This report is a part of my graduation thesis-“Regional Individualities in the Coast of Kii Peninsula from an Agricultural Point of View. In earlier papers I have already described analytically the geographical individualities of all the elements that constitute the agricultural landscape on this coast. In this paper, I shall describe synthetically the appearence of every element constituting it and classify the agricultural provinces so as to make the regional individualities quite clear. I shall here describe the southern coast of Hidaka, Wakayama Prefecture, as a characteristic agricultural region.
From observations in the field in that region and from statistical studies I find it advantageous to classify the distribution of agricultural phenomena in this region into three forms as follows:
(I) The form that is limited to the western part of the region, and characterized by the distribution of pyrethrum, sweet-potato and rye cultivated in the field. This form can be seen in the two villages of Nada and Inami.
(II) The form that is limited to the east, the characteristic of which is the distribution of plum-trees, mandarine oranges, and mulberry trees. This form is seen in Ramiminabe and Minabe.
(III) The form that is a combination of the preceding two. The province representing this form is situated between the two regions above mentioned, namely in Kirime and Iwasiro. It is characterized especially by the cultiv-ation of quick-ripening peas and the nursery cultivation of pyrethrum. These three forms become still more characteristic through statistical studies of the average income from agricultural products for every section of the villages. The agricultural character in the province of the first form is due to the utilization of coastal terraces, inconvenient irrigation, soil aridity, and sea breezes; the profitable income by the cultivation of pyrethrum and the intensive work of the labourers. The eastern province is characterized by subsidiary agriculture, consisting of sericulture and the cultivation of plum-trees, mandarine orange trees, etc. In the third form, between the first and the second forms, the characteristics of the two other provinces are combined. we see particularly the cultivation of quick-ripening peas on the southern slopes of the coastal terraces and also seedling cultivation of pyrethrum on the newly cultivated hills.
The economy of the farm house will be still more apparent by a study of the incomes and disbursements of the typical farmer in the above three provinces. In the western province, the agricultural products that yield the largest income is pyrethrum. The number of working days expended in it are exactly the same as for fruit-culture and sericulture in the eastern prov-ince. This fact make the western province the centre of pyrethrum cultivation and the eastern province the centre of subsidiary agriculture. In the eastern province fruit culture. constitutes the most important agricultural, income of the farmer cultivating the rice field. In the intermediate. province, the incomes from all the elements stated above, constituting the agricultural landscape in this region, are the same. This province represents a compound form of agricultural phenomena. These three provinces make up the region of the southern littoral of Hidaka. As compared with the region of the littoral of Oobezi, situated at the southern end of Kii Peninsula, the farmer here goes in for much intensive and complicated cultivation, while at the latter place the tendency is to much simpler agricultural pursuits owing to the need for labour caused by immigration abroad of farmers and by fishing.