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Japanese and American teachers' attempts to socialize children and their students' judgments of norms were examined across four domains of classroom life: academic performance, academic procedures, social procedures, and morality. The descriptive framework contrasted a morality of duty with a morality of aspiration. Duty refers to minimal standards that must be met or punishments will ensue; in teachers' communication ills characterized by after-the-fact negative responses to misbehavior or poor performance. Aspiration refers to encouragement of top performance and is characterized hr teachers' emphasis on positive feedback, stress on persistence toward goals. and attributions to effort. Communication was coded for its reactivity, feedback quality, use of explanations and sanctions, and types of attributions in 10 Japanese and 9 American fifth grade classrooms. Children's assessments of norms' importance, their assignments of credit and blame to others, and their feelings about personal adherence so and violation of norms were also obtained. Compared to American teachers, Japanese teachers stressed academic procedures that promote good work habits, and their communication about explanations. attributions, and sanctions more closely resembled a morality of aspiration. Compared to American children, Japanese children stressed the importance of academic procedures they also appeared more willing to apply standards of duty to their own behavior, feeling bad about violations of norms to a greater extent than they felt good about adherences. This paper concludes by discussing implications of these findings for the quality of citizenship and scholarship in Japanese and American schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to examine Taylorism and the development of Human Resources Management (HRM) in Japan. It looks at the translation of Taylor's works, books based on his ideas, and direct applications of 'Scientific Management' as well as the later work of practitioners promoting their diffusion in Japanese enterprises. It concludes that imported Taylorism was an important factor in the development of what most observers have held to be a uniquely indigenous Japanese system of organization and management, and that late Taylorism may have been the bridge to Total Quality Management (TQM) in the post-war period. Japan's clear contribution, it concludes, was to absorb and adapt such imported concepts and practices in an 'organization-oriented' rather than a 'market-oriented' context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Aston Centralization of Authority scale, this paper shows that Japanese organizations vary in their level of overall centralization of authority in decision-making, and in the level at which decisions in particular areas are made. In a sample of 48 heterogeneous Japanese manufacturing firms it is found that both spatial dispersion into multiple sites and higher levels of automation of technology increase centralization of authority, while large size and the increasing number of levels to which size gives rise, and greater task variability all have the opposite effect, i.e., they lower, somewhat, the levels at which decisions can be made. The implications of these findings for claims of 'bottom-up', participative decision-making in Japan's ringi system are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 3 per cent of the population of Japan belong lo an indigenous minority group—known as Burakumin—against whom prejudice and discrimination still exist. After many years of activity the Burakumin Liberation Movement pressured the government into launching an affirmative action programme which has been in operation for 15 years. However, the ‘Burakumin problem’ has generated fierce controversy within Japanese society, not least between the Japan Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Japan and their supporters within the liberation movement. The paper concentrates on their different theoretical approaches to the problem and discusses some of the practical consequences of the controversy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan celebrated in 1990 the centennial of systematic training of prison personnel. That exceptional accomplishment is linked with the history of modernization beginning only some 125 years ago with the Meiji Restoration. While adapting Western social institutions to Japanese traditions, the reformers introduced new laws and correctional practices. In addition to this unique initiation, inservice training enjoys advantages derived from special characteristics of corrections in Japan. From that basis, the paper traces the affects of factors external to the field of corrections on the evolution of inservice training. The nature of contemporary programs is described. [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]

Japanese women participate in the labor force at rates similar to women in Western industrial nations, but gender stratification patterns are sharper. Women in Japan are less apt to work as employees, a tendency that increases with age. Likewise, female employees tend to shift from larger to smaller firms across the life Cycle, whereas male employees do not. These aggregate pallets imply that Japanese women are seldom placed in career-track positions in large firms early in their careers. Analyses on labor market entry data from the 1984 "Survey on Work Patterns" substantiate this view. Although Japanese men and women enter large firms at equivalent rates upon leaving school, 22 percent of men and only 7 percent of women enter career ladders. The majority of women enter large firms as clerical workers, three-quarters of whom are in low-level "assistant clerical" positions. Causal processes governing entrance to large firms and career tracks are examined in the paper, with particular attention to the relative returns to different levels and types of education for Japanese men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of human organization in industrial groupings is a favorite of contemporary sociology. Most of the studies, however, have confined their attention to modern, highly rationalized plants; few have been concerned with the institutions of a pre-rationalized stage of those transitional between these extremes. This neglect appears to reflect the near disappearance of the latter type of institution from the Western World. Yet in Japan, notwithstanding the rapid development of rationalized industry after the Restoration of 1868, such instances remain here and there even today. In this article the writer presents some observations on the life of iron working communities in Shimane Prefecture, Japan, where certain characteristics of a pre-rationalized industrial organization have remained until quite recently, as of April 1, 1950. The more important of these characteristics may be summarized as follows; the persistence of a traditional method of iron smelting, the origin of which is associated with a myth; and the existence of a special dependency relationship between the workmen and the owner of a smeltery and a hereditary occupational system.

This article looks back at the statistical problems on the relationship between the demographic and economic expansion of Japan. The data relating to the number of population cannot be used as it stands for measuring the population increase in Japan since the last century. During the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, neither the demographic, nor the political and economic expansion beyond national frontiers, were part of Japan's national program. There is no evidence pointing to a definite upward trend in population during that period. Population was kept down by rudimentary, but efficient and peaceful, checks. There are strong reasons, however, to believe that it was appreciably higher than suggested by official records. We know little of the trend of population in the decades preceding the Meiji restoration in 1868, but it follows that the increase in the nineteenth century was possibly less than commonly accepted hiherto. All the evidence points to a remarkable, but neither unique or inexplicable, increase of population since the Meiji restoration. The improvements made gradually in statistical recording, call, however, for extreme caution when endeavoring to measure and to explain this increase, at least as regards the earlier Meiji period.

Objectives: We assessed the effectiveness and safety of rivaroxaban in patients with isolated distal deep vein thrombosis (IDDVT). Methods: Symptomatic venous thromboembolism (VTE) and major bleeding were assessed. Results: Of 1016 patients with acute symptomatic/asymptomatic DVT and/or pulmonary embolism treated with rivaroxaban, 288 had IDDVT and 294 had proximal DVT (pDVT). The IDDVT group had fewer patients on the higher rivaroxaban dose (30 mg/day) (42.7% vs. 66.0%) and a shorter treatment duration (135.5 vs 369.5 days) than the pDVT group. VTE recurrence occurred in 14 and 11 patients with IDDVT and pDVT, respectively (2.89% vs. 2.29% per patient-year; p = 0.534). Major bleeding was less frequent in the IDDVT group (1.55% vs. 4.53% per patient-year; p = 0.044). Comparable effectiveness and safety were observed with 15 and 30 mg/day rivaroxaban in the IDDVT group. Conclusions: Short-term, low-dose rivaroxaban seems safe and effective for IDDVT treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Despite existing patient safety measures, both outside and inside hospitals, barriers to patient safety prevail. We aimed to identify the current contributory factors to patient safety in Japan. Methods: This qualitative study included nine expert Japanese health care providers working both inside and outside hospitals. These participants, who included six physicians, one nurse, one pharmacist, and one physical therapist, work across a broad spectrum in government policy and public health, academia, and safety management. Root cause analysis using the online Kawakita Jiro method (KJ method or affinity diagram) was conducted. We labeled and summarized the classification in a fishbone diagram to elucidate barriers to patient safety in Japan. Results: We identified specific factors in six main groups: the hospital system, education, law and policy, culture and society, patient centricity, and multidisciplinary cooperation. Quality of care, patient engagement, and shortage of patient safety specialists were crucial factors for multiple groups. Conclusions: This study clarifies components of patient safety in Japan and provides basic data for promoting comprehensive patient safety in the future. Periodic root cause analysis of comprehensive patient safety issues can help develop strategies to promote patient safety at both the hospital and national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arimatsu Narumi Shibori (thread-tying), which is a traditional craft, has a history of more than 400 years and has been handed down to artisans in Japan. Recently, the shortage of successors to artisans has emphasized the maintenance of this thread-tying technique. To achieve this, Arimatsu Narumi Shibori needs to be elucidated based on scientific knowledge using numerical analysis techniques, which has not been achieved so far. In this technique, the fabric is complexly deformed, and complex wrinkles are formed in it. One possible approach for modeling this fabric is the use of a shell element that does not have an element volume. As the tensile and bending stiffnesses of the shell element are evaluated using a single Young's modulus, the bending stiffness increases with the tensile stiffness. Therefore, unlike the deformation achieved by the actual fabric-tying, this fabric analysis model cannot achieve large deformation of the fabric. In this study, a tying analysis method is proposed to elucidate Arimatsu Narumi Shibori. In this method, the fabric is modeled using three layers of shell elements to reproduce the fabric behavior. The material properties of the three-layer structure are presented based on the tensile test, the bending test and the friction test. Using the proposed method, we could visualize the stress distribution and wrinkles in the fabric-tying and elucidate its breaking condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous studies suggest that women have higher anxiety than men regarding COVID-19, underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study tries to explain the mechanisms by gender difference in social interaction based on a theory of social amplification of risk framework (SARF). We surveyed older adults in Japan regarding their anxiety regarding COVID-19, as well as the frequencies of their direct and indirect social interaction in July 2020 (N = 1,587, aged 78–99 years). To explore the way in which gender and anxiety regarding COVID-19 were mediated by these two types of social interactions, MODEL4 of SPSS's Process MACRO was applied to the data. We found that older women interacted more directly and indirectly with others than did older men. And, direct social interaction was negatively and related, but indirect social interaction was positively related to older adults' anxiety regarding COVID-19. Furthermore, direct social interaction was related to older women's low anxiety regarding COVID-19, whereas indirect social interaction was related to older women's high anxiety regarding COVID-19. The findings of our study suggest that the degree of anxiety regarding COVID-19 among older women may be dependent upon the types of social interaction they have with others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the prevalence and risk factors of abusive parenting among the incarcerated population in Japan. Using a national survey of incarcerated parents (95 women and 79 men), the results showed that incarcerated mothers are at greater risk of abusive parenting and that childhood abuse history predicted abusive parenting for mothers but not for fathers. On the other hand, intimate partners' parental attitudes impacted the abusive parenting of both incarcerated mothers and fathers, but differed by gender. Special attention was given to gender differences throughout the study, aiming to guide gender-responsive parenting programs in correctional settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of transportation sector and related emissions are attracting the attention of policymakers to ensure environmental sustainability. Therefore, the deriving factors of transport emissions are extremely important to comprehend. The role of electric vehicles is imperative amid rising transport emissions. Electric vehicles pave the way towards a low-carbon economy and sustainable environment. Successful deployment of electric vehicles relies heavily on energy consumption models that can predict energy consumption efficiently and reliably. Improving electric vehicles' energy consumption efficiency will significantly help to alleviate driver anxiety and provide an essential framework for operation, planning, and management of the charging infrastructure. To tackle the challenge of electric vehicles' energy consumption prediction, this study aims to employ advanced machine learning models, extreme gradient boosting, and light gradient boosting machine to compare with traditional machine learning models, multiple linear regression, and artificial neural network. Electric vehicles energy consumption data in the analysis were collected in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. To evaluate the performance of the prediction models, three evaluation metrics were used; coefficient of determination (R2), root mean square error, and mean absolute error. The prediction outcome exhibits that the extreme gradient boosting and light gradient boosting machine provided better and robust results compared to multiple linear regression and artificial neural network. The models based on extreme gradient boosting and light gradient boosting machine yielded higher values of R 2, lower mean absolute error, and root mean square error values have proven to be more accurate. However, the results demonstrated that the light gradient boosting machine is outperformed the extreme gradient boosting model. A detailed feature important analysis was carried out to demonstrate the impact and relative influence of different input variables on electric vehicles energy consumption prediction. The results imply that an advanced machine learning model can enhance the prediction performance of electric vehicles energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing numbers of low-income single male retirees from Japan are migrating to Southeast Asian countries to live in isolation. They migrate to avoid the emotional burdens in Japan associated with an acute sense of shame, inferiority and displacement. This article argues that their migration should be understood as a type of anticipatory action taken by the retirees—that is, an action driven by the awareness of one's own social incapability, particularly the lack of social relations and self-esteem—to create a meaningful future in Japan. I demonstrate how the men became socially incapacitated through events in their life course, focusing on the dominant work regime, family regime and gender ideology in post-war Japan. The concept of "social incapacitation" contributes to the study of aging futures by foregrounding the significance of gendered norms and emotion, as well as demonstrating how history and futures are interlinked in embodied ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between September 2011 and August 2015, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) organised a series of 12 stakeholder dialogue workshops with residents of Fukushima Prefecture. Discussions focused on recovery, addressing topics such as protection of children, management of contaminated food, monitoring, and self-help measures. The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) supported, and the Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health (CRPPH) Secretariat attended, all 12 meetings to listen directly to the concerns of affected individuals and draw lessons for CRPPH. To summarise the dialogue results, ICRP organised a final meeting in Date, Japan with the support of NEA and other organisations. The lessons from and utility of the dialogue meetings were praised by dialogue participants and sponsors, and ICRP agreed that some form of dialogue would continue, although with ICRP participation and support rather than leadership. This paper summarises the internationally relevant lessons learned by CRPPH from this important process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the economic mobility of foreign migrants in Japan. In a country that is largely regarded as homogeneous and closed to outsiders, how and to what extent do immigrants achieve economic success? A survey conducted by the authors revealed that the conventional assimilationist perspective does not fully explain immigrants' economic success in Japan. Migrants from the West experience what Chiswick and Miller () refer to as 'negative assimilation.' That is, their earnings decline over time in Japan. While negative assimilation was not clearly observed among immigrants from neighboring Asian countries, wages among them did not increase with the length of their stay in Japan. For both groups, the skills they brought from abroad were found to be largely accountable for their economic success, while locally specific human capital, such as education acquired in the host society, did not contribute to their earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A revolution in the energy sector is crucial for achieving environmental sustainability since almost three-fourth of global carbon dioxide emissions is generated from the energy sector. It is believed that combustion of unclean energy resources is the major contributor to the multifaceted environmental adversities experienced across the globe. Thus, the development of clean energy technologies, to elevate their shares in the global energy mix, is deemed necessary to reinstate environmental well-being worldwide. Against this background, this study aims to explore the symmetric and asymmetric impacts of public research and development investments for nuclear and renewable energy development and economic growth on carbon dioxide emissions in the context of Japan over the 1974–2017 period. As opposed to the conventional approaches, this study contributes to the literature by specifically scrutinizing the environmental effects associated with public investments in clean energy development projects; whereas the majority of the preceding studies have either considered the environmental impacts associated with the overall research and development investments in the energy sector or that made by firms in general. However, evaluating the effects of such investments for clean energy development is more appropriate for policy-making purposes. The results from both the symmetric and asymmetric analyses reveal that higher public investments in clean energy research and development-oriented projects help to curb carbon dioxide emissions in Japan. Besides, such investments for nuclear energy development are evidenced to be relatively more effective in facilitating the nation's carbon emission-abating agenda. In contrast, economic growth in Japan is evidenced to trigger higher carbon dioxide emissions. In line with these key findings, this study offers several policy-level suggestions in respect of undergoing clean energy transition and achieving environmental sustainability in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of a healthy indoor environment requires the accurate evaluation of an individual's exposure to pollutants. The concentration of indoor chemical pollutants is a representative indicator for such evaluation and is generally measured on-site. Moreover, material flow analysis (MFA), using macroscopic statistical data, is a reasonable method for objectively evaluating pollution on a wide scale; however, no effective strategy exists for the prediction of indoor air pollution, nor for the assessment of an individual's exposure from social stock data. Accordingly, we developed a novel integration method comprising MFA and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with a computer-simulated person (CSP) to establish a framework for evaluating indoor pollutant concentration and individual exposure of residents. We focused on diethyl-hexyl phthalate (DEHP) and first estimated the amount of DEHP-containing product accumulation in Japan by MFA. Second, we conducted a thorough survey and measurement of DEHP emission rates. Using these results as boundary conditions for indoor CFD with CSP, the individual exposure of a resident, in a standard residential house, was quantitatively evaluated. The total daily exposure per unit of body weight was estimated to be more than 100 (μg/kg/d) in the worst-case scenario which was considered the upper limit for exposure in this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The revised Japan Stroke Society Guidelines for the Treatment of Stroke were published in Japanese in July 2021. In this article, the extracted recommendation statements are published. The revision keeps pace with the great progress in stroke control based on the recently enacted Basic Act on Stroke and Cardiovascular Disease in Japan. The guideline covers the following areas: primary prevention, general acute management of stroke, ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack, intracerebral hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, asymptomatic cerebrovascular disease, other cerebrovascular disease, and rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In industrial design, perceived quality is driven by color, material, and finishing (CMF). Extant literature on CMF in the automobile industry has primarily focused on hue. Accordingly, the present study focused on color brightness with the goal of assessing whether light reflection brightness of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) positively affects consumers' purchase intentions due to an expectation of premium design. Additionally, it was hypothesized that light reflection brightness of compact cars would negatively affect consumers' purchase intentions, as they would expect a cost-effective design. Subsequently, multiple car designs—with the same style but different levels of light reflection brightness—were created, and randomized controlled trials were conducted through an online research environment in Japan. The results confirmed the study hypotheses, indicating that while light reflection brightness of SUVs positively affected consumers' purchase intentions, the same effect was not observed for compact cars. This suggests the importance of coherent embodiment based on product concepts. While some elements, such as safety and durability, are required in all products, compatibility with product characteristics needs to be examined for emotional elements, such as design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Few studies have developed automatic systems for identifying social distress, spiritual pain, and severe physical and phycological symptoms from text data in electronic medical records. Aim: To develop models to detect social distress, spiritual pain, and severe physical and psychological symptoms in terminally ill patients with cancer from unstructured text data contained in electronic medical records. Design: A retrospective study of 1,554,736 narrative clinical records was analyzed 1 month before patients died. Supervised machine learning models were trained to detect comprehensive symptoms, and the performance of the models was tested using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) and precision recall curve (AUPRC). Setting/participants: A total of 808 patients was included in the study using records obtained from a university hospital in Japan between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2019. As training data, we used medical records labeled for detecting social distress (n = 10,000) and spiritual pain (n = 10,000), and records that could be combined with the Support Team Assessment Schedule (based on date) for detecting severe physical/psychological symptoms (n = 5409). Results: Machine learning models for detecting social distress had AUROC and AUPRC values of 0.98 and 0.61, respectively; values for spiritual pain, were 0.90 and 0.58, respectively. The machine learning models accurately identified severe symptoms (pain, dyspnea, nausea, insomnia, and anxiety) with a high level of discrimination (AUROC > 0.8). Conclusion: The machine learning models could detect social distress, spiritual pain, and severe symptoms in terminally ill patients with cancer from text data contained in electronic medical records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines recent controversies in Japan surrounding access to the power grid by renewable energy producers to think through the possibilities of a political ecology of socio-technical systems. Beginning in summer 2016, regional power utilities across Japan began denying applications from renewable energy producers seeking access to the grid because it was "at capacity." Questions about what constituted "capacity," how and by whom capacity was determined, and what energy sources were given preferential access to the grid were significant topics of contention among renewables developers, solar advocates, power utility administrators, and central government bureaucrats. On days with excess sun or wind and low power demand, renewables producers have also been denied access to maintain grid stability. Bringing together literature on the material politics of socio-technical systems and the political economy of electric power, this article examines the grid as a networked infrastructure with its own intrinsic materiality that shapes the trajectories of renewable energy transitions. It draws on interviews with central government policymakers, utility representatives, and renewables advocates to argue that regional grid operators appeal to technical constraints to restrict the amount of renewable energy on the power grid and safeguard fixed capital investments in nuclear power. It highlights the role of expertise and counter-expertise in these disputes and calls for greater attention to how the materiality of the power grid shapes the political dynamics of renewable energy transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is three-fold: first, it tests whether inter-industry R&D spillovers are positively associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes among R&D intensive firms in Europe, US and Japan; second, it tests whether such a relationship is conditional on their level of absorptive capacity (ACAP); third, it tests whether the acquisition of foreign patents, an additional channel to access external knowledge, trigger high growth episodes among a sub-set of R&D intensive firms. For the empirical analysis, we focus on R&D intensive manufacturing firms observed between 2002 and 2017, located in Europe, US and Japan. The empirical findings support the hypotheses suggesting that: a) inter-industry R&D spillovers are associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes; b) ACAP conditions the relationship between inter-industry R&D spillovers and the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes and c) shares of foreign patents are positively associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes among high-tech R&D intensive firms. JEL codes: C41, L25, O33. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a historical introduction to psychiatry and music therapy in Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed by English translations of related excerpts from Shūzō Kure's Psychotherapy (1916). Music was used as preventive healthcare during the Edo period (1603–1867). This continued into the Meiji period (1868–1912), when European music was also employed by psychiatrists alongside traditional Japanese songs. Kure (1865–1932) is known as the father of Japanese psychiatry and his work best illustrates the links between music and psychiatry in Japan at the turn of the century, showing the integration of European and Japanese theories and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author announces the publication of the article "Society of Toxicologic Pathology Position Paper on Pathology Image Data: Compliance with 21 CFR Parts 58 and 11" in volume 35 issue of the "Journal of Toxicologic Pathology." He claimed that the article was published after an agreement was signed between the Society of Toxicologic Pathology and Sage Publications. The author argued that the decision of the Japanese Society of Toxicologic Pathology (JSTP) to republish the article denotes a global cooperation among toxicologic pathology societies.

While people may experience mixed emotions when confronting a meaningful ending; it is unclear how much an ending's meaningfulness contributes to evoking these mixed emotions. This study examined, among Japanese undergraduate students, whether different degrees of meaningfulness of an ending affected emotional experiences, and how time passage changed emotional intensity. Sixty-one Japanese students (37 females, 24 males; M age = 20.75, SD = 0.80) reported their emotional experiences and the degree of meaningfulness they assigned to the ending of the Heisei era at two time points-before and after the ending. As expected, participants who placed high meaningfulness to the ending of the Heisei era experienced a high level of mixed emotions, indicating that the degree of meaningfulness given to an ending can modulate emotional experiences. Furthermore, the specific emotions experienced (i.e., sadness or happiness) differed depending on the assessment time point, such that the meaningfulness of the ending played a key role in producing mixed emotional experiences in this sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross-sectional study aims to clarify the relationship between the number of behavioral and psychological symptoms in long-term care recipients and family caregivers' depressive states. Participants were 38 family caregivers who had provided care for their relatives for 6 years or more; they were recruited from in-home care settings in Aichi, Gifu, and Shiga Prefectures, Japan. Participants answered a self-administered questionnaire assessing their depressive state using the Japanese version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies for Depression Scale (CES-D). They also answered questions inquiring about behavioral and psychological symptoms of care recipients, including resistance to care, irritability, and feelings of persecution. Using CES-D scores, 11 participants were categorized as depressed and 27 as non-depressed. Depressive symptoms were significantly greater in those with more behavioral and psychological symptoms, following adjustment for confounding factors. The odds ratio of being in a depressive state was 9.43 higher for those with more than 4 behavioral and psychological symptoms compared to those with none, showing a distinct threshold for the influence of behavioral and psychological symptoms on depressive state. Knowing the number of behavioral and psychological symptoms of care recipients may help quickly identify depressed caregivers and alleviate depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the policies of development cooperation promoted by Japan and Korea in Central Asia, focussing on the roles of discourses treating Japan and Korea as potential non-Western models for the region's development and modernisation in their relations with Central Asian states. We trace the evolution of relevant developmental approaches made by Japan and Korea, analysing discourses and practices of sharing experiences, as well as the key drivers behind those shifts, and we seek to locate these changes in the larger context of regional political economy and international relations. Furthermore, the article seeks to address the ideational and normative aspects of Japanese and Korean development cooperation in Central Asia. We conclude with a recap comparison of Japan's and Korea's sharing of development experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project ethnographically explores how individuals in a small Japanese town negotiate the changes brought about by the increased omnipresence of digital technologies in their everyday lives. It delves into the affective dimensions of individuals' imagination of a global digital order, of the impact of digital media on social organization, and of their own sense of place in a globalized world. It demonstrates that while digital media's connective affordances help reduce the sense of isolation stemming from the community's geographic position, conflicting feelings of dis connection, alienation and loss simultaneously arise in its members' broader relationship to the digital world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In criminological country comparisons, countries are often assumed to be relatively homogeneous units ('methodological nationalism'). Within individual countries, there seems to be a more or less uniform understanding of crime. In contrast to this supposition, we assume the possibility that interpretations of deviance or crime can also diverge to a great extent within countries. Based on an explorative comparative study with young people in Japan and Germany, we show that there are both similarities and differences: The youths we interviewed in the two countries share some views on norms and norm violations (for instance, relating to school norms which they, at the same time, question, and acknowledge), while in others they differ (e.g. concerning the assessment of the severity of deviant behavior). Criminological country comparisons, we conclude, should pay more attention to controversies on the definition of deviance and crime and to heterogeneity within countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the automotive lineage and manufacturing origins of platforms. Challenging prevailing assumptions that the platform is a digital artefact, and platform capitalism a new era, this article traces crucial elements of platform capitalism to Toyotist automobile manufacture in order to rethink the relationship between technology and organization. Arguing that the very terminology and industry applications of the 'platform' emerge from the automobile industry over the course of the 20th century, this article cautions against the uncritical adoption of epochal paradigms, or assumptions that new technologies require new organizational forms. By parsing the platform into two types, the stack and the intermediary, this article demonstrates how the platform concept and data-driven production practice both develop out of the Toyota Production System in particular, and American and Japanese analyses of it. Toyotism, we show, is the unseen industrial and epistemological background against which the platform economy plays out. In making this case, this article highlights the crucial continuities between the data-intensive production of companies like Uber and Amazon – emblematic of digital platform capitalism – and the organizational paradigms of the automobile industry. At a moment when the automobile returns to prominence amit platforms such as Uber, Didi Chuxing, or Waymo, and as we find tech companies turning to automobile manufacturing, this automotive lineage of the platform offers a crucial reminder of the automotive origins of what we now call platform capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Tokyo, the traditional role of streets as children's play spaces has been largely replaced by designated spaces such as parks. Based on two case studies, this article demonstrates how carfree streets provide an opportunity for residents to reinvent and domesticate street spaces for children's play. The declining heterogeneity in Japanese streets and the government's rigidity in restricting informality are explored through literature review, while participant observation and interviews with key stakeholders are used to explain the evolution of streets and street activities, and the intricacies in appropriating spaces reclaimed from cars. The article concludes that these activities give texture to the street spaces, and the emergent camaraderie produces a "placeness" that is unique to each location. Moreover, the long-standing rapport that community organizations have with residents and authorities has empowered street-based activities to transgress the boundaries that limit the heterogeneity of streets as public open spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the reader methodological insights emerging from a hermeneutic phenomenological study that examined the meaning of the woman–midwife relationship in Japan. The methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology was chosen because it is well suited to reveal women's and midwives' lived experience that is often taken for granted in day-to-day maternity care settings. However, implementing the methodology was not without its challenges. These challenges included whether hermeneutic phenomenology, based on Western philosophy, could be appropriate for conducting a study involving a researcher and participants who identify as Japanese. Further, while the study required final write up in English, the interviews were conducted in Japanese. Utilizing hermeneutic phenomenology relies on language as the tool for accessing the phenomenon of enquiry. However, Japanese culture is less expressive and, relative to Western cultures, values non-verbal communication. Beyond verbal expression, language also conveys unique influences of each culture. Although it may be challenging to conduct research between different cultures, and their unique ways of thinking and languages, it is not an impossible situation and can be rewarding. The value of using hermeneutic phenomenology for a Japanese centered study helped to convey the meaning of the woman–midwife relationship in Japan. This article details the unique process of the study, in terms of the philosophical foundation and languages, to provide methodological insights and advances for future cross-cultural qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explain why Japan has been at the periphery of the international humanitarian system, at least for the past two decades. Based on a review of the main features of the country's historical involvement in humanitarian crisis response, I suggest two main reasons: 1) the difficulty for Japan to adapt to the kind of institutions created after the end of the Cold War, mainly by Western actors, and 2) Japan's preference for an integral approach to crisis management, using multiple international cooperation means, which falls outside of the present humanitarian diplomacy paradigm. As this paradigm comes into question, Japan can influence the emerging humanitarian system, particularly through the promotion of crisis management ownership and long-term commitment backed by multiple financial means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Help-seeking is commonly conceived as an instrumental behavior that improves people's subjective well-being. However, most findings supporting a positive association between help-seeking and subjective well-being are observed in independence-preferring countries. Drawing from research demonstrating that the pathways to subjective well-being are culturally divergent, we posit that help-seeking tendencies may be detrimental to subjective well-being for members in interdependence-preferring countries where norms for preserving relational harmony and face concerns are prevalent. This study tested the moderating role of country in the relationship between help-seeking tendencies and subjective well-being using data from 5,068 American and Japanese participants. Results revealed that although help-seeking tendencies were associated with greater life satisfaction, higher positive affect, and lower negative affect among Americans, help-seeking tendencies were associated with poorer life satisfaction and lower positive affect among Japanese. We discuss the importance of adopting culturally sensitive perspectives when examining antecedents of subjective well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminology has long understood architecture to be both a problem, in that design might increase the pains of an individual's experience within the criminal justice system, and its solution. Study of the Japanese koban, or police box, reveals the ways in which the architecture and design of a built form communicate the values and objectives of criminal justice. The article draws upon recent criminological thinking about space and about the senses, in which the materiality of public space is understood to have a powerfully affective dimension, and in which meaning arises through the signifying practices of places, events and experiences. In Japan, police boxes have a lengthy history as an architectural manifestation of a mode of policing designed to surveill, reassure, and monitor. Extensive and immersive research conducted in Japan during a 2-year period investigated the ways in which koban both 'take place', as built forms within public spaces, and also 'make sense', as signifying practice designed to communicate the values and intentions of Japanese community policing and an 'affective atmosphere' of law enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As demonstrated in this paper, Japan over the years has grown to become the leading ODA provider in Central Asia (CA). ODA has served as a foreign policy tool and as the most significant tool for maintaining cooperation ties. Although the focus of Japan's ODA assistance over the years has been on East Asian countries, CA is growing to become another frontier for more proactive Japanese policies. The Japan-supported initiatives of recent years tend to favor more pragmatic cooperation schemes. As is exemplified by water-related assistance in Uzbekistan and support for local capacity building in Kyrgyzstan, Japanese assistance of a more focused character can better contribute to development both in these societies and in the region in general. These types of initiatives can successfully complement government-to-government assistance schemes and Japanese investments into large scale projects. The focus on local communities will also ensure that beneficiaries of the Japanese assistance projects will include not only governmental institutions but also the general public at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of people affected by dementia increases rapidly, dementia has been transformed into an epidemic which endangers global health and wealth, and many populations are now living in what Jain terms a time of prognosis, in fear of the disease. Through its strong association with ageing and memory loss, dementia is conceived of as a linear decline into loss of self and death, and those with dementia as other. More significantly, imagined as a threat that signifies both a loss of able-bodied workforce and a large population dependent on care and support, dementia inevitably feeds into the 'crisis-of-care' narrative that is prominent in many ageing societies. With one of the fastest ageing populations in the world, and an extremely low birth rate, the dementia prognosis is particularly acute in Japan and dementia is strongly linked to the idea of a 'care crisis'. This situation has produced an increasing number of cultural representations of dementia and care and this paper considers three of these cultural texts, all rooted in the historical and cultural contexts in which they were produced: the novel The Twilight Years; the film Memories of Tomorrow; and the comic book Pecoross' Mother and Her Days. The analysis concentrates upon their representations of care, seeing this as a space where the ethical relationship between self and other can be negotiated and where time with dementia can be imagined and re-imagined. The analysis of these texts from a feminist ethics perspective demonstrates the potential of popular and creative representations to interrogate and potentially expand the meanings of dementia, ageing and living in prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Sociological Association’s Research Committee “Logic and Methodology” (RC33), under the direction of President Nina Baur, has begun to concentrate on sociological methodology developments in world regions other than Europe and North America. This is the first “Regional Report” to be jointly published by the BMS and this issue’s RC33 Newsletter. This paper attempts to briefly outline the status of historical and comparative sociology in Japan by a retrospective study focusing on methodological aspects. It reveals that methodology has been and will be the philosopher’s stone in a series of disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobile ecosystem has recently experienced a transition in platform leadership from network operators to mobile operating system providers. In each system the platform provider exerts effort in order to attract other firms for generativity and profitability. In this paper, we identify and analyze the working mechanism of one business practice that significantly influences the ecosystem's generativity and platform provider's profitability via value appropriation. Revenue sharing has become a common practice in the mobile ecosystem following NTT DoCoMo's radical revenue-sharing model contributing toward mobile service success in Japan. Studies further argue that offering a wide portfolio of services through an attractive or innovative revenue-sharing model is one of key success factors in the mobile ecosystem. However, app developers have continuously claimed that they do not receive their fair share and the press reports a substantial number of disputes concerning revenue sharing between the platform provider and app developers. We propose a new bargaining model, the modified apex game, that investigates how value is likely to be appropriated between the platform provider and app developers within a given mobile platform mediated network. We support our theoretical predictions using data collected from the early mobile ecosystem by a network operator as well as the iOS and Android mediated networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Seminar of Population and the Economy: From Hunger to Modern Economic Growth, held in Toyonaka, Japan from January 7 to 10, 1997, was cosponsored by the Historical Demography Committee of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population and the International Association of Economic History. The seminar objective was to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of findings concerning the relationship between population and economic change in pre-industrial Europe and in non-European regions, both in the past and more contemporary times. Seminar organizers hoped to generate research that would bring us closer to filling existing gaps in our knowledge concerning Malthusian demographic-economic dynamics. Although the role of migration as both a short and long-term adjustment mechanism to population pressures and economic stress has been emphasized in the literature, people still have limited knowledge concerning this mechanism. In the first paper presented at the Session on Migration in Demographic Contexts, Massimo Livi-Bacci posited the hypothesis that nineteenth century European emigration served as an escape route from Mathusian population pressures. In the paper, Migration, Marriage, and Population in the Netherlands, 1500-1900, Jan de Vries considers the role of migration in the patterns of population growth, urbanization, and nuptiality in the Netherlands during the 1500-1900 period.

The article discusses the reassessment of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination dosing regimen in Japan, highlighting the shift to a two-dose recommendation for individuals under 15 and the persistence of a three-dose recommendation for those aged 15 and above. It emphasizes the need for evidence-based policy decisions, potential benefits in optimizing medical resource allocation and the importance of international cooperation to address vaccination disparities.

Through a questionnaire survey of teachers of special classes for children with low vision in Japan's primary and lower secondary schools, this study aims to clarify the basic data of children in these classes, the realities of their learning situations, and the realities of the instruction they receive from their teachers. A special class for children with low vision is a class specially organised in primary and lower secondary schools to deliver an education that is appropriate to children with low vision. Basic data items for children covered grade, sex, and visual acuity and also the written characters, low-vision devices, and textbooks that they use in their studies. The survey also elicited responses about the information and communication technology (ICT) devices that teachers use in their teaching, their number of years' teaching experience, their number of years' experience teaching children who are visually impaired, and the content or topic of training that they desire to improve their specialisation in the education of children who are visually impaired. In addition to obtaining statistics on basic items related to children's sex and visual acuity, the results revealed change in children's actual situations over the years through comparison with the results of previous studies. Specifically, the percentage of children with visual acuity under 20/66 increased, and the usage rate of braille decreased. We also learned that while usage rates of enlarged textbooks and ICT devices are increasing, the rate of using low-vision devices is decreasing. In addition, it was revealed that a majority of teachers had less than 3 years' experience in education for children who are visually impaired, regardless of general teaching experience, and that there is a considerable need for training in basic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Arm wrestling is a popular sport in which various injuries have occurred, even in children. Purpose: To analyze reported fracture-separation of the medial humeral epicondyle (MHE) caused by arm wrestling to determine its mechanism and provide a current overview. Study Design: Systematic review; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: The PubMed and Web of Science databases were searched using the terms "arm wrestling" and "humeral fracture" or "medial humeral epicondyle fracture"; and "sports" and "humeral fracture" or "medial humeral epicondyle fracture," following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. The inclusion criteria were English full-text articles on arm wrestling–induced MHE fracture that described patient characteristics and presented appropriate images. Studies with a lack of appropriate images or detailed description of the injury situation were excluded. The patient characteristics were evaluated, and the ratios of treatment selection and outcomes were evaluated using the chi-square test. Results: Included were 27 studies with a total of 68 patients, all boys with a mean age of 14.6 ± 1.24 years (based on n = 65, with 3 patients excluded from this calculation as no definitive age was provided). Boys aged 14 to 15 years accounted for 72% (49/68) of the cases. Fracture occurred suddenly during arm wrestling in 63 boys, while the other 5 boys experienced antecedent medial elbow pain. The match status at the time of injury, provided for 46 patients, was varied. In 31 boys with known match details, injury occurred when a participant suddenly added more force to change the match status. Eight patients displayed anterior and/or proximal displacement of the MHE fragment. Treatment was nonoperative in 25 patients and operative in 38 patients (n = 63, excluding 5 unknown patients). In 35 patients followed up for ≥3 months (mean, 17.6 ± 12.3 months), outcomes were not significantly different between the operative and nonoperative groups. Conclusion: MHE fracture-separation caused by arm wrestling occurred mostly in boys aged 14 to 15 years regardless of the match status. The likely direct cause is forceful traction of the attached flexor-pronator muscles. A relative mechanical imbalance during adolescence may be an underlying cause. A sudden change from concentric to eccentric contraction of the flexor-pronator muscles increases the likelihood of fracture occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although organizational slack is a prominent construct in strategic management, it is often treated as an antecedent or enabler of other organizational outcomes, and thus our understanding of where slack comes from is underdeveloped. We draw on the behavioral theory of the firm to develop a better understanding about the antecedents of organizational slack. In so doing, we address a gap in the literature on the antecedents of slack by developing base models showing how and why performance feedback influences the three most common types of slack studied in the literature. Moreover, we contend that ownership is an important contingency that influences these relationships because different types of owners are motivated by different norms. Within a "communitarian" culture such as Japan, domestic owners generally have a multifaceted relationship with the firm and hence are motivated by norms of reciprocity and embeddedness, thereby allowing managers to adopt a stakeholder perspective. In contrast, foreign investors typically have only an arm's-length relationship with the firm and are thus motivated by stock price, thereby putting "contractarian" pressures on managers to adopt a shareholder perspective. This domestic/foreign ownership distinction influences how resources are allocated and therefore the relationship between performance feedback and different types of slack in the firm. We further emphasize that these relationships will vary in accordance to where the slack resides: internal or external to the firm. We find general support for our hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When crisis strikes, where do evacuees go? This question affects how policymakers and first responders allocate their time, funds, and resources after disaster. While past research compared evacuation rates of cities within the same disaster, evacuation among different types of disasters remain under-examined. This mixed methods study compares evacuation patterns from 7,631 cities among 10 major disasters in the US and Japan between 2019 and 2020, combining social network analysis, modeling, and visualization. This study highlights that evacuation from some hazards is more alike than others; large, sprawling disasters, including some storms, fires, and power outages trigger both clustered and dispersed evacuation networks, while smaller, focused disaster result in mainly dispersed evacuation networks. Further, cities with similar levels of social capital tend to see greater evacuation between them. By uncovering the different shapes and drivers of evacuation networks across different disasters, scholars can clarify where evacuees go and which kinds of cities need additional support after crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]