Enlargement of Forest cooperative associations and their regional conditions

本研究旨在明确1963年以来日本各林业合作社的空间扩张过程及其地域状况。起初，他们这样做是为了配合新的自治市，这些自治市是通过相互联合而产生的。此后，一些新的大型林业合作协会成立，合并其范围内的城市，以处理更多的工作。新出台的扶持林业合作经济组织合并的政策也对促进林业合作经济组织的合并产生了一定的影响，结果表明，各地林业合作经济组织合并的类型主要有四种。一类是不断推进林业合作联社合并的地市案例。B型是指近期推进合并的地市。C类是本学期初完成合并的地市情况。D型是指撤销合并后的县，这些县是由D型在空间上排列而成的，位于城市地区。这些合并案例得到了日本政府林业政策的支持：同时，大量人口从山区向城市迁移以及山区经济活动变得十分薄弱的条件也是合并的重要因素。

This study is to clear the process of spacial enlargement of each forest cooperative associations and their regional conditions from 1963 in Japan.The number of forest cooperative associations have been decreased due to merge their each neighboring ones. At first, they were done to coincide with the new municipalities which were borne by uniting each other. After that, some new large forest cooperative associations were established to merge over their ranges of municipalities to deal with more their works. New policy to aid to merge the forest cooperative associations had also influenced to advance their merging.As a result, we can find four types of merging of forest cooperative associations of each prefecture. A type is the case of prefectures of constant advance of merging of forest cooperative associations. B type is the case of prefectures of recent advance of merging ones. C type is the case of prefectures of finishing merging ones at the beginning of this term. D type is the prefectures of case of undoing to merge ones.These types are arranged spacially from D type which are located in the urban areas. to A type which are located in remoter areas from central urban areas.Thes merging cases have been supported by the policies of forestry of Japanese government : At the same time, the conditions that a lot of people moved from mountain areas to urban areas and economic activities in these mountain areas were changed to very weak were also very important factors to merge ones.