Even today when land traffic has attained remarkable progress, marine traffic in the Seto Inland Sea is still of high economic value. In fact, “Kihansen” takes up more than half of the total volume of goods transported and is playing an important role in the economic development of that area. It is rather difficult, however, to grasp the actual entity of this business, because over 90% of the shipowners are working on so small a scale that we might say ‘one ship one owner’. And yet in view of its being an important and complicated business, there are many interesting problems to be surveyed in regard to the forms of traffic and management. In this draft, the economic value of the “Kihansen” traffic has been closely studied, by analysing quantitatively the real conditions of fright transport, and through the subsequent regional differences in the degrees of dependence on “Kihansen”, the establishment of the area of operations of traffic, the ways of connection of these area of operations, and through their graphic representation. The following is the gist of the investigation. (1) The “Kihansen” service enjoys some strong points over that of steamships such as adaptability to the traffic conditions of the Inland Sea, reduction of the expenses of loading and unloading, comparative cheapness of short distance freightage, handling chiefly of small cargoes, lack of modernized harbour facilities for steamship, and all this gives the “Kihansen” service the principal position in the Inland Sea traffic. Thus it makes itself one of the fundamental factors in the establishment of the industrial area along the Inland Sea coast. (2) The transported goods being mainly rough and raw materials, the traffic takes the form of one way transport on the whole, while the kinds of goods make a difference in carrying distances, and such goods as coal, metals, fertilizers belong to the long distance transport. (3) While the “Kihansen” traffic in the Seto Inland Sea constitutes a big traffic area of operations centering on the Hanshin (Osaka-Kobe) area, the whole sea may be re-divided into five big traffic areas of operations by regional variations in traffic volume arising from the extent of local industrialization and sectional differences in the kinds and quantities of resources. (4) Namely, they are divided by three north-south lines, Katakami-Naruto line, Fukuyama-Tomo line, Iwakuni-Nagahama line and by two east-west lines, one passing south of Nakashima, Osaki-shimo-jima, Omi-shima, Ikuguchi-shima, Inno-shima, and Kitaki-shima, the other passing north of Nao-shima, and Shodo-shima (Fig.8). (5) As for traffic volume, that within the area of operations is relatively larger. The volume is sweepingly great in the Hanshin (eastern) area, the western area coming next. Aki and Bittyu (northern two) areas are reversely prominent in out-of-the-area-of-operations traffic, but the volume is rather small. The Shikoku (southern) area keeps the balance. The out-of-the-area-of-operations traffic is carried out between the Hanshin area and the western and the Shikoku areas. (6) The main routes of the traffic take this form: raw materials and fuel goods from Northern Kyushu and Shikoku flow into the Hanshin area, and the primary or finished products worked and manufactured there are again distributed among the different parts of the same area of operations. (7) The traffic form can be divided into two big types; one is the external traffic whose object is chiefly to transport rough and raw materials, fuel, and consumer products; the other is the internal traffic shipping various productive and manufactured goods, either primary or finished, to shorter distances, and the principal lies in the latter.
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