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The article presents information on etiquettes of Japanese people. Musings on the implications of the multi-layered gift, and other possible parallels, led to an alteration in the focus of the author's research. Takako, a Japanese woman, was helpful on this front because she was familiar with some of the author's reading, and she could quickly find relevant references, such as the example mentioned in the previous chapter of wrapping a single-page letter in an extra blank sheet. Another line of thought was inspired one morning in Takako's house when the author found her busy with a man stripping the covers of her cupboards. These were floor-to-ceiling affairs, exactly like those in their own house, which enclosed and concealed a capacious storage space, accessed through large, sliding doors. The sliding doors are called "fusuma," and the man who was here to recover them is called a" fusuma-ya," a skilled occupation which he explained required many years of training. Plain white paper is also used for the wrapping of a formal gift, and its quality is measured in its texture, and in the visible grain.

This article examines the Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) program for the elderly in Japan. LTCI is presented as Japan's policy approach to the growing need for care for the elderly. The paper describes the context around which the policy was developed, describes details about the policy, and the implementation issues of the policy. The paper traces the role of social work as a profession in Japan as it relates to the issues of implementing LTCI. Suggestions are made in this paper for possible integration of social work professional roles in effective implementation of LTCI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's experiences with an anthropology research team at Keio University, Japan. The author was invited to talk with the anthropology research group at the university. The day before scheduled lecture to students of the university, the author talked with one of his colleagues about how he was developing his ideas on concentric circles, and, in particular, the notion of "centre." The author's paper, the following day, was very well attended. In the staff common room, the author met a professor who had helped him with his first research in Kyushu Region, Japan over ten years previously. He had travelled all day to be there, and felt very honoured, though a little more nervous. His research had continued in much the same direction, meticulous and careful, and the author wondered how he would feel about the author's hastily penned piece. The author was introduced to professors and among them was a well-known religious studies specialist who was co-editing a book related to retirement.

The magnitude of Japanese overseas manufacturing investment since the currency exchange rate adjustment in 1985 is unprecedented in Japan's postwar history. Industrial globalization threatens Japan with contraction in domestic production, plant closings and manufacturing job losses paralleling the past experience of the U.S. This paper investigates the internationalization of Japanese manufacturing anti the manner in which the Japanese state is responding to the threat of industrial and regional hollowing out, principally through a case study of the automobile industry, Toyota Motor Corporation, and Toyota's home territory, Aichi Prefecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a policy to help the growth of regional centers of advanced electronics and computer research, called the "Technopolis Plan," the Japanese government plans to spur research in this field, slow down the movement of high-tech firms overseas, and redistribute population away from the big urban centers to regional cities. However, the Plan runs counter to current trends of capital internationalization, which are leading to the loss of manufacturing capacity in Japan, its "hollowing out." Through a case study of the Oita Technopolis, this paper tests the ability of the Japanese national state to bend economic trends to national and regional purposes. Since the Technopolis Plan is falling short of expectations, it concludes that this ability is not very strong. Nevertheless, personalistic connections between the Oita governor and high-tech companies enabled Oita Prefecture to become one of the more successful technopolises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an update on the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) as of 2002. It is the top academic institution in the information processing field in the country. It has about thirty thousand members and promotes a variety of research and development activities covering all aspects of information processing and computer science. One of the major activities of the society is publication of its transactions containing papers covering all the fields of information processing, including fundamentals, software, hardware, and applications. Some of the papers are published in English, but because the majority are in Japanese, the transactions are not suitable for non-Japanese wishing to access advances information technology (IT) in Japan. IPSJ therefore decided to publish the book series Advanced Information Processing Technology. The series consists of independent books, each including a collection of top quality papers, from mainly Japanese sources of a selected area in IT. The book titles were chosen by the International Publication Committee of OPSJ so that they enable easy access to IT for international readers. Each book contains original papers and/or those updates or translated from original papers appearing in the transactions or internationally qualified meetings.

The section presents information on a series of books concerning information processing published by the Information Processing Society of Japan. The Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) is the top academic institution in the information processing field in Japan. It has about thirty thousand members and promotes a variety of research and development activities covering all aspects of information processing and computer science. One of the major activities of the society is publication of its transactions containing papers covering all the fields of information processing, including fundamentals, software, hardware and applications. The series consists of independent books, each including a collection of top quality papers, from mainly Japanese sources of a selected area in information technology. The book titles were chosen by the International Publication Committee of IPSJ so that they enable easy access to information technology form international readers. Each book contains original papers and/or those updated or translated from original papers appearing in the transactions or internationally qualified meetings. Survey papers to aid understanding of the technology in Japan in a particular area are also included.

This article presents a preface to the book Domain Oriented Systems Development: Practices and Perspectives, edited by Kiyoshi Itoh, Satoshi Kumagai and Toyohiko Hirota. The book is the second collection of articles edited by the research group on domain analysis and modeling in Information Processing Society of Japan, Special Interest Group of Software Engineering. It mainly includes the extended versions of several presentations by International Workshop participants from Japan, Korea, Canada, and Austria and the qualified papers selected by the research group. It covers the wide range of activities on domain oriented systems development, such as triplex schema of key concepts for domain oriented systems development, feature oriented product line software engineering, software architecture for intelligent computer-aided design, fully independent component architecture, interrelationships between requirements engineering and domain engineering, framework development and evolution, knowledge base development for product configuration systems, domain specific repository and reuse for computer-aided instruction, domain framework based on three-view model, generation of architecture product model.