THE INTERNAL MIGRATION OF JAPAN: 1950-55

Abstract

This paper undertakes to provide and analyze the data of internal migration in Japan for the period from 1950 to 1955. By use of the “Survival Ratio Method”, based on the data of Censuses of 1950 and 1955, estimates of net-migration between 1950 and 1955 have been prepared for the rural and urban parts: of each prfecture. For the application of this method, Shortcut Method is adopted, being adjusted by the multiple regression equation, because of missing the age and sex composition of population in 1950 for the boundary of 1955, so that the Detail Method which requires the age and sex data can not be applied.. The most remarkable feature is that the heavy concentration of population to the eight major prefectures (Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi, Kyoto, Fukuoka, and Hokkaido), though the internal migration of Japan consists of two major movements, namely the out-migration from the more agricultural to the more industrial: prefectures and a movement from rural to urban areas within earch prefecture. Among these eight: prefectures Tokyo and Osaka have the outstandingly big amount of net-in-migration as well as their high, migration rate. Another remarks is that the number of prefectures in which even urban areas actually lost population: by net-out-migration in this period, reaches as many as twenty four, partly due to the expansion of urban boundary to the rural areas, and partly due to stationary or decreasing status of population in the good number of urban areas. This indicates that the concentration of population has created not only a movement of people from rural area, but also a movement of people from urban area in less industrilized prefectures to urban area in more industrialized prefectures. The urbanward movement of population may be divided into three types from the comparative study of net-migration in urban and rural area of each prefecture. They are: 1) long rural and urban migration. This is the type which has predominantly long-distance migration in both rural and urban areas by sending out the people to the outside of the prefecture. Prefectures which lost population by migration in rural and urban area belong to this type. 2) local urbanward migration. This is the type which sends, out rural population to the other prefectures, though urban areas of the same prefecture received some of the adjacent rural population, as will be seen in the case of prefectures which hay net-in-migration in the urban area and net-ont-migration in the rural area. 3) long-distance urbanward migration. This is the type which have positive net-migration in both urban and rural area as will be seen in the case of Tokyo and Osaka. The side-job-opportunity in secondary and teritary industry in urban areas may be concluded as basic factors which affect the feature of the movement of prople, since both of them show the close relationship with migration rate, following a pattern by type of movement or by region such as eastern or wes- tern Japan and Tohoku or Hokuriku district.