PERMIAN SHALLOW marine strata are widely distributed in the
  Southern Kitakami Massif, Northeast Japan.  They yield many
 marine fossils and have been well studied both stratigraphically
 and biostratigraphically.  However, the geological age of the upper
 part of the Perrnian in the Tassobe district, located in the northern
 part of the Southern Kitakani  Massif (Fig. 1), is still an unsettled
 question.  The Permian is divided into the lower Tassobe and up-
 per Sotokawame Formations (Okuyama, 1980; Yoshida et al.,
 1992). Early Permian (Sakmarian-Artinskian) fusulinoideans
 have been known from the middle to lower-upper part of the
 Tassobe Formation (Hirokawa and Yoshida, 1956; Saito, 1968;
 Yoshida et al., 1992), whereas no age-diagnostic fossils have been
 found from the overlying Sotokawame Formation.  In the course
 of the geologic survey of the Permian, we collected two arrimo-
 noid fossils from the lower part of the Sotokawame Formation,
 which can provide us a basis for stratigraphic correlation.  This
 paper describes these ammonoids and discusses their stratigraphic
 and biogeographic significance.