ABSTRACT

The Japanese Islands are too small and too narrow for the development of great river systems to be possible. The most distant sources lie near the boundary of Shimotsuke and Kotsuke where the mountains of Nikko and their branches form the watershed between the Pacificand the Japanese Sea. After it has been reinforced by considerable rivers from the right it flows to the right of Nii-gata into the Japanese Sea. The Mogami-gawa is a broad but shallow river, which carries the drainage of the province of Uzen past the left side of the town of Sakata to the Japanese Sea, and has its springs on the borders of Aidzu. Several of the rivers of Aidzu-taira are, as has been already pointed out, the drainage-streams of lakes, among which may be mentioned the Ose-numa, the Tsuru-numa, and above all the Inawashiro-no-kosui or Inonae-ko. The water rushes, in nearly all of them, over walls of old crystalline or volcanic masses of rock.