Vol.65 No.2(2013)
Contents
Articles
MIKI Masafumi
A Study of the Relationship between the South Manchurian Railway and Freight Shipments of Soybeans in Manchuria before the 1920s 1
Review
SUGIYAMA Takeshi
Collective Learning Practice and the Resurgence of Community Teory in Urban Agglomeration Research 23
Research Note
KAJITA Shin
An Attempt at Complementary Usage of Population and Agricultural Censuses :A Case Study of the Yamagata District of Kuji City 42
Focus
UEMURA Yoshihiro
Research on Earthquake Disasters and Physical Geography 61
Meeting Reports
227th Regular Meeting 75
46th Research Seminar of Metropolitan Area Study Group 78
112nd Research Seminar of Geographical Thought Study Group 81
4th Research Seminar of Political Geography Study Group 83
News 85
Abstracts
A Study of the Relationship between the South Manchurian Railway and Freight Shipments of Soybeans in Manchuria before the 1920s
MIKI Masafumi
Faculty of Letters, Nara University
This paper clarifies that soybeans were produced in Manchuria（Northeast China）and were intensively transported to Dalian using different railways without changing the fare systems based on the relationship between the South Manchurian Railway, the Chinese Eastern Railway, and the regions within or along both using the results from a micro-scale regional analysis. The contents of this paper are summarized as follows :
Tsarist Russia constructed the Chinese Eastern Railway Company. It opened its main line to Vladivostok as an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the early part of the 1900s, and this line bifurcated from Haerpin（Harbin）to Lüshun through Dalian as a southern feeder line within Manchuria. After Tsarist Russia ceded the southern feeder line between Changchun and Lüshun through Dalian to Japan as reparation for the Russo-Japanese War of 1904―05, Japan continued to operate it through the South Manchurian Railway Company. However, trains on the South Manchurian Railway line between Changchun and Lüshun by way of Dalian couldn’t have gone directly to the main or southern feeder lines at Haerpin and Changchun using the Chinese Eastern Railway because Japan had previously changed its track gauge.
Soybeans were one of the most high-volume agricultural products for export from the region in the 1910s. Since more soybeans could be produced in southern Manchuria than in the north during this period, the route to Vladivostok via the Chinese Eastern Railway was less advantageous than that to Dalian using the South Manchurian Railway, which was near the high-volume production areas. Although the Chinese Eastern Railway Company set discounted fare rates, most of the soybeans produced in southern Manchuria were transported to Dalian and little was sent to Vladivostok.
Produce was transported by wagon and then loaded and shipped from particular specified stations, not necessarily the nearest ones from the main farms that produced soybeans, due to the relationship between their locations and the railways. Some stations shipped a high volume of soybeans, and these constructed large consolidating zones for both railways. While they might straddle local hsien boundaries, they rarely straddled those of other provinces. Most of the section west of Haerpin on the Chinese Eastern Railway lines ran across Heilongjiang Province, and the eastern and southern sections across Jilin Province. Since most of the high-volume soybean farms in Jilin Province in the east transported their produce to specific stations on the southern feeder line within this same province, they gradually decreased shipments to Vladivostok after the Russian Revolution.
The author believes that the reason that few consolidation zones straddled provincial boundaries was due to the currency that was circulated within Manchuria in the 1910s. The zones of regional types of money circulation were generally confined to within a given province. Since most of the farmers must have received their payments from the soybean brokers（liangzhan）within their own provinces, few transported their products to brokers at export ports in other provinces.
Key words: Manchuria, soybean, railway, consolidating zone, multiple currency system
Collective Learning Practice and the Resurgence of Community Theory in Urban Agglomeration Research
SUGIYAMA Takeshi
Urban Research Plaza, Osaka City University
The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on collective learning in urban agglomeration and examine the roles of community and regional identity.
Over the past few decades, a considerable number of studies have been conducted on industrial clustering in the field of economic geography and regional development. It has been recently recognized that collective learning offers the key to an understanding of local competitive advantage in the rise of the knowledge economy. Although studies of urban milieus have been made about collective learning practice, the process is only vaguely understood and there are questions that remain unsettled.
First, classical location theories such as those of Marshall and Hoover are examined to note the position of urban agglomeration research within agglomeration research in general. Second, the literature on urban milieus is reviewed and the growing concern about the collective learning process is pointed out. In particular, this paper highlights the role of associations such as chambers of commerce and industry. Third, the role of community is discussed. Since learning practice is closely related to the process of cognition, the problems of identity sharing and changes in identity are mentioned. Finally, under the influence of a resurgence of community theory, research prospects for collective learning are summarized.
Key words : urban agglomeration, experiences of cross-industry exchange activities, milieu, collective learning, community, regional identity
An Attempt at Complementary Usage of Population and Agricultural Censuses : A Case Study of the Yamagata District of Kuji City
KAJITA Shin
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
Quantitative analyses of rural areas at the sub-municipal scale are extremely scarce at present. The most important reason for this is a low correspondence between the territories of enumeration districts（chosaku）and basic unit blocks（kihon tan’iku）in the population census and those of agricultural settlements（nogyoshuraku）in the agriculture census.
The author examined the potential complementary use of population and agricultural data at the sub-municipal scale and presented possible uses as developed by statistical analysis of a pilot case study. Sakuno（2011）suggested that territories of enumeration districts, basic unit blocks, and agricultural settlements in Tohoku relatively correspond at the section（oaza）level. Grounded on his suggestion, the author performed a case study based on Yamagata Village（referred to as the Yamagata district of Kuji City, after its amalgamation with Kuji）, a largely depopulated mountain village in the Tohoku region.
First, the degree of territorial correspondence between population and agriculture censuses in Yamagata was examined using a geographical information system（GIS）, and the author concluded that longitudinal analysis at the section scale of data from 1970 was possible. Time-series analysis of the population census at the enumeration district scale is also available using 1960―1985 data.
The author’s quantitative analysis of Yamagata using these sub-municipal statistics allows for more exact and abundant descriptions and analysis than those of existing studies. Specifically, the following conclusions were drawn:
1）This study clarified the quantitative relations between dekasegi seasonal migration, out-migration, and agricultural production conditions in the 1960s when the former two were at their peaks. The results of this study clearly showed that, if agricultural conditions were hard, even the main（key）settlements faced severe depopulation and a drastic increase in dekasegi at that time.
2）In the early 1970s, construction jobs created by the rise in volume of public works spread on a narrower geographical scale than municipalities or sections. At first, their coverage was limited to within enumeration districts containing the contractors’ main office and their managers’ communities.
3）Since the late 1990s, after the amalgamation with Kuji City, depopulation of the central（key）settlement of Kawai, where most of the public facilities are concentrated, accelerated at least as much as in other sections of the district. This was mainly because of the non-replenishment of retiring officials in Yamagata and the fact that officials of amalgamated Kuji tended to live in central Kuji owing to regular job relocations within the entire Kuji territory.
These findings show a great potential for much deeper understanding of rural areas and the need for more systemic studies.
Key words : small area statistics, population census, agriculture census, Yamagata district of Kuji City
Research on Earthquake Disasters and Physical Geography
UEMURA Yoshihiro
School of History, Bukkyo University
The Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 has posed questions for geographers concerning their awareness of and the contributions they can make to reducing damage in the future and to regional reconstruction in the wake of the gigantic devastation throughout the region caused by the earthquake disaster.
There have been two periods of intense seismic activity in the western Pacific region. The first was during the period of the 1920’s to the 1930’s, and the other is from 1995 up to the present. Severe earthquake damage has occurred in Japan twice in 1925, in 1927, and in 1995 ; in Taiwan in 1935 and 1999 ; and in New Zealand in 1931 and 2011, all caused by inland earthquakes. The author has examined severe earthquake damage in the western Pacific Rim from a geomorphological viewpoint. Based on research of historical earthquake damage that occurred in the region, some important lessons were obtained and can be summarized as follows:
1）Multi-scale analysis is essential for analyzing earthquake damage to buildings and its causes. Such analysis is also necessary for programs to mitigate damage that can be adapted to the appropriate scale.
2）In order to mitigate direct damage by surface faulting we need to legislate land use controls in active fault zones. Additionally, an earthquake memorial museum should not only be for memorializing tragedy but also for education and as a tourist destination, and it needs to have content that is substantial.
3）Governmental organizations for rehabilitation should be set up quickly after a disaster, and a comprehensive plan for reconstruction of a safer and more beautiful town must be presented as quickly as possible.
4）It is necessary to move forward with research that grasps the entire process from the occurrence of an earthquake disaster up until reconstruction and includes an internationally comparative perspective.
Key words : earthquake disaster, geomorphologic environment, multi-scale analysis, fault zone land use control, reconstruction planning
2013/05/27
