Recent Trends in Cultural Geography

Abstract

The author believes that it is essential to establish a new model of terminology for recent trends in in order to further develop geographical studies. Fortunately in 1998, the author was requested to make a tentative list of English-Japanese terms for the Project on the Multilingual Glossary of Cultural Approach in Geography from the IGU Study Group. Not only to participate in the IGU project but also to advance his own research, the author compiled lists of the main terms used in cultural from the following three kinds of geographical sources in recent Japan.1) Terms selected from the titles of geographical research papers in cultural during 1987-1996 and published in Japan. The above-mentioned titles were collected in 'category 26 culture' of chirigaku bunken mokuroku (Bibliography of geography)* vol. 9 (1987-1991) and vol. 10 (1992-1996). The titles numbered about 1100 in all.2) Terms selected from the summaries, chapter titles and maps/figures' titles of 55 articles. These articles were carried in four major professional journals** of in Japan during 1987-1996.3) Terms selected from the index and chapter titles of books*** on cultural published during the same ten year period.From the vast number of terms from three kinds of geographical sources, 1290 main terms were selected according to three principles as follows:(a) those reflecting the characteristics of recent research in Japan, (b) terms neither on the basis of personal knowledge nor of personal liking, (c) those which are possible to compare with terms in other countries.Table 1, which occupies about half of this paper, shows not only the list of main terms but also their frequencies in the above-mentioned sources.1) The first row (X1) shows their frequencies by sub-category**** of cultural in Bibliography of geography vol. 92) The second row (X2) shows their frequencies by sub-category of cultural in Bibliography of geography vol. 103) The third row (Y1) shows their frequencies by journal during the first five years (1987-1991).4) The fourth row (Y2) shows their frequencies by journal during the latter five years (1992-1996).5) The fifth row (Z) shows their frequencies by book. In this case, the following book was included in addition to the two books.Bunka-chirigaku no keifu (History of Cultural Geography) written by Hisatake, T. (2000). Chijinshobo, Kyoto.The author believes that this table must make professional cultural geographers understand the recent trends in Japanese cultural in the respect of terms which are used.However, in order to make the trends more obvious, 152 important terms were selected out of the main terms on the basis of frequencies, and these were classified by four groups according to their frequencies. It is these important terms that are the most typical and which represent recent trends in Japanese cultural geography. Table 2 shows which of sixteen themes the important terms belong to by group on the basis of frequency. From Table 2, we can clearly recognize not only recent trends in cultural geography, especially in a theme, (M) behavior and information, but also the main study areas where Japanese cultural geographers undertook field surveys.*: The bibliography has been compiled even five years since 1953 by Editorial committee of The Human Geographical Society of Japan (Jimbun-Chiri Gakkai).**: Chirigaku-Hyoron (Geographical Review of Japan), Jimbun-Chiri (The Human Geography), Kikan-Chirigaku (Quaterly Journal of Geography) and chiri-kagaku (Geographical Sciences).***: Bunka-Chirigaku (Cultural Geography) edited by Ohshima, G. et al (1989).