The Osarizawa Mine has a long history, and is a large-scale copper mine, representative of Japan.
This mine began to be on the decline about the year of 1966, and it was closed on May 31, 1978. This closure is due to the exhaustion of high-quality mine, the lowering of the price of copper caused by the increase of the imported mineral and the high evaluation of ‘yen’.
The decline of this mine has had a great deal of influence over the related, subcontracted plants, the local commerce, economy, and administration. And the local culture and education was influenced as well.
This decline also brought about the critical influence over the Osarizawa district, and especially the southern part of the Kazuno Basin was terribly affected.
The closing of this mine was carried out, showing an unprecedented smooth procedure.

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The delivery centres and business warehouses increased year after year in 1960s owing to the rapid economic growth in Japan.
However, this trend somewhat changed thereafter.
Because of the depression in the early half of 1970s, the number of business warehouses decreased as compared with the expansion of the scale of delivery centres.
In the field of the delivery centres the intensive unification and the independent management of merchandise have promoted in order to increase the efficiency of the marchandise circulation system. As a result, the number of delivery centres have increased. On the other hand, as for the business warehouses, the stock of commodities on shippers side decreased due to the slump of business, thereby the availability has remarkably dropped.
As to the location of the delivery centre, it depends largely on the road situation, and the major items handled are occupied by such commodities as machineries, furnitures and papers which are relatively in large quantity to deliver and in large volume. These business managers are changing themselves more and more from a wholesaler to a maker with the development of a mass production.
Moreover, an exclusive company appeared for storage and distribution or sales in the same line of a maker after the year of 1965.
Most of the delivery centres were moved from Nagoya city, and a regional differentiation of the business department and the delivery department are remarkably seen. This trend was influenced by the increase of flow of materials handled and the excessive density of cities.
The region of delivery is mainly local, mostly limitted in central Japan.
Nevertheless, the head offices of the delivery centres are mostly situated in Tokyo or Osaka, and seldom in Nagoya. The delivery centres which are aiming for the distribution to all over Japan are few and they have nothing to do with the factories scattered in Komaki. This means that the large plants in Komaki is making a mass production on order for a large demander, therefore they have not much necessity to rely upon the delivery centre.

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The purpose of this study is to propose and test a quantitative method for evaluating prefectures as functional regions on the basis of commuter flows.
The 47 prefectures of Japan are divided into 4 types on the basis of “Internal Cohesion”, defined as the average number of commuters moving between any two sub-prefectural divisions (cities, towns, villages) located within the prefecture of interest, and the “Degree of Closure”, defined as the proportion of all commuter movements, both within a given prefecture and between that prefecture and others, that takes place within the prefecture. The 4 types are as follows:
I. The “Degree of Closure” is high and “Internal Cohesion” is strong. The prefecture is likely to constitute a complete functional region.
II. The “Degree of Closure” is low and “Internal Cohesion” is strong. The possibility is great that the prefecture, whilst itself forming a functional region, is part of a larger functional region.
III. The “Degree of Closure” is low and “Internal Cohesion” is weak. In all probability all or part of the prefecture is part of one or more larger functional regions, but cannot be considered a frnctional region in itself.
IV. The “Degree of Closure” is high and “Internal Cohesion” is weak. The possibility is great that the prefecture, whilst not in itself constituting a functional region, can be divided into several smaller functional regions.
It is found that many prefectures lie on the borderline between two or more types, which suggests that the classification should be used in conjunction with a flow map for comparison.
The method is thought to be applicable not only to commuting but also to other flows, and in addition it may be useful not only for evaluating administrative areas, but also in comparison of various functional regions.

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In these analyses the author treats two peat samples (Jumoonjin and Bangeojin) and one boring core of alluvium (Pohang) from eastern coastal region of Korean Peninsula (Fig. 1, 6, 7, 8).
The forest change in eastern coastal region, Korean Peninsula, since the Late Glacial Age is divided into two stages and three substages. It may be summarized as follows.
I; Quercus Stage (10, 000-6, 000y. B. P.)
II; Pinus-Quercus Stage (6, 000y. B. P. -present)
IIa; Lower Pinus dominant Substage (6, 000-4, 000/3, 000 y. B. P.)
IIb; Pinus, Quercus Substage (3, 000/4, 000-2, 000y. B. P.)
IIc; Upper Pinus dominant Substage (2, 000y. B. P. -present)
The change of the forest in study area was controlled mainly by climate, partly by sea level change and human activities.
From forest change of Postglacial Age, the author considered that the Stage I and Substage II (b) were under relatively humid climate, but the Substage II (a) and II (c) were under relatively dry climate.

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Many well-developed nivation hollows, 100-200 meters in diameter, are found in two large hollows (glacial cirques?) on the southeast slope of Mt. Onishi, central part of the Iide Mountains. In this paper the writer observed geomorphological characteristics and soil profiles of the nivation hollows, monthly distributions of snow patches and zonations of plant communities in and around the hollows (cf. Fig. 3-7). He also attempted to explain nivation processes forming the hollows from the above-mentioned observations and the result of an experiment.
Within a nivation hollow silt, sand and small gravel are transported mostly by rill-wash of rain water and snow meltwater. Average annual transport distances of gravel (∅1-5cm) have been known to range between 1.3 and 7.8cm from deformations of four experimental lines of painted gravel. Movements by solifluction and/or frost creep have not been observed from deformation patterns of these lines. Partial creeping of snow due to formation of crevasse in snow patch drags coarse materials, and it breaks down and shaves basement rocks. Both removal of sediment by rill-wash and denudation by creeping snow are relatively active on the core area of the hollow where lack of vegetation increases mobility of debris, while peripheral areas are protected against erosion by vegetation.
However, weathered granitic bedrock under thin debris in the hollow suggests that mechanical denudation working is slight at present. Nivation hollows are thought to have been formed in the past when nivation was much more vigorous. Many relict nivation hollows covered with vegetation and those dissected by gullies are scattered in the Tide Mountains.

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As the results of geomorphological analysis at constructed and projected dam sites, considerable number of landslide topography (including small scale gravitational fracture) is found although such a situation has not been realized by dam engineers.
On the other hand, the rock mass condition at the dam sites has been made clear due to intensive geological survey such as ground-survey, boring, test pitting and geophysical prospecting. Owing to these conditions, the study about the relation between landslide topography and the rock mass condition has been carried out. The discussed conclusion is as follows.
1) The landslide mass is composed of not only granular marerial but also giant boulder, and the latter has been taken as in-situ basement due to the undisturbed appearance until this geomorphological analysis is performed.
2) Landslide (including rock mass creep) is one of the important agent for rock mass weathering.
3) The distribution density of landslide topography is considerably high in geologically disturbed area such as Japan, although the characteristic feature of landslide topography is sometimes vague.
4) The good correlation between the rook mass and the topography shows the reliability of geomorphological analysis.

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Japan has two main rainy seasons, the one represented by “Bai-u” season or typhoon and the other caused by winter monsoon on the Japan Sea side. Generally speaking, in Japan “Bai-u” season ranges from the early June to middle July. In present paper, the writer tried to find the characteristics of precipitation distributions in “Bai-u” season (in June and July) in the upper reaches of the Agano River, Fukushima Prefecture, Northeastern Japan, using the statistics in the period of five years (from 1966 to 1970). The results obtained are as follows:
1) The regional difference between distribution of the total precipitation and that of occurrence frequency of rainy day (above 1.0mm/day) is recognized as one of the climatological characteristics in this region (Figs. 1, 3 and 4).
2) The distribution maps in each succeeding rainfall can be classified from E-type to X-type as shown in Table 2, those in the daily precipitation, however, can be classified in detail moreover as Table 3.
3) The occurrence of heavy rainf ails in this region is especially related to the activities of “Bai-u” fronts over Tohoku District. Furthermore, the extra-tropical cyclones moving from southwest to northeast over the Sea of Japan have the distinctive influences on precipitation distributions of this region.
4) Weathers of the Japan Sea side invade into the western part of this region, those of the Pacific side, on the contrary, extend to Mt. Adatara region, in the eastern part of this region. Therefore, the central part of this region (that is, the drainage area of the Inakawa River as well as that of the Okawa River) is not blessed with abundant rainfall.
5) In order to study the aerological situations in which heavy rainfalls occurred in this region, the vertical-time cross sections of wind velocity, wind direction and relative humidity on the one hand (Figs. 7 and 8), and the vertical-meridional cross sections of those on the other hand (Fig. 9) were drawn for the period from June to July in research years respectively. As the results, it is found that the heavy rainfalls will be expected in this region, when westerly moist (90%< in relative humidity) and strong winds (10m/s< in wind velocity) prevail in the upper layer between 800mb to 600mb.

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Prominent emerged beachrock found at Shiomi, Tateyama City, Boso Peninsula is situated about 1m above present sea-level and its original extent is estimated 100m long and 20m wide.
Judging from the elevation, the beachrock is considered to have been formed during comparatively stable period between Genroku Earthquake (1703) and Taisho Earthquake (1923).
Discovery of this beachrock confirms the northern limit of its distribution in Japanese Islands.

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