I) In this paper the writer attempts an analysis of the management of apple farming, obtained through a process of such development as is regulated by a law he alreacy mentioned concerning the qualitative expansion of the apple production in the Iwaki Basin. In other words he tries to find out the character of the farm groups drawn out from heterogeneous farms, then to examine the areal difference of the charater, and further to refer to the relation to the qualitative development, hoping that a step will be taken in grasping the geographical character of marketing agriculture.
The problem to which a peculiar meaning has been attached in agricultural economics has been introduced because he intends to be free from the easy-going analysis having been adopted in geography. Consequently the detailed analysis of the management is not to be mesnt for, but the chief indicators which appear conspicuously in marketing agriculture is examined and the areal arrangement showing locally a considerable difference is going to be discussed. And the idea of class-division is introduced because the growth of capitalistic classes formed by the disolution of the class of farmers with the result of the advent of wage-labor, is of much importance to the development of the capitalism in agriculture. The elements of the management geography has ever adopted seem too often superficial and external.
II) Areal character of class-constitution as farmers' groups. After the war, the dispute about the class-division of farmers developed and the former ones according to land-ownership or nanagement-scale being rejected, there has been proposed a new one tased on exploitation caused by the relation between capital aud labor. But the quantitative constitution of the farmers' classes and its areal difference have seldom been found in the concret studies. From this point of view he makes this analysis by the help of K. Fukumo's method of class-division. The classification of farmers shown by the statistics is inappropriate to deal with the calss-constituton for the following reasons; that is, (1) such classification as land-owners, peas ant-owner-operators and tenant-farmers means a pre-capitalistic relation resulting from land-ownership and each item contains the opposition among the capitalistic classes in itself, (2) the one based upon the occupation, special or subsidiary, can not reveal the class-relation either, and (3) the in ana gement-scale has no essential meaning as to agricul-tural development, but reflects the partial and exterior character of the classes because it does not show the character of the fjrmeconomy or farms. But the classification based on the management scale would be a fairly efficient means as 2 preliminary step if it were dealt with carefully.
Various materials informs him that apple farming generally brings more profit than rice-crop, and as to apple farming, the farms with a larger area to manage gain a great deal within the scale of 1-15 cho, consequently it is easy for them to accumulate the capital. Such farms are located in the natural levee area and around Hirosaki-shi showing the progress of the capitalistic mode of production and excellent agricultural techniques, and convincing the writer that there seem to be more rich farmers than the other areas viewed from class-constitution (Fig. 1). Comparing the apple-farming farms with rice growing ones, many of the former are rich ones having hired laborers. (Fig. 3) Conse-quently the higher ratio of apple-farming farms to the whole farms a village or a town shows, the more farms with agricultural annual employees it contains (Fig. 4), many of them, moreover, hiring more than two annual ones. Such areas are found in the above mentioned apple-farming zone.

View full abstract

1. “An unavailable time” means the time between 24:00-6:00.
2. A train which moves during “the unavailable time” is generally called a night-train. A long distance day-train is somewhat local from the point of “an available time”, but the night-train has a charac-teristic of the long distance.
3. In our country, the night-train operates 71 times in going and returning. This in not conditioned by disance. For this reason the operation of the night-train suggests the degree of relation between both districts. Consquently the number of the Nitght-trains is a function of the relation degree.
4. The night-train has both available an I unavailable zones between operation sections. But these distributions are different according to an operation-route; and by these facts we can know the areal construction through the mutual communication on areas. The principal unavailale zones are Sanyo, Tokai, Fukushima, Taira, Kitakami, Joetsu districts. The available zones are great cities (Tokyo, Osaka), San-in, Shikoku (Matsuyama, Koshi) Ou (on the side of Japan Sea, the middle basin) Spporo, Otaru, Niigata, Hokuriku (Kanazawa, Toyama). The distribution reveals one side of the areal structure of Japan.
5. The night-train has a characteristic of long distant communication and at the same time the charac-teristic of locality, and is little available between too distant places.
6. Unavailable zones are distributed between great cities and they only have a local character. Moreover they have a weak characteristic of mutual communication in unavailable zones.
7. The district which can be reached in three hours from great cities is the one where we can make a day-trip from the point of view of an available-sojourn-time, but it is seldom different from he “available time” in a directional area of the night-train. Accordingly, in the inclination from great cities towards the districts exists a depressed area like a “Graben” just outside “the three hour area”, and the power of a city decreases in it and increases again in a directional area. I think this consequence would have an influence upon the distribution of cities on one side.
8. The operation of the night-train provides facility to the connection of a far distant district directly. It is impossible to return on the same day from those places as Gifu-Toyama, Sendai-Akita, but by the night-train we can have much more available-sojourn-time. Namely this is considerable matter to be thought for the benefit of the development of districts.

View full abstract

In the undeveloped districts in Japan Proper, the major patters of present service centers was established in the feudal days hundreds years ago, as a castle town, a post town, a river communicaion village or a larger agricultural settlement. Therefore, it will be worthy of note that some of the rural centers in the Shinjo Basin (general service features of which were already informed in the paper of footnote 9) were established latestly and suggest the present dominant factors of the creation of rural centers in such regions. The writer classified the center villages in this basin into four types.
(1) Proper larger settlement type (old stage) : Some old post towns and river communication including Nikke and Isagozawa (Fig. 2-6) belong to this type. (3) Ooaza center type (younger) : In the extensively bounded Mura, especially when the center is one-sided type 1, the center with commercial core and almost all public institutions but Mura-office was foimed in the non-center part in each Mura. This formation occurred in 1926 33 when the construction of rail ways disregarded the center of type 1 and set the station in the non-center area. This type is k center in Fig. 12 including Masugata (Fig. 9). (4) Post War center type (infantial) : In Mura served by two or more centers of type 1 and type 3, some public institutions including even Mura-office have removed after the World War II to the mid-central part of their already-established centers. A commercial core and some agricultural housing are now growing around them. An example is cited in Fig10.
Through the analysis of these villages, the following were noticed. (1) Presence of governmental or administrative institutions is so important a factor regarding to the development of rural centers in undeveloped regions today, as the isolation of Mura-office and other public institutions can cause a new creation of central Villagas. This is also why the rural service center in Japan almost always coincide to the site of Mura-office. (2) On the back ground of growing importance of the admini-strative unit as a social band, the rural service centers are tend to remove more and more towards the central portion of every Mura (through two ways; directly in the case of type 2 and after the period of disruption of centers in the case of type 4) under the leadership o the site of public institutions as above.

View full abstract