Reconsidering the concept of region in

本研究的目的是了解和介绍近十年来西方人文地理学中关于区域和空间概念的讨论。然后，我主要研究了德语地理学家的研究情况，因为我之前的研究联系在一起。在2000年8月的德国考察之旅的基础上，我拜访了德国代表性地理学家H. H. Blotevogel、P. Meusburger、U. Wardenga等人，并讨论了我的问题。我也收集了很多研究资料。我于2001年6月3日在广岛大学举行的地理科学学会会议上报告了题为“人文地理学中的当代社会和区域、空间概念”的研究成果。根据我的研究，从那时起，我发表或正在印刷四篇文章，如本文所示。此外，我还在《地理科学》上写了一篇题为《重新思考人文地理学中的空间概念——特别提到德语国家》的论文。在研究结果报告中，我增加了Werlen（1995/99）的删节翻译，因为B. Werlen的《Habilitation》一书似乎对研究德语国家当代地理学的研究趋势非常重要。今后，我将在对英语国家人文地理学的研究趋势进行进一步研究后，写一本书。

The aim of this study is to understand and introduce the discussions on the concepts of region and space which became active during the last decade in the human geography of Western countries. Then I mainly studied the researching situations of German-speaking geographers owing to the connection of my previous studies. Based on my research travel for Germany in August, 2000 I visited German representative geographers such as H. H. Blotevogel, P. Meusburger, U. Wardenga and others and discussed my questions. I gathered a lot of research materials, too. I reported my research results titled 'the contemporary society and the concepts of region and space in human geography' at the Association of Geographical Sciences held on 3th, June, 2001 at Hiroshima University. Based on my studies added since then I published or am now printing four articles as shown on this paper. In addition I wrote a paper titled 'Reconsidering the space concept in human geography - with special reference to German speaking countries' to the 'Geographical Sciences'. In the report of research results I added to an abridged translation of Werlen (1995/99), because it seems that the Habilitation book by B. Werlen is very important for studying the research trends of contemporary geography in German-speaking countries. In future I will write a book after my further research on the research trends of human geography in English-speaking countries.