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Introducing gender perspective into international migration studies has been considered very important since the end of the 20th century. However, there is not much discussion on how the gender structure of home country causes immigrants' international migration. Classical studies on international migration have revealed that economic and political disparity between home country and host country causes international migration. In this paper, the author clarifies that the disparity of gender structure between two countries may motivate women's international migration. This study focuses on women who moved to the United States from postwar Japan. The proportion of women in the Japanese people who immigrate to the United States far exceeds the national average. The characteristic of Japanese female immigrants is that there are few women who migrated to the US with their families. Many have migrated alone. In this paper, the author will analyze the interview data for the Japanese female immigrants who live in single metropolitan areas in the West Coast of the United States. The author analyzes the data of 15 women who have migrated to the United States alone, collected by the interview research held from 2011 to 2014. Many Japanese informants in the study reported resistance to gender structure in Japanese society. In any case, it is clear that "gender structure" difference between the home country and the host country becomes an important factor which cause women's international migration. As classical studies on immigration shows that economic and political gap between the home country and the host country causes international migration, this paper disclosed that the disparity of gender structure between two countries may motivate women's international migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most societies it is taken for granted that there is a benefit for individuals in achieving a higher level of education. Japan is no exception. After a thorough analysis of the Japanese data, however, we found a declining trend in the correlation between the measures of educational attainment and occupational status (Nakao et al. 2016). We tried to investigate why. We looked to see whether other countries experience a similar trend. So, we analyzed the Census data from various countries. In this paper, we examine the data from mostly modernized societies from Europe and Western countries such as the United States. Conducting correspondence analysis, we discuss our findings in this paper in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether certain firm policies regarding work-life balance and flexible work places increase women's wages, thereby decreasing the gender wage gap in Japan. In particular, this paper focuses on the influence of (1) firms' personnel policies that "encourage employees to fulfill their potential regardless of gender," which hereinafter is referred to as the GEO (Gender Equality of Opportunity) policy, (2) whether firms have systematic work-life balance (WLB) promotion policies in place, and (3) whether firms have work-location-restricted regular employment systems. The linked survey data between Japanese firms and their employees taken from the 2009 International Comparative Survey on Work-Life Balance conducted by the Research Institute of Economy Trade and Industry are used in the analysis. A selection bias occurs because companies' policies and measures are not randomly assigned. In this paper, the selection bias caused by firm and employee characteristics is eliminated through the use of propensity-score weighting. Furthermore, the analysis takes into account unobserved heterogeneity in company characteristics and interprets the causal relationship of the analytical results accordingly. The analytical results are as follows. (1) Compared with situations in which the GEO policy is not in place, women's wages increase and the gender wage gap decreases in cases in which it is in place. (2) The effects of the presence of both the WLB promotion policy and work-locationrestricted regular employment systems depend on the presence of the GEO policy. When the GEO policy is in place, the effects of both increase women's wages and decrease the gender wage gap over and beyond the effects of the GEO policy. (3) When the GEO policy is not in place, the presence of work-location-restricted regular employment systems has no significant effect on the gender wage gap, whereas the presence of the WLB promotion policy actually increases the gender wage gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a great amount of research on the topics of school-to-work transition, school mediated job-search systems, and high school vocational education and training (VET) in Japan, gender differences in job outcomes are a largely missing topic in the literature. Thus, this paper examines the interlocking effects of school mediated jobsearch systems and de facto gender segregation in VET on occupational attainments among Japanese women. Descriptive statistics find that women in female-dominant occupations are more likely to be employed in permanent positions and have higher occupational prestige scores. Logistic regression analysis finds that school mediated jobsearch systems, which include either or both of school referrals or the various supports provided by in-school job placement offices increase women's likelihood to enter femaledominant occupations. Yet, women's education levels and attendance at VET programs did not have a clear effect on the odds of being employed in female-dominant occupations. Discrete-time event history analysis finds that women who used school mediated job-search systems are more likely to experience first-entry job-turnover compared to those who did not, while this difference did not occur for men. The analysis finds no generational differences among women while in the case of men, younger cohorts are more likely to experience job-turnover compared to older cohorts. Overall, the findings of this paper suggest that there is persistent gender segregation in the Japanese labor market, which negates the effects of generational, class, and education differences on women's job outcomes. Moreover, under the institutionally coordinated Japanese labor market, school mediated job-search systems, which are associated with school-employer linkages, reinforce these gendered hiring practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of interracial intimacy on the building of postwar Japanese womanhood during and after the U.S. occupation of Japan, 1945-1952. As the occupation was coming to an end, many began to envision a new image of Japan: an independent, democratic, and cultured nation reentering the international arena. In reality, however, the actual image of the nation was overtly sexualized by the presence of a large number of women consorting with U.S. servicemen. Since this image was highly inappropriate for the reborn country, there was a growing tendency to eliminate any sexualized elements from Japan. The most sexualized group was the panpan, postwar unlicensed female sex workers serving occupation soldiers. The panpan were highly visible as they showed off flashy fashion to the public and walked down the street snuggling up to foreign servicemen. Focusing on their deviant appearance and behavior, many studies of the occupation tend to treat them either as social problems or cultural emblems that uniquely symbolized the occupation. This paper, however, emphasize that that the panpan were not an isolated entity because the boundaries between panpan and "ordinary women" were often unclear during the occupation. I focus on how Japanese women, professional or nonprofessional, who consorted with foreign men were collectively stigmatized as "un-Japanese" due to their association with the foreign. Simultaneously, I argue that their stigmatized status was fluid. I highlight how some women who had relationships with foreign men were celebrated as "Japanese ambassadors to the world" as they contributed to Japan by letting the world know their "Japanese femininity." In examining the conflicting images of Japanese women consorting foreign men as "good women" and "bad women," I argue that these collectively sexualized women challenged traditional Japanese gender roles and sexual mores and negotiated womanhood which was central to national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immense gap between countries in levels of economic productivity and prosperity that characterizes the contemporary world emerged in its modern form in the nineteenth century. Even if the decisive transformation that set some regions towards sustained economic development while leaving other behind had already begun by the late eighteenth century or even before, at the turn of the nineteenth century the absolute gap between the wealthiest and poorest territories remained relatively narrow. It was only over the course of the nineteenth century that the ongoing process of industrialization expanded the initial divergence into a qualitative divide. This paper investigates the causal process that led to some initially lagging economies to begin to "keep pace" with capitalist development and others to continue "falling behind" in the late nineteenth century through a comparative analysis of four cases: Japan, Russia, Ottoman Turkey, and Qing China. Of these, only Japan entered into a durable process of growth and development, while the others continued to experience uneven growth and crippling political instability. Building on previous research in the literature and by the author, it identifies a key remaining question: if these different states shared similar initial levels of development and coexisted in the same international environment, why did rural social structures and institutions transform so as to form a basis for economic development in Japan and some limited parts of Russia but not elsewhere? The answer proposed is that the presence of a rural elite already partially excluded from political power was a decisive condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the influence of religion on attitudes toward homosexuality has been extensively studied for Abrahamic religions (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), the relationship between Buddhism, the world fourth-largest religion, and attitudes toward homosexuality as well as research in non-Western countries, in general, has not received much scholarly attention. This paper uses Japan, an East Asian society where it is often said that homosexuality had been historically tolerated because there was no religious authority that condemns same-sex sexuality and Buddhism traditionally tolerated male-male sexual behavior, to examine how Buddhist faiths shape attitudes toward homosexuality. To take the family-centeredness of the religious system in Japan into account, I treat individual followers of a religion and those who only have a household religion as unique groups in the analysis. Using the 2008 Japanese General Social Survey, the analysis shows that active followers of Buddhism, who follow Buddhism individually, are less tolerant of homosexuality than the non-affiliated, whereas nominal followers of Buddhism, who do not practice but follow Buddhism as a household religion, are as tolerant as the non-affiliated, suggesting that male-male sexual relations that were prevalent in the pre-modern Japanese Buddhism should not be seen as a form of homosexuality in the modern sense. The findings also suggest that some scholars may incorrectly claim that Buddhism is tolerant of homosexuality in Japan, because nominal affiliates of Buddhism constitute a large portion of Buddhists in Japan and the number of active affiliates of Buddhism, who are intolerant of homosexuality, is very small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a set of new concepts to define and explain qualitative phase changes in the institutional logic of societies based on the paradigmatic lens that informs the scripts by which institutionalized social action is justified. These legitimation logics are the rooted in what I term the kinship-paradigm (social action justified by the rightful enaction of reciprocal roles), the sovereignty paradigm (social action justified on the basis of posited essential difference), and the systems paradigm (social action justified by the fact of its adherence to standardized processes and protocols). These are expanded, umbrella terms influenced by the kinbased mode of production, tributary mode of production, and capitalist and socialist mode of production concepts from the world-systems school, but attempt to explain an even wider field of action than the exchange-centered existing terms. The applicability, advantages and constraints of the concepts are evaluated in an examination of two of the seminal historical cases of transition from one phase to another; the "modernization" processes of the U.S. and Japan between 1865 and 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the writing on labour market flexibilisation focuses on non-regular employment, this article explores one overlooked aspect, the experiences of increasingly precarious young regular workers. These jobs take the form of standard employment, but workers are often subjected to even more precarious and exploitative working conditions than non-regular workers. Drawing on the case of Japan, this ethnographic study has three aims. First, it clarifies the underlying mechanisms of labour exploitation in precarious regular employment. Second, it illustrates these mechanisms at work by examining the experiences of young workers. Third, it explores the potential of such young workers to disrupt these mechanisms through an individualistic form of collective action. By comparing one successful dispute with seven less successful cases, this paper tries to identify mechanisms that likely to lead precarious workers' collective organizing to gain support from the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Western contexts, immigrant women and women of color typically fall at the bottom of earnings and occupational hierarchies. This pattern occurs at every level of the occupational structure--even immigrant women with college degrees working in professional occupations experience this "double jeopardy," earning less than both native-born women and native-born men. However, some scholars have argued that immigrant women in Japan, one of the most gender unequal countries in the world, avoid the trap of double disadvantage. This paper tests this provocative claim with data collected from over 500 foreign and Japanese workers in 12 large firms. I find that indeed, foreign women earn more than Japanese women, but this advantage is slight. I also show that, despite its reputation for xenophobia, ethnic or foreign nativity penalties are small in comparison to the gender pay gap. The premium that foreign women receive for their unique skills counterbalances the modest ethnic penalties, but barely makes a dent in the sizable gender pay gap that all women experience regardless of ethnicity or nativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original "social question" of industrial society arose from strife between labor and capital and how the state should respond. As they evolved and encountered historical contingencies, these social tensions produced different power configurations in different countries. Debates have continued to the present about the best theoretical explanations of these configurations. These include class, state, managerial, institutional, rationalchoice and most recently cultural. Bourdieu's work on the field of power synthesizes much of this theoretical development, describing it as a social space that adjudicates among its component bureaucratic, political, economic, cultural, symbolic and social fields. His work remains abstract and assumes the French case, but it opens the potential for flexibly considering different combinations of these factors in empirical historical comparative analysis. This paper adopts this background framework to draw out the theoretical implications of a comparative analysis of political network patterns between labor, capital and the state in three national polities. The network data represents the late 1980s politics of making laborrelevant government policy in the USA, Germany and Japan. Data analysis shows that the three polities all exhibited forms of class division and state mediation, but differed dramatically in the state's role and the relational media of that mediation. The three forms may be labeled business-pluralist (USA), labor-management corporatist (Germany) and state-coordinated corporatist (Japan). Among the relational media, networks of expected reciprocity displayed a massively different presence: in Germany minimal, in the US only among labor organizations, but in Japan, encompassing both labor and business and centered on a managerial (though capital dominated) state. These findings imply that, among the numerous factors contributing to the historical genesis of these distinct formations, distinct cultural value systems shaped the relational doxa: utilitarian individualism (USA), legal universalism (Germany) and hierarchical particularism (Japan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural landownership in Japan has changed drastically over the last century due to post-World War II land reforms and cultural, political, and economic shifts in the subsequent decades. Initial land reforms shifted the concentrated ownership of land from the wealthy to small-scale peasant farmers. But as Japan has industrialized and become more urbancentered, a substantial amount of land has been left abandoned or unmanaged by descendants of those farmers. This paper analyzes the attitudes of absentee agricultural landowners in Japan to better understand the prevalence of economically rational versus traditional attitudes towards land ownership. We draw on the rural sociological literature on place attachment to hypothesize why some absentee landowners feel a strong tie to the land of their ancestors, while others would be willing to sell for a reasonable price. To test our hypotheses, we use unique survey data obtained from 466 absentee agricultural landowners in Japan, and employ logistic regression modeling to show that attachment to place, gender, age, educational attainment, and usage of land are meaningful predictors of whether landowners hold traditional values, rather than being chiefly economically motivated. We discuss the implications of these findings for the future of sustainable agricultural land management in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on communication in a corporate misconduct which reflects enactments of corporate hegemony. Japanese organizations traditionally have a strong relationship with their employees, and this psychological or mental connection between an organization and employees are recognized as organizational identity. In this paper, transformation of corporate identity is discussed in terms of critical perspective. A Japanese case of the cover-up scandal by Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (MMC) is analyzed, and three aspects of organizational deception are confirmed: offensive, defensive, and collaborative deceptions. There are a couple of important findings. (1) Strong identification with an organization is reified into a corporate brand through ingroup communication. (2) Symbolic process of discourse and knowledge creation discipline MMC workers in concertive control. (3) In corporate hegemony, top management does not directly commit the crime, but collective will made the organizational members to naturally commit misdeeds. (4) Organizational identity is transformed into idolatry, and their organizational communication becomes fetish in corporate hegemony. I conclude that corporate misconduct is neither errors nor mistakes in management but it is a natural consequence of the current management systems, and a center of a corporate misconduct must be considered as transformation of organizational identification and reification of communication ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the determinants of homelessness among day laborers in San'ya, Tokyo's largest yoseba, or day labor ghetto. Yoseba have long served as kakikomidera, or "temples of refuge," for Japan's unemployed. However, under the Heisei Recession since 1990 demand for day laborers has dramatically declined and homelessness has exploded. While the link between the recession and rising homelessness among day laborers has been affirmed by social science researchers in Japan, this paper is the first research effort to empirically explore the factors that determine whether or not an individual day laborer becomes homeless. A binomial logistic regression analysis is performed on survey data from day laborers in San'ya, showing that, contrary to expectation, characteristics such as youth and possession of job-related skills were not found to significantly prevent homelessness. However, day laborers were able to draw on their formal education, past experiences as a day laborer, and interpersonal connections with labor brokers to avoid homelessness. These relationships with employers proved to have the largest impact, suggesting that this form of social capital is the most important asset in avoiding homelessness in Japan's yoseba. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible causes of and the social background behind the recently rising suicide rate among the middle aged or older Japanese male workers, particularly a certain type of suicide called Karo-jisatsu (suicide by overwork). The image of Japan as a country of a suicide preference culture as a method of personal distress resolution is widespread overseas. While such a cultural explanation holds somewhat true, other social structural factors should be taken into consideration before resorting to the historical and cultural explanations. This paper aims to present, based on the existing data and facts, a balanced view of both cultural and social structural explanatory model, analyze the changing situation at Japanese workplaces, and to deepen the understanding of the suicide reality in Japan today. The pressure from long economic recession, a new evaluation system at workplace, and the widening gap between the traditional concept of work and the new reality are some of the reasons behind Karo-jisatsu. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have often seen Confucianism as a cultural source of economic development in East Asia. Such a Confucian explanation is flawed both theoretically and substantively. This paper proposes an alternative cultural approach to East Asia's economic success which is based on an agentic, dynamic view of culture and which stresses the state as an active cultural actor. Economically successful modern states have engaged in what may be called developmental moralization, namely, inculcation into common people of modern economic ethics. The East Asian states, too, have attempted to reach into the cultural lives and the minds of ordinary people to speed up economic development. These attempts culminated in a number of moral, economic campaigns for modernization in which people took direct part. This paper argues that it was primarily through these moral campaigns, through participatory developmental moralization, that the East Asian states have succeeded in transforming traditional culture into modern culture conducive to economic development. To illustrate this, this paper takes up the Local Improvement Movement in Japan and the New Community Movement in Korea. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between religion and subjective well-being has received considerable attention recently in the physical and social sciences. Despite the importance of these studies, they are generally limited to predominantly Judeo-Christian societies, such as the United States. To reveal how these two significant social forces might be associated in other cultures, this paper examines the religion-health connection in Japan. This East Asian nation constitutes a good comparison country because, although it is politically and economically comparable to the U.S., religious practices and other social norms vary significantly. Based on a nationally represented random sample of 2,790 Japanese adults in the 2001 Japanese General Social Survey, this paper reveals positive significant correlations between religious beliefs and membership and global life satisfaction and happiness. Even after controlling for socio-demographic and other secular variables, strong associations remain. By using data from Japan, this paper is a unique example of how the link between religion and well-being can be applied to societies that are not predominantly Christian. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the crucial impact of exogenous factors (e.g. geopolitical context) and the endogenous dynamic between "self" (i.e. Japanese) and "other" (i.e. Koreans) on the nexus of nationhood and citizenship in a historically specific context of distinctive regime types in Japan. The Japanese case provides a formidable opportunity to revisit several prominent theories of nationhood and citizenship, which stipulate a mostly Western, nation-state centered narrative as Japan's development differs from the conventional narrative of nationhood and citizenship. During the imperial period, an authoritarian regime conducted an inclusive policy based on cultural assimilation and broad recognition of heterogeneity. The democratized Japanese nation-state in the aftermath of WWII implemented more exclusionary citizenship. Today, such exclusive practices are called into question by the former colonies, minority groups, and supranational institutions (i.e. U.N.). Based on archival research, this paper seeks to refine some of the dominant assumptions in the literature on nationalism and citizenship. This paper pays special attention to the changing role of the Korean minority in Japan because they are the focus of these changing policies and their mobilization (or lack thereof) informed the transformation of Japanese nationhood, citizenship and immigration policy. By identifying what constraints regime-type places on the types of citizenship available to a society and what social forces create and sustain dissonant voices in debates over nationhood, my study shows how the making of nationhood and citizenship-immigration policies is contingent on exogenous geopolitical factors as well as endogenous contentious relationships between state and non-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic that gathers the increasing attention in recent Japan is no doubt the one of declining fertility. This problem is said to be caused mainly by two direct factors: delayed marriage and less kids by married couples. However, the factors that engender those phenomenon are not fully investigated. This paper explores the factors of delayed marriage and the implications of them. Statistical estimation shows that those who are highly educated and who live apart from their parents tend to marry late. These are explained by the possibility that overall economic adversity the young adults in Japan have to face, which is the structural fallout of the seniority system in Japanese society. The usual emphasis concerning the marriage entry and fertility is on gender stratification, which is surely an extremely important factor in sexist society like Japan. However, this paper tries to utilize the another important perspective, namely the problem of stratification by age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper contains two complementary essays, one on the logic of comparison and the fallacies of structural Westernism, the other on the history of Japanese prisons. Usually, when Western social scientists find a non-Western historical case that resembles well-known examples from their own cultures, they tend to analyze the non-Western case by imposing standards of measurement acquired from their prior studies. However, such a method of inquiries often misses the opportunity of theory elaboration that an in-depth explication of non-western cases could uniquely offer. By using the case of Japanese prison history, this paper attempts to show an alternative method of comparative inquiries. The invention of the Japanese correctional institution in the late eighteenth century coincided with the rise of the prison reform movement in Europe and North America. Through a detailed examination of the Japanese case that developed independently without knowledge of western penology, the paper offers a multi-causal and relational analysis of the origin of prisons, distinct from the existing Western models such as Marxist labor control theory. The Japanese case calls for a simultaneous \"re-economizing\" and \"re-politicizing\" of penal history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRUCT In November of 1936, the Geisha Girls Union of Osaka in Japan demanded that their brokers company that they should remove despotic management, abolish extra commissions, and respect the geisha girls? individuality. When the broker company rejected their demands, 60 geisha girls of the union climbed up Mt. Shigi, a holy place for people of Osaka, and confined themselves in the temple at the top of the mountain. Narrating the story of the sit-in strike of the Geisha Girl Union at a holy mountain in the mid of the 1930s? Japan, this paper studies why these geisha girls sat in the holy mountain to go through their demands and what made their strike possible. Drawing lessons from the story, then, this paper discuss how and in what conditions less socially legitimatized workers regarding their rights such as contemporary workers in the service sectors can justify their cause including union organizing. Finally this paper argues that one of the key points in union organizing of less socially legitimatized workers regarding their rights such as service sector workers is socially constructing moral space favorable for the workers in a given local settings through the reference of locally embedded moral codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are female-dominated paths (which I will call ‘feminine paths’) in education and occupations still chosen by a number of women, especially in a society like Japan? I argue that it is partly because a choice for ‘feminine paths’ is believed to produce advantageous quality (which I call ‘feminine capital’) in the marriage market for women. In this paper, with qualitative analysis on interview comments, I will investigate people’s perception of ‘feminine paths’ in contrast with ‘egalitarian (or male-dominated) paths’, regarding their advantage in the marriage market. The analyses in this paper suggest that ‘feminine paths’ in education and occupations are oftentimes perceived as more advantageous for women’s marital status attainment than ‘egalitarian paths’ because of cultural capital and social capital they entail. However, such ‘advantageous qualities for a marriage’ consists of various and often contradictory elements. Especially, the qualities useful ‘before’ marriage (for a ‘search’ of husband) is different from qualities useful ‘after’ marriage (for a ‘compatibility’ with household responsibilities), and such contradiction suggests why the pursuit of the two courses of status attainment (one through marriage, and the other through occupational attainment) becomes difficult, resulting in a discontinuity in an occupational career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the gap between race, ethnicity, and immigration. I combine Current Population Survey data (1998-2002) and my own family roots from Ireland and Japan to examine this gap through a sociological lens. I specifically look at factors such as time of immigration to the U.S., generation (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 3rd-plus), race, ethnicity, intermarriage, and multiethnic identities. This paper seeks to connect the ?old immigration? with the ?new immigration? and bridge the gap between race and ethnicity in the United States in light of the never-ending-stream of immigration that continually changes how we think about race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ethnic conflicts around the globe have sparked renewed attention to the long-debated, oft rejected concept of national culture (or national character) and its effect on politics. Japan, with its Western institutions and East Asian culture, enhanced by its economic successes, has been one natural locus classicus of this debate. Led by empirical findings about networks of extended reciprocity among political organizations in Japan, this paper considers national culture and other explanations for these findings. The network approach allows empirical distinction among different relational qualities and sanctions that can generate power. This paper distinguishes among tangible-coercive, practice-normative and symbolic-emotive relational exchanges, operationalized (imperfectly) as political support, expected reciprocity, and information, respectively. In Japan, national culture has strong symbolic and normative qualities stressing relational harmony. The findings indicate that distinct practice-normative exchanges stressing harmony ?glue? together the Japanese polity. But in the US, more tangible-instrumental relationships predominate, while in Germany, a norm of role-formalism seems pervasive. The contrasts arise from historical, demographic circumstances as well as specific relational content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to explain puzzling patterns of Internet usage in Japan in the 1990s. Throughout the decade, the growth of access from home computer has been unexpectedly slow whereas access to the Internet from cell phones became popular with service providers garnering over 50 million subscribers from within the national population of 130 million within a timeframe of a few years. This paper first examines the distribution of different access methods across the population. Data from a community survey indicates that the use of personal computers is mainly explained by conventional demographic variables including gender, age, educational attainment, and marital status while the use of web-accessible cell phones is not predicted by these variables. This finding leads us to explore the underlying factors in the popularity of wireless internet access. After reviewing possible explanations, this paper concludes that the success of web-accessible cell phone is a multi-causal story. Evidence suggests that a number of factors including the marketing strategy of cell phone service providers, technical functionality, the process of network externality, and the level of technological literacy all contribute to the diffusion of Internet access via cell phones. These findings support the notion of interpretative flexibility of technological artifacts. That is, the Internet/cell phone/personal computer is not deduced from technology itself because it is an outcome of social negotiation involving both producers and users of a technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration is often assumed to be a key condition leading to ethnic conflict. However, in both immigration studies and ethnic studies there is an inadequate theorization about the relationship between immigration and ethnic conflict, and there is little systematic cross-national comparative evidence on this relationship. This paper is a step toward filling these gaps in the literature. In contrast to the "inevitable hypothesis" that assumes ethnic conflict as a natural outcome of immigration, we propose a "conditional hypothesis" that contends that only under certain conditions will migration and contact generate conflict between groups. These conditions include, but are not limited to, group direct competition for scarce resources, unequal allocation of socioeconomic resources and political power, ethnic and cultural policy based on ethnic/cultural superiority or inferiority, and perceived threats from other groups especially those with a large size and lower-class backgrounds. The historical and contemporary evidence from selected major immigration countries reviewed in this paper seems to give little credence to the inevitable hypothesis but lend substantial support to our conditional hypothesis. It is evident that when these conditions are present, so is ethnic conflict. This is particularly true in the USA, Canada, Australia, and Germany. In contrast, in Japan none of these conditions is present, and hence we see little conflict along ethnic lines. In tandem, the conditional hypothesis and the contact hypothesis suggested by psychologists grasp more completely the role of migration and contact in relation to ethnic conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern education emerged in the long modern century stretching from the mid-eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. Many accounts of modern education assert that its goals, structure, content and functions were essentially identical across all modern societies. This paper argues, to the contrary, that at least six distinctive patterns of modern education emerged, each reflecting their unique temporal and spatial context and the nature to the ideological, economic, and political changes that accompanied their birth and systematization. These patterns are the Prussian, French, English, American, Japanese, and Russian approaches to modern education. The paper first seeks to describe the process of emergence of these respective systems, and then it reflects on some of the implications for institutional theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, homelessness began to increase in the 1980s and rose sharply in the early 1990s. Partly because homelessness is defined narrowly as "sleeping rough," the magnitude of homelessness in Japan seems less pronounced than in other developed countries. Without adopting a broader definition, this paper addresses the reasons behind the growth of homelessness in Japan over the past two decades. By analyzing the ways in which economic globalization interacted with the Japanese political economy in the 1980s, it demonstrates how some of the structural explanations of homelessness in other developed countries can be usefully applied to the Japanese case despite the much narrower conceptualization of homelessness in the country. Specifically, I argue that three broad changes contributed to the growth in homelessness in Japan: namely, 1) a shift from the manufacturing to service economy, 2) urban redevelopment, and 3) state policy shifts toward deregulation and privatization. In Japan these processes occurred in tandem in association with economic globalization in the 1980s while, in many other developed countries, they occurred earlier and on a larger scale. The present paper offers only a preliminary causal analysis of homelessness in Japan. Nevertheless, it suggests that a globalization perspective allows us to transcend definitional complexities and identify broad similar processes responsible for the rise in homelessness in different parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the graying Japanese society, primary caregivers for frail elderly people are predominantly their female family members. This paper discusses expected gender roles in family caregiving in relation to social structures and cultural norms in Japanese society. The paper also intends to highlight the constant negotiations that many Japanese people grapple with at the intersections of gender-biased expectations, social structural forces, and cultural norms. To explain this gender dynamic in family caregiving, this paper incorporates a multilevel conceptual framework that includes interactionism, social structures, and cultures. As for the structural component of gender, limited availability of social services and long-term care programs in Japanese society are introduced. The cultural component in this framework entails traditional familial ideology, called ie in Japanese, and norms of filial piety. Both the social structures and cultural norms contribute to reproducing gender roles that predominantly put burdens on women. On the other hand, the rapid social changes that are taking place in today?s Japanese society (e.g., increasing female labor participation) challenge socially constructed gender roles in family caregiving. In response to such social changes, an increasing number of male family members are taking on family caregiving responsibilities. Experiences of such Japanese male caregivers are one example of negotiations at the intersection of social structures, culture, and gender expectations. Successful negotiations can lead us to a new set of social expectations and structures, by which both men and women can more comfortably abide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan is the second largest economic agency worldwide. However, Japanese culture has never permeated the rest of East Asia. This paper investigates the reasons why Japanese cultural products did not penetrate other countries worldwide as well as East Asian countries. It argues cultural, historical as well as economic issues because these backgrounds substantially affect an individual¡¯s choices of foreign programs. This paper also examines the recent trends of Japan¡¯s trial of the expansion of its cultural products. My aim is to figure out whether this new trend is a sign that Japan is attempting to develop and enlarge important roles in the communications field both regionally and globally. Finally, the paper speculates about the impact of the economic depression of Japan on cultural goods production and trade over the last decade and the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a paper highlighting the challenges of mobile access to online reviews and price comparison in Japan. The paper was presented at the 61st International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference, held at Boston, Massachusetts, on May 29, 2011. It explores the objective of the Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) project, which was launched in 2006, with a leading principle that customers must have freedom, and not be slaves to vendors.

This paper looks at mixi, a Japan-based social network site (SNS) with a focus on its web interface. It argues that mixi's interface imagines the boundary of the social network of an 'average Japanese person,' which in effect sets a criteria for what types of people can 'fit in' in the 'Japanese society.' It also demonstrates that the interface does not simply embody preexisting notions about Japaneseness and politics of inclusion and exclusion prevalent in Japanese society. Rather, there is a 'neighborhood of relations' residing in and around the interface. Thus, the way mixi's interface draws a boundary around 'Japan' differs from the ways in which traditional modes of boundary making do so. Additionally, this paper examines how this imagined boundary affects members of different racial, ethnic and cultural minorities living in Japan and discusses implications of the findings in relation to future directions in internet studies and SNS research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of when and how cultural differences between media producers and audiences negatively influence the success of media exports. It proposes the 'Lacuna and Universal Model' that provides a terminology and a theoretical classification of various phenomena, explaining why particular media content may or may not be appreciated internationally. It puts forward the term 'Lacuna' for possible reasons for the cross-cultural failure of media content, and it argues that media content is not successful with audiences outside its culture of production when audiences perceive a mismatch between their own 'cultural baggage' and that of the producer. Depending on what elements of the 'cultural baggage' do not match, this paper introduces the terms 'Content Lacuna', 'Capital Lacuna', and 'Production Lacuna'. Furthermore, it puts forward the term 'Universal' for possible reasons for the international success of media content. Specifically, it proposes the terms 'Content Universal', 'Audience Created Universal', and 'Company Created Universal' for content attributes or circumstances as a result of which content is successful despite possible cultural differences. For each category of Lacuna and Universal, this paper provides examples that have been identified through in-depth interviews with representatives of some of the largest western media companies and their Asian subsidiaries and affiliates. Interviewees were asked to describe why they thought certain western media was or was not successful with audiences in China, India, and Japan. The analysis of the interviews also allows for a comparison across countries and media types with regard to cultural barriers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing a construct of performativity offered by Judith Butler as the role of the leitmotif, this paper analyzes the December 1981 advertisement, "Father Didn't Know - Mother Wants Her Own Desk (Okāsan ga tsukue o hoshigatte iru koto o otōsan wa shiranakatta)" presented by the Seibu Retailing Group of Japan. This is about housewives, a group which has not been considered at the forefront of women's empowerment in the 1970s and the 1980s. How Seibu appealed to those housewives is a topic of interest in this paper. Using Critical Discourse Analysis as the analytical tool, I analyze the visual, the verbal and the aesthetics spheres of the advertisement with socio-historical consideration. In particular, a subjectivity that the advertisement emanates is analyzed on three levels: of the women who appeared in the ad; of the advertiser's own voice; and of the society that generated the advertisement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews and tests the hypotheses of the just fielded international research project COMPON (Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks) concerning factors affecting national variation in effectiveness of climate change countermeasures. The COMPON project presently includes 20 country cases under the current international post-Kyoto regime formation process. The degree of national concern -- knowledge of and risk assessment about global climate change among authorities, political actors and publics - will be the key proximate factor in the formation of effective national policy (H1). National concern will interact with the relative strength of pro and con advocacy alliances -- composed of policy actors (organizations and key persons): social movements, NGOs, business and labor organizations, scientific communities, media, political parties and government agencies from both national and international levels (H2). Standardized policy network and discourse analysis methods will provide data on national networks of climate change knowledge, ideology, reciprocity, political support, negotiation, normative templates, and power deference. These relational fields indicate the origins of alliance strength, national concern and policy outcomes. Specific national-unit hypotheses include: presence of stakeholder participation; legitimacy of the scientific community; national science culture; degree of prosperity, resources and vulnerability; interests in world trade system; political institutions and party system; autonomy of civil society; civil liberties; governmental capacity; carbon-intensity of socio-economic organization. This paper uses global environmental policy network data from Japan (1997) to pretest the COMPON hypotheses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative study about determinants of women's employment with infant children between the U.S. and Japan. From previous studies, there are three factors which have effects on women's employment; human resources, household economy, and social support. In this paper, I compare effects of those factors between the U.S. and Japanese women using nationally representative samples from each society. Data used for the U.S. women is the second wave of National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), and data used for Japanese women is National Family Research Japan 2003 (NFRJ03). Women who are currently married, and whose youngest child is younger than 6 years old are selected from each data set (n=895 for NSFH; n=501 for NFRJ03). Results of multinominal logistic regression show some differences and similarities of determinants of women's employment of U.S. and Japanese women. First, higher education enhances women's longer and shorter hour employment in the U.S., but not in Japan. Second, higher husband's income has negative effect for women's employment in the U.S., but not in Japan. Third, husband's frequent conduct of housework enhances women's employment both in Japan and the U.S. Lastly, living with or close to mother (or partner's mother) does not enhance women's employment both in Japan and the U.S. Those results imply that difference of labor force participation of women with infant children between the U.S. and Japan is derived from limited opportunities for shorter hour employment and high expectation towards women as care givers for children in Japanese society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores ethno-racial boundary formation in Japan between the 1860s and the 1960s. Contrary to the common perception as ethno-racially homogenous country, Japan has had a long history of contentious relationship between racialized minority groups and the dominant group in a society. Based on an extensive review of historical archives (i.e. news publications, central and local governmental documents, intellectuals' publication and diaries, minority organizations' documents), this paper examines experiences of two largest minority groups, Koreans and Burakumin who faced the similar state's oppressive policies, and investigates why Burakumin, despite both of whom were once considered as distinctive ethno-racial minority separate from non-Japanese origin, eventually became classified as Japanese while Koreans were classified as non-Japanese after the war. Findings suggest that the formation of ethno-racial boundaries and institutional boundaries of race, nation and ethnicity are not a mere reflection of state or majority's perception, but rather contingent upon the reaction of minority groups, as well as the larger geopolitical context in which the dispute between the state and non-state actors took place. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data from 16 months of participant observation and in-depth interviews with feminist activists in Japan, this paper investigates feminist teachers who have played a major role in feminist mobilization in Japan. Teachers have made certain advances, while making two radical claims; that gender is a continuum rather than a binary and that children should be freed from hegemonic gendered practices and ingrained gendered beliefs. Inspired by Western feminist writing and transnational exchange of feminist ideas, teachers have been a major force in such feminist mobilization. This paper more specifically asks: despite the conservative environment regarding gender issues in Japan, what motivated feminist teachers' commitment to such radicalism and success? The subjects revealed that their commitment to activism is founded on a deep commitment to professional ethics and expertise as teachers and feminist beliefs in egalitarianism and the empowerment of children. Ironically, while a focus on professional ethics helps them achieve unlikely goals, it also limits their potential as collective actors by precluding broad grassroots-based support for the cause. The paper contributes to the less studied topic of activism of professionals in sociology. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing my interviews with key policy makers and activists of employment issues, this paper attempts to explain the processes of the law and social consciousness developments towards the global norm. Since the legal passage, related laws and social consciousness have continued to expand their support for rights at work. Why were such social norm transformations toward the "international norm of women's rights at work" possible? My interviews on a case of Japan suggest two major influences for the social change for women's rights - the experts' 1) strategic use of the international resources and the 2) collective activism before the international pressures coming into the country. The diffusion processes of the global "women's rights" norm, however, were shaped by the intervened effects of the long-lasting economic downturn and pre-existing rigid employment structure. My findings suggest that the local effects from the pre-existing social structure, cultural resources, and macro economy are important to explain social consciousness transition toward global norm of women's rights. Nonetheless, overall laws and social consciousness have become supportive of women's employment over the last two decades. The future vision or "social expectation," with the concepts of "time flow" and "world flow," is an explanatory factor that the interviewees emphasize in their responses. This paper contributes to the extant literature of neo-institutional research on the local change processes, legal consciousness, and life course studies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Chinese immigrant women's career experiences in Japanese firms to explore the impact of economic globalization on the gendered career patterns in Japan. Gender stratification characterizes corporate Japan. Japanese firms frequently assign women to career tracks with few job responsibilities and promotion opportunities. Chinese immigrant women working in Japanese firms inevitably confront such gender inequality. Their foreigner status further increases the difficulty for them to advance their careers in Japan. However, although still at a disadvantage, by situating themselves in occupational niches in Japanese firms' transnational businesses, some Chinese immigrant women are able to overcome the gendered career arrangements and to achieve upward mobility. This paper describes how they struggle with organizational constraints, economic opportunities and gender norms. This study suggests that economic globalization, in the forms of international labor migration and increasing volume of transnational economic practices, might bring positive changes to Japanese firms' gendered employment structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines organizational characteristics and presents a specific case of Japanese community unionism (region-based community unions and regional labor councils), and contrasts the Japanese case of community unionism with the conceptual framework of community unions based on cases in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the UK. The paper shows that, although there are some common features, one of the important differences of community unionism between Japan and other industrialized countries is the weakness of coalition-building between unions and community-based organizations in Japan compared to other countries. The paper argues that the forms of community unionism are mediated by political and institutional contexts of labor movements, and that the partisan nature of the Japanese labor movement and the relative under-development of civil society explain the difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the prejudiced attitudes toward homosexuals among university students in Japan, and the relationships of these attitudes with the students' demographic information, contact experiences with homosexuals, and attitudes toward men's and women's roles. In addition, this paper compared Japanese and American university students' prejudice toward homosexuals. Survey data were collected from 166 university students in Japan, which is then compared to data on 956 university students in the United States (Baunach and Burgess 2002). The regression results demonstrated that Japanese respondents who had contact with homosexuals and who had relatively egalitarian gender role attitudes were less prejudiced than those who had no contact and who had relatively traditional gender role attitudes. American students expressed more prejudiced attitudes toward homosexuals than Japanese students. Even after controlling for gender, parents' education, gender role attitudes, and contact experiences, American students were more prejudiced than Japanese students. I discussed religious and cultural differences between Japan and the United States as to why American respondents were more prejudiced than Japanese respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shinzo Abe became Japan's prime minister in September 2006, capping a political rise termed by one scholar as "extraordinary." Public opinion polls at that time showed widespread support for Abe who proposed, among other things, to revise the country's constitution and education system and to make it once more a "beautiful nation." One year later, however, he resigned in defeat and disgrace, a leader described, in another scholar's words, as "an unmitigated disaster."Adopting a Gramscian analytical framework, this paper examines the post-war hegemony that dominated Japanese politics until the Liberal Democratic Party's defeat in 1993 and subsequent attempts to reestablish hegemonic dominance. The paper gives particular attention to the Abe government's policy agenda based on militant right-wing nationalism and his government's sudden collapse. Ultimately, the paper argues 1) that Japan is in the midst of a continuing "organic crisis" that, beginning in the early 1990s, destabilized previous political alliances; and 2) that the recent collapse of the Abe government's reflects a failed attempt to forge a new hegemony around right-wing nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police institutions tend to be among the most secretive and least accountable of all organizations. When pressed for accountability or sued over malfeasance, they are notorious for skilful evasiveness. To admit error is akin to public humiliation. Police institutions disdain criticism of any kind, especially when the criticism is brought by women. In order to protect itself, police forces will use any step outside the law and use any means available to cage the voices of criticism. This paper will examine the arrest and prosecution of women who sue the police. It will use three major cases--two in Japan and one in the USA--of women being charged with murder after filing suits against the police in open courts. This paper will make the disturbing conclusion that women who sue the police, both in the USA and most certainly in Japan, put themselves in danger of vengeful arrest. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is non-marriage increasing among highly educated women in Japan, one of the least gender-equal industrialized countries? According to the economic independence theorists improving economic standing among women leads to the decline of marriage primarily due to women's avoidance of unequal gender burdens in household. However, scholars have pointed out this theory's contradiction in its exclusive emphasis on women's economic independence in such highly gendered traditional society as Japan. Corresponding to the limited applicability of economic independence theory to Japan, a country with distinct gender inequality, this paper examines how gender barriers in the labor and marriage markets shape employed women's views of marriage in Japan. Based on in-depth interviews with 26 never-married Japanese women, the paper addresses how employed women's views of marriage are shaped by gender inequality in employment structure and the marriage market in Japan. Employing the notion of gender strategies, I analyze four strategies (deflection, repudiation, ambivalence, and compliance) through which employed women negotiate their positions within the discourses of marriage and rationalize their non-married status. I also discuss these women's non-married status as resistance to the gender inequalities in the current employment structure and marital relationships, which, I argue, possibly translate into the patterns of rising non-marriage in Japan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the restructuring of large Japanese firms and explores the question, "How have the positions within the structure large Japanese firms been restructured in the 1990s, and how is this reflected in the re-distribution of wages between top management and other employees?" In the four decades following World War II, wages in large Japanese firms were distributed fairly narrowly with CEOs making about 7 times the average salary in the 1980s. Over the past five years since 2000, CEO salaries have grown 95% while average salaries have dropped 5% in large Japanese firms. Toward explaining this increasing wage dispersion, this paper posits that organizational control with the goal of sustained employment has been replaced with market-mediated employment with the goal of profitability. In this way, market mechanisms are replacing organizational control in larger Japanese firms with the replacement of lifetime employees by part-time and temporary employees. This paper is particularly interested in the shift in power from employees to shareholders, as characterized by the shareholder revolution in Japan, and evident in the widening wage gap within large Japanese firms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminologists have conventionally conceptualized criminality as the propensity to unlawful behaviors. The social reality of crime and criminality, however, does not correspond to actual law-breaking behaviors. While crime is an individual act, the discourse of criminality typically refers to a social category as a location of criminality. This paper examines the discursive construction of collective offenderhood in the foreign criminality discourse in contemporary Japan. After a decade-long decline of unauthorized migration, the Japanese government implemented punitive immigration control policies. What triggered this shift was the rising fear of foreigner-perpetrated crimes. The Japanese police discourse conflates foreignness and crime through four modes of linkage: statistical linkage, structural linkage, ecological linkage and cultural linkage. This paper argues that the demographic transformation, a belief in ethnic homogeneity as cultural orientation and the rise of the alleged security crisis contributed to the making of the foreign-crime nexus in Japanese consciousness. A criminality discourse magnifies the power of the marginalized and presents a distorted view of social stratification. A vision of collective offenderhood naturalizes social inequalities and rhetorically legitimizes further marginalization of the marginalized. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990’s, a cycle of Japanese anime films has been released to western markets, many of which have proven very successful. Oshii Mamoru’s SF anime Ghost in the Shell is no exception. Since its release in 1995, it has either been acclaimed as an original and revolutionary breakthrough or denounced as too philosophical and obscure for a commercial film. This paper looks at Ghost in the Shell as a critical engagement with feminist media criticism, cyborg theories, and philosophy that deals with body. Through the examination of this film, I argue that this film owns a subversive “new shell” of postmodernism in its depiction of an unconventional female protagonist, the inverted sexual/power roles, and the extinction of the human’s uniqueness in a post-human world; on the other hand, though, this film also befriends a conventional “old ghost” in the sense of the ways of representing female characters, the stress on the female’s maternal function of reproduction, and the reiteration of the mind’s agency over body. These result in the conclusion that Ghost in the Shell and many other successful anime innovatively present ideological norms sanctioned by cultures in the form of an open text, which might account for anime’s international popularity. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

74 law schools recently opened for the first time in Japan's history. This paper examines institutional processes by which US-style law schools became the solution to a problem of a shortage of legal professionals based on archival analyses and interviews. The establishment of law schools served interests of many players. Law professors saw increasing influence of prep schools as a problem. Furthermore, law professors in elite universities viewed the presence of the large numbers of lower-status law faculties as a threat to the prestige of their profession. They predicted only elite universities could establish a law school if rigorous requirements were introduced. Lower-status universities would then die out. As soon as a law school proposal was initiated by some professors, the Ministry of Education jumped at the opportunity. The ministry viewed the proposal as an ideal project for their plan to shift an emphasis from undergraduate to graduate-level professional education. Meantime, power holders (the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations) found creating a new institution (law schools) an effective way in which they could avoid substantial changes in their existing institutions: a mandatory legal training institute (the Supreme Court), the competitive bar exam (the Ministry of Justice), and the Lawyers Law prohibiting anyone but lawyers from exercising the authority to serve as representatives (JFBA). They knew that if the new institution was operated by a subordinate agency (the Ministry of Education), they could shape the form later in order to preserve their interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]