructed, and in the category of points, cultivator's houses and pump-houses are built. But the change is not so simple, but is complicated by various conditions of work or areal factor.
Namely, the landscape formation proceeded throughout the changing process caused by reclamation work that operated on each categories in landscape-surface, line and point-, independently or associatedly under interferance of various areal factors.

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[in Japanese]

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In recent years, the new construction of paddy fields which are mainly converted from dry fields and forest land is the most remarkable change in agricultural regions of Northeastern Japan. Surely, change of land use contributed to enlarge the size of paddy fields, but the author cannot take it as a basic condition into modernization of agriculture. Particularly this idea can be applied to small reclamations.
In this paper, characters in newly constructed paddy field area on small scale are discussed in relation to the changing aspects of irrigation, and then on the forming process of the fields and on the size of the fields after that.
The results are summarized as follows:,
(1) The distribution of the newly constructed paddy fields shows a close relation with existing water system in the area.
(2) With the advance of the construction of paddy fields along the rivers into the hilly land, the location of the new paddy fields and water head for irrigation tends to be separated.
(3) And the enlargement of the size of fields has progressed since 1955, because the enforcement in groups is basically difficult, restricted by ununiform topography and water sources, and various conditions required for enforcement such as funds raising exist individually.
(4) The newly constructed paddy fields are generally small in area (see Table 4). Accordingly, with enlargement of size, a customary farming system does not change com- plately. However, farmers who converted forest lands to paddy fields, enlarged the size of farm management. Such farmers are compelled to change to a new agriculture with modernized machines. This is a trend opposite to the collective management in flat rice cultivated land, and it works to intensify separated farming system.

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The Koiwai ranch, is on the mud-flow at the southern foot of Iwate Volcano. Since 1891, the ranch has supplied a number of milch cows to the farms in Tohoku, Kanto and Hokkaido, and its farm-management has been well known as one of the western style farms which are very few in Japan. Whole area of the farm is 2, 600 ha, containing 1, 800ha of the forest land.
In 1954, 201 bulls and excellent cows of Holstein breed for artificial breeding, 133 sheep, 160 turkeys and 1, 400 hens were bred in this ranch, and 156 cows, 31 labour cattle and 75 sheep were rented to the surrounding farms. And also, several kinds of feed crops were grown on the cultivated land of about 286 ha, hay producing land became about 410 ha and pasture land for cows and sheep became 57 ha by 1960.
From 1960 to 1963, the above states changed and in 1969, 193 bulls and cows of Holstein breed, 262 cows excluding 390 cows rented for milkig, 67 beef cattle and 222 sheep for grazing were kept in this farm. An area of 293 ha was used for hay-producing, 216 ha for pasture and 228 ha for hay-producing and grazing.
These drastic changes of management of this ranch preceded the general changes of dairy farms in Japan.
This change of the management is one of the measures to develop the real dairy farming in Japan, in the way as it is in Europe and America. However, there are very few farms in Japan that can make such a change following the example shown by Koiwai ranch.

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The author observed an example of these springs in the upper valley of the River Abe, Shizuoka Prefecture, at the time of Typhoon no. 7, 1969 August 5. The geological structure is with many joints running from south to north direction. The rocks are shale and sandstone. Fig. shows that the valley walls which cut from east to west have many spring holes but there are no landslips. On the other hand, the valley which runs along the geological direction has very few springs and there are many landslips on both side. On the following day these springs disappeared.

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The depressions caused by the presence of ground water were found on the surfaces of Hijiori pyroclastic plateau.
They are of two types; (1) so-caled “sirasu doline” (funnel-shaped depression) and (2) a sort of graben (landslide in embryo).

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The writer observed Polygonboden and Taschenboden on Mt. Yakeishi, Iwate Prefecture.
Polygonboden develops on the top of Mt. Yakeishi (1548 m). Taschenboden develops on the eastern gentle slope, at about 990 m, which is observed at the bundary of peat and tuffaceous sand.

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In the northern half of Kitakami Mountains, some tephra sequences composed of micaceous clayey volcanic ashes and pumice layers without mica flakes are observed. These sections are situated at hill foots and presented within exposed regions of granitic rocks.
Pumice grains fell and settled relatively in short time and, on the contrary, falling and settling of finer ash materials were slow or intermittent. So a certain part of clayey ashes with mica flakes derived from granitic rocks, was transported on slope and was coated with pumice layer. In addition to the mixture of materials at place in situ, relatively active movement of materials from considerable distances occurred during the stage of finer ash falling and weathering into clay.

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