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After the 1970s the new urban poverty (NUP) ballooned in Japan and the US, and it evoked policy responses that produced new, rescaled regulatory spaces to contain the poor on the fringe of social rights and the capital circuit. The paper illuminates this process through the comparison of Japanese and US trajectories, both of which, evolving through economic crises, have established unique pathways. The author first constructs a theoretical framework based on Marxian, Polanyian, and Lefebvrean traditions. Then, he compares national-scale poverty regulation in Japan and the US from the 1950s through the 2000s. Lastly, the author examines how the countries' regulation of a major aspect of the NUP--homelessness--intensified multiscalar reseating processes. The paper concludes that regulation of the NUP represents a significant instance of uneven spatial development of capitalism mediated by the state that requires synthetic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The elite coalition that pushes local industrial growth is composed of six actors: local state, business, and party and national state, business, and party. The question of which dominates the coalition reflects current debates about the structure of power in capitalist society. This paper addresses these debates through the detailed study of a growth coalition in a rural industrialization project in southern Japan. It traces the strategies and modes of influence of the six actors, their structure and process, through the 25-year history of the project. Contrary to the "strong state" image of Japan, national big business dominated the growth coalition. The rest of the society, including the state, adjusted around its motion. This resulted in policies which favored economic growth over social needs, giving some of the other actors legitimation problems. Yet, success at rapid growth prevented these from assuming crisis proportions. The findings run counter to state autonomy arguments and suggest closer attention be paid to multiple levels of structure and process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past century, Japanese society has undergone a radical change in its temporal experience, moving from one following the rhythms of nature to one of mathematical precision, namely, the western time system. Why did Japan westernize its time? This paper argues that it was for the sake of industrialization, where time was equated with profit. The accelerating sense of time reflected Japan's desperate efforts to catch up with the western level of industry in the shortest possible time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1970s 'the Japanese-type welfare society' was proposed by the ruling party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party. This paper examines the background and content of this proposal. Without being enthusiastically committed to the 'welfare state', Japan, under continued rule by the LDP since 1955, has developed social security institutions in an ad hoc way keeping pace with the growth of the economy. However, facing the prospect of an unprecedented rapid aging of the population, Japan has to find a way to balance the cost of social security with an increase in the needs for it. The LDP's answer to that was 'the Japanese-type welfare society'. However, it has been found that there is no easy answer to the problem. It has been noted in recent years that there is less talk of the 'Japanese type' and more introduction of concrete measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the longitudinal trend on sport involvement of Japanese female adults after World War II and to consider the factors that have influenced it from a sociological perspective, based on an analysis of the relevant literatures. The rate of females' primary sport involvement is lower than that of males at any period. This trend is related to traditional Japanese gender role and females' life cycle. In the period from the end of the war to the 1950s, the greater part of female adults had no opportunities to engage in sports. The number of female sport participants increased remarkably in the 1960s. This trend continued in the I970s, however, the rate of increase was quite low, and that has not changed in the 1980s. Some factors that influenced sport involvement of female adults were indicated: a rise in the standard of living by economic growth, an increase in leisure time, the completion of the conditions needed for sports, a change in gender role and a change in women's life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]