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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the archaeological transitions among microblade industries in Hokkaido and to propose some possible relations between human activities and natural environment. Hokkaido is situated in the north of the Japanese archipelago, and the microblade industries in this region lasted approximately from 24,000 to 13,000 cal BP, corresponding to the climatic changes of the MIS2 Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) Cold2 and MIS2 Late Glacial Warm (LG Warm). The primary purpose of this paper is to describe the whole picture of transitions observed in microblade industries through a series of examinations on the size of microblades, maintenance of burins, and the stone tool classes. Results suggest that the following changes in hunting-related stone tools were occurred during the LG Warm: 1) miniaturization in the part of spears (microblades), 2) high frequency in burin maintenance, and 3) appearance of the new hunting weapon (i.e., projectile points), and axes. Then, a preliminary discussion on the possible relations between human activities and the natural environment including some significant climate changes is made referring to the recent studies on the analyses of charred deposits on pottery from the Taisho 3 site which belongs to LG Warm. Given the fact that the alterations in the environment and human activities were coincident, I propose the hypothesis that the transitions in microblade industries in Hokkaido was an outcome of human adaptation to the fluctuation in accessible natural resources caused by the globally occurred warming trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 did enormous damage to industries in Tokyo Prefecture. Around 40% of the buildings in Tokyo Prefecture were completely burnt or destroyed. In this paper, we investigate whether this temporary shock had a persistent impact on the spatial distribution of industries in Tokyo, using ward- and county-level panel data for industrial workers. It was found that while the earthquake caused mean shifts in the shares and numbers of workers, these mean shifts disappeared by the early 1930s. On the other hand, the earthquake caused shifts in the trends in the share and number of workers. The combined effects of these mean shifts and trend shifts were persistent for both the shares and the numbers of workers. The earthquake caused especially serious damage to the old industrial clusters in the southeast of Tokyo, and provided an opportunity for newly developing industrial clusters in non-damaged areas to take over the market. Further, the people and the local governments in non-damaged areas made an effort to take advantage of this opportunity to attract factories. Arguably, these forces made the impact of the earthquake on the spatial distribution of industry persistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]