ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the changes that have taken place in the mountain villages areas of Japan, and those changes which have occurred since the period of rapid economic growth in the 1960s. About 70" of Japan's land area is mountainous and these mountain areas are divided into two parts by the Fossa Magna the fault corridor that traverses central Honshu from the Pacific to the Sea of Japan. A number of geographers also attempted to investigate the depopulation trend, through intensive studies of the process of change in mountain villages, and they succeeded in identifying the relationships between out-migration and the changing social structure of the village community. It is widely thought that depopulation was a direct consequence of the government's economic policies, which stressed large capital investments in heavy industries located in metropolitan areas. It must also be recognized, however, that the economic base of mountain areas was itself becoming much weaker over the same period.
