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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]

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]

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 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]

This paper examines the causes of, and motives for, secondary (two-step) migration from one industrial country to another, focusing on West Indian and South Asian migratory flows from the U.K. to the U.S. in comparison with Latin American re-migration from Japan to the U.S. Why do they re-migrate from Japan or U.K. to the U.S., and who does? Based on in-depth interviews with second migrants and comparative survey research, I analyze how secondary migration relates to immigrants' integration patterns in each country. I argue that the causes of secondary migration are rooted in immigrants' racial/ethnic integration and (perceived) occupational opportunities. Also, second migrants are more likely than primary migrants to possess high levels of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper comparatively examines how the issue of genetically modified (GM) foods is framed in the leading newspapers of the United States, France and Japan in 2000. Three main findings suggest different understandings of GM foods across the three countries. First, the analysis indicates the overall availability and prevalence of the market frame in the American context: In The New York Times, GM foods and issues surrounding them are most often addressed in economic terms. Second, in both Asahi Shimbun and Le Monde, unknown risk and scientific uncertainty were more often invoked than in The New York Times. Third, the analysis shows that the French newspaper frames GM foods as distinctively American more often than the Japanese one. These findings are generally consistent with findings of past research. They provide initial insights with which to further explore the complex processes whereby cultural resources, material interests and institutional arrangements in each national context interact to produce particular outcomes such as nationally distinct policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Japanese subsidiary of an American multinational corporation, given the pseudonym of Transco, Japanese women managers are considered a source of competitive advantage, yet the retention of women is a problem. As women move up in rank, they become increasingly less satisfied with the types of guidance they receive from their superiors. This is in contradistinction to the fact that women are considered to be more culturally "able" than their Japanese male counterparts. Using a model of the "ideal employee" at Transco to highlight the interplay of gender and cultural phenomena at the company, this paper argues that women’s successful cultural negotiation is rewarded primarily at the lower levels of management, while at the higher levels, gender-based assessments return to the evaluation process, leaving women confused and dissatisfied. At the lower levels of management, women also face negative sanction from their Japanese male peers for successful negotiation of the cultural terrain. The emphasis on cultural differences down the management line causes women to conflate gender and culture, which leaves them less prepared for the subtle return to gendered criteria further up the line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the differences and similarities of the breastfeeding mothers at workplace in Japan and America. The analysis is based on the interviewing 37 mothers who have an experience of expressing breast milk at workplace in America and Japan. I investigated how they comply to or resist against the ideal asexual body image at the workplace. We can safely assume that their nursing body deviates from the standardized and universalized ideal asexual body image of professional worker. I found that the ethic of asexuality in organizational life directly contradicts the experiences of breastfeeding workers at workplace. Despite the limits it imposed on their body, many of both Japanese and American mothers believe that asexual/gender neutral professional body is ideal at workplace. The differences of "mother friendly corporate policy" between Japan and America brought differences on the working mothers' lives. Visibility of nursing body at workplace in America may present an opportunity to challenge the ideal asexual body within the heterosexual normative male hegemonic system. However, physical disappearance of nursing body from Japanese corporation by the influence of "mother friendly corporate policy" may not have the same effect. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the particularity of the Japanese way of working, using long-term follow-up survey data as the basis for an analytic comparison of the relationship between job conditions and individual psychological states in Japan and the US. Relying on three measures of individual job conditions proposed by "work and personality" studies - substantive complexity of work, closeness of supervision, and routinization - we found the patterns of correlation between the substantive complexity of work, routinization, and individual psychological states to be quite similar in both countries. In contrast, while the correlation between the closeness of supervision and workers' psychological states was significant in the US, this job condition was only moderately related to Japanese workers' psychological states. We attribute this dissimilarity to differences in cultural values, to greater individualism in the US and collectivism in Japan, and to differences in the work locus of control. Furthermore, we conjecture that these attributes of Japanese workers contributed significantly to Japan's rapid economic growth. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a new form of family arrangement, termed "transnational family": mothers and children live in an English-speaking country and husbands live in another. There are literatures on Taiwanese, Chinese and Korean cases on this form of family, but no Japanese case has been explored. I interviewed with fourteen Japanese transnational mothers who have lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, to investigate their initial motivations to become transnational families, class practices in order to understand families' educational strategies within both domestic and transnational arenas. Data show that individuals exposed to globalization strive to obtain not only domestic cultural capital, but also cosmopolitan cultural capital, to add up their total amount of assets for their family's better life chances and well-beings, while more than half of the mothers had a negative conjugal relationship with husbands. Also, the elite entrepreneur and upper-middle class families often engage in "bypass class practices" for their children to have primary education in the United States so as to enter Japanese prestigious universities by converting their accumulated cosmopolitan cultural capital into Japanese domestic cultural capital. Such "capital conversion" seems to become more widely available in the globalizing world. On the contrary, families with lower cultural capital which parents have experienced academic failure in the domestic educational route, initially came to Hawaii to "escape" from Japan's exam-oriented educational system. They use cosmopolitan cultural capital as an "ideological vehicle" to hide their memories of academic failure and seek an alternative life with children in the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the gender division of household labor in the United States and Japan to test if economic exchange and gender ideology theories operate equivalently in both contexts. Both nations have undergone similar trends of industrialization, urbanization, and other modernization forces, yet each country retains a unique cultural history with respect to the division of household labor. Previous work argues that the traditional gender division of work is more strongly enforced and encouraged through gender ideology in Japan than in the U.S. Using structural equations modeling, separate dimensions of gender ideology are modeled as latent variables, gender ideology is included explicitly as a mediating rather than an exogenous variable, and formal testing for equivalence of the models between the U.S. and Japan is possible. In Japan, going against the traditional beliefs that women really want a home and children and that a man's job is to earn money has the greatest impact on housework. In the U.S., relative income between the wife and husband is the biggest predictor of the division of household labor, but this factor is not significant in Japan. Women's work in the U.S. affects housework both directly and indirectly through beliefs about whether working hurts a woman's family relationships. The effect of gender ideology and work experience on the division of household labor are independent of each other in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between specialization and happiness in marriage in the U.S. and Japan. Our findings, based on the General Social Surveys in the U.S. and Japan, indicate both similarities and differences in the determinants of marital happiness in the two countries. In the U.S., the findings are mixed. Women in the U.S. are more likely to embrace the bargaining model where their happiness is determined by their own income. Men in the U.S. are more likely to support the specialization model; they are happier if their wives are not working or, alternatively, if they are financially dependent on their wives. In Japan, we find support for the specialization model, particularly in the case of women; they are happier if they are specialized in the household and they have a higher household income. Our research highlights how marital quality is affected by the institutional context and the normative environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of changing demography and the ever competitive global economy today, over roughly the last decade promoting age diversity in the workforce has increasingly become an important business and policy goal in many industrialized countries. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of age diversity management by clarifying the importance of placing older workers in national contexts. National contexts powerfully shape, enable, and constrain workers' labor market behaviors in later life, including retirement and continued employment beyond conventional retirement ages. The national contexts that this paper focuses on are those of Japan and the United States. This paper focuses on the three main national contexts of the two countries: (1) The level of demographic pressure to retain older workers or bring them into the workforce; (2) national employment institutions constraining, or enabling, workers continued employment in later life; and (3) the role of government intervention in the labor market to promote older worker labor force participation. Japan and the U.S. differ from one another in each of these three national contexts, and the differences help explain why Japanese workers' tendency to remain in the workforce longer than American workers. This national contextual difference between Japan and the U.S. clearly supports the broad theoretical distinction between the 'liberal-residual' and 'productivist' models of public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will contrast certain recent trends in the United States foreign policy to those in the Chinese foreign policy and argue that the largely divergent policies --coercion-intensive in the case of United States, consent-intensive in the case of China-- are related to the declining economic position of the United States in the world-economy since the 1970s, and the concomitantly rising importance of the East Asian region in worldwide processes of capital accumulation. I will argue that the increasingly militant posture assumed by the United States government in world affairs, and its insistence on the right to preemptive strike after 9/11, are closely related to the reality of a steady decline of American capitalists classes from the commanding heights of the capitalist world-economy, combined with a perception on part of the ruling elites of the United States of their diminishing influence in global political and economic affairs, something they seek to redress through a decisive show of military might. In contrast, the Chinese state is keen to avoid direct involvement in military conflicts, as the ruling classes believe this would distract their attention from the real goal of steadily improving their economic position and making China rather than Japan the center first of the dynamic East Asian economy, and eventually of the entire world-economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My presentation addresses the applicability to the situation of migrant Filipina hostesses in Japan of the top to bottom solution of "rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration" that the U.S. universally imposes in its anti-trafficking campaign. My discussion is based on 62 in-depth interviews that I conducted with migrant hostesses in Japan as well as participant observation gathered from working for three months as a hostess in a Philippine pub in Tokyo. In my discussion, I establish that Filipina migrant contract workers in Japan are trafficked (but not for the same reason cited by the U.S. Department of State.) Then, I illustrate that the universal solution that the U.S. bullies other governments (by ranking in the Trafficking in Persons Report) and funds local organizations to implement ironically increases the likelihood of migrant Filipina hostesses of being trafficked. In my presentation, I call attention to the hegemony of the U.S. anti-trafficking campaign over trafficking as a political issue so as to reclaim the use of the term "trafficked" and rid it of its political stigma and association with the hegemonic campaign of "rescue" posed by the government of the United States. In so doing, I call attention to our need to reject the universal top to bottom solution imposed by the United States to combat all forms of trafficking and our need to develop multiple strategies and action plans to fight trafficking in the twenty-first century. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the concept and reality of social capital by exploring the types of social relations and support systems salient in two societies, namely, the United States and Japan. In recent years the concept of social capital, as most notably investigated by Robert Putnam in his analysis of American community is getting transplanted to Japanese policy agenda. According to Putnam, the benefits of increasing social capital are legion. Social capital in the form of social norms and the networks that enforce them provides a solution to problems that fall under the rubric of "collective action problems," "the prisoner's dilemma," "the free-rider problem," and "the tragedy of the commons." Given the potential advantages of a well-functioning civil society, it is natural that Japanese policy makers seek remedy for a variety of social problems, ranging from crime to unemployment to low fertility in the re-creation of social capital. However, we know little about the cross-cultural similarities and differences in social capital creation and maintenance. Using cross -cultural survey data, this study finds that the two societies differ in the make-up of dominant types of social support. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the extent and causes of differences in information communication technologies (ICT) usage in five countries: the U.S., Sweden, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. We focus on cross-countries differences in ICT access, use and skills with regards to gender, age, education and income and how any such differences have evolved over time. Our results indicate that there is digital inequality in all five countries, but the gaps in ICT usage tend to be more prevalent in the three Asian nations than in the U.S. and Sweden. Digital inequality has narrowed over time along some dimensions but not all. Our findings generally suggest that gaps in ICT usage along demographic and socioeconomic dimensions reflect the extent of pre-existing inequality in other areas of the economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a research study in which the differences in the level of sexual harassment of young working women in the U.S. and Japan are examined. The study considers the age of the women, legal consciousness over life course and comparative research on workplace behaviors. Japanese women face a mix of social pressure to leave the work force for intensive family-care roles during their childrearing years, typically in their late twenties and thirties. Sexual harassment is considered as a form of sex discrimination in the U.S. Sexual harassment laws have developed in similar ways in both countries, although the legal systems differ significantly.

By performing a content analysis of 246 Japanese comic strips published on Mother's Day (MD) and Father's Day (FD) from 1950 to 2004, I replicated the research of LaRossa, Jaret, Gadgil, and Wynn (2001) who examined gender disparities in American comic strips published on the same holidays from 1945 to 1999. By comparing and contrasting the findings between Japan and the United States, I present how gender disparities were produced and altered over time in Japan. In addition, I demonstrate the role of comic strips in cross-cultural research. Each comic strip was examined with the following questions in mind: 1) How often were females and males portrayed? 2) How often were fathers and mothers portrayed as being outside? 3) How often were fathers and mothers portrayed reading? 4) How often were fathers and mothers portrayed sleeping? 5) How often were fathers and mothers portrayed wearing an apron? 6) How often were fathers and mothers portrayed performing household chores? A combination of the different measures was used to calculate a gender disparity score for each half decade. Ultimately my study, placed alongside the work of LaRossa et al., reinforces the value of comparatively examining comic strips in cross-cultural research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For years work sociologists have discussed a phenomenon known as the gender paradox in job satisfaction: women do not fare as well as men in the workplace, yet they report levels of satisfaction that are comparable to and often exceed those of men. I hypothesize that this paradox exists because men and women hold different work values and experience different job rewards in the workplace. This study analyzes the gender paradox in job satisfaction through an international analysis, using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) for Japan, the United States at two time points, and Sweden. I find that there is a gender gap in job satisfaction for all three countries. When controlling for work values and job rewards the effect of gender on job satisfaction becomes non-significant for Swedish and Japanese workers, although Swedish mothers are significantly more satisfied than Swedish fathers. However, the gender gap in job satisfaction in the United States persists even after controlling for work values and job rewards. The results suggest that for the United States, work values and job rewards alone do not account for all variability in job satisfaction between the genders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore multiple meanings of the concept of apology and understand the cultural complexity associated with the practice of apology. Focusing on the collision between the submarine, USS Greenville, and a Japanese trawler in 2001, the contents of American and Japanese newspaper articles concerning the incident were analyzed. Based on Apter (1964) and Geertz?s (1964) interpretations of ideology, I explain apologies as ideological attitudes. A total of 150 articles from leading US and Japanese newspapers (issued from February to April, 2001) were subjected to content analysis regarding: 1) the frequency of appearance of the incident; 2) the page location and coverage; and 3) frequency of appearance of words or phrases referring to ?apology,? ?regretful,? and ?responsibility.? The data indicate that the nature of apology is institutional as well as individual. However, there are clear cultural differences between Japan and the United States. For example, while Japan urged the United States to apologize ?sufficiently and appropriately? to the Japanese victims, the United States was more intent on determining why this collision happened. In Japan, the practice of apology expresses a cultural complexity of human emotion and feelings, and represents irrationality and inconsistence as an ideological orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is substantial concern in the U.S. and Japan about universities? and other public research institutions? contributions to national innovation systems. In both countries, there is a strong desire to strengthen ties between firms and public research. There are also those who caution that strengthening such ties may endanger the proverbial goose that lays golden eggs. Furthermore, recent debate in Japan has focused on the perceived relative weakness of Japanese universities in influencing industrial R&D. Based on comparable surveys of American and Japanese R&D labs, we compare the influence of public research on industrial R&D. We begin by showing that the institutional environment for university-industry linkages in the two countries are quite distinct. We then examine the impact of public research using a variety of survey-based measures. We find that public research has a substantial impact on industrial R&D in both countries. Furthermore, contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that the effect of public research upon industrial R&D is at least as strong overall in Japan as it is in the U.S.?and typically stronger. However, industry-by-industry comparisons show substantial heterogeneity in the patterns, with the country difference reversed in some industries, including communications equipment and automobiles. We then explore the organizational and institutional characteristics that might explain these country differences. Based on a series of logistic regressions, we show that use of public research is associated with investment in basic research, proximity to public research centers, job rotation for engineers, and firm size. However, including these firm-level characteristics in the regressions does not eliminate the country effect. We conclude with possible explanations for the observed country effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A catastrophic event such as the onset of mental illness forces the patient?s family members to make tremendous adjustment to the reality. Parents, siblings, and spouses of the mentally ill patients were interviewed in the U.S. and Japan with regard to how they perceived the cause of the illness of their loved ones. They struggle to make sense out of the tragedy by searching for the plausible reason for the illness. The perceived causes were mainly divided into two groups; factors relating to the early family socialization and genetic factors. Other possible causes included a traumatic event in later life, karmic influence based on the Buddhistic perspective, and cult religion. However few were convinced about their own theories as most wavered between different causal explanations, and continued to question what caused it. The parents were often tormented by self-blame, and some family members still doubted the diagnosis and hoped the patient?s problem was caused by drug addiction. Regardless of the accuracy of their causal attribution, their mental struggle is an important part of the cognitive adjustment process toward better acceptance of the mental illness in the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether there are differences in men?s and women?s use of computers and the Internet in the U.S. and Japan and how any such gender gaps have changed over time. We focus on these two countries because information technology is widely used in both but there are substantial differences in institutions and social organizations. We use microdata from several surveys during 1997-2001 to examine differences and trends in computer and Internet usage in the two countries. Our results indicate that there were significant gender differences in computer and Internet usage in both countries during the mid 1990s. By 2001, these gender differences had disappeared or were even reversed in the U.S. but remained in Japan. People not currently working have lower levels of IT use and skills in both countries regardless of gender, but working women in Japan have lower levels of IT use and skills than working men, a difference that generally does not occur in the U.S. This suggests that employment status per se does not play a large role in the gender gap in Japan, but type of employment does. The prevalence of nonstandard employment among female workers in Japan accounts for much of the gender gap in IT use and skills in that country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars accept Ruth Benedict?s concept of Japan as a shame-based society and the United States as a distinctly guilt-based one, as argued in her highly cited work, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. More recent empirical studies suggest that this clear demarcation between shame- and guilt-based societies is not necessarily the case today. We perform an exegesis of her work, and summarize it into an ideal typology of guilt and shame-based societies. We use this typological summary to set up a testable set of falsifiable predictions. The affect control theory model simulator, JavaInteract, provides a mechanism for rigorously sorting out the kinds of role-identities, behaviors, settings, and events that actually lead to feelings of shame and guilt in each culture. The fundamental principles underlying affect control theory suggest much more complex causation of displays of guilt and shame than Benedict or more recent researchers indicate, but our results are consistent with the growing, empirical cross-cultural literature suggesting the power of collectivistic Asian and individualistic Western norms for leading to different emotional displays and event outcomes. We demonstrate that Japanese emotion norms lead to very different interactional outcomes than for Americans. Japanese emotion norms are stratified by sex and age, leading to very different emotional work compared to Americans when the emotion norms are breeched in ways not anticipated by Benedict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the performance by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell of the country-western song ¡§El Paso¡¨ at the annual conference of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Vietnam on July 27, 2001, to help illustrate that whiteness needs to be studied through the ¡§interlocking axes of power, spatial location, and history,¡¨ and that it is a discursive rather than a biological phenomenon. I suggest that this song ¡§uses a pose of ¡¥innocent yearning¡¦ both to capture people¡¦s imagination and to conceal its complicity with often brutal domination,¡¨ romanticizing an exploitative power relationship between a cowboy, the adventurous patriarchal white national agent who symbolically represents ¡§Americans,¡¨ and an ¡§exotic¡¨ woman, the vulnerable sexual object open for conquest, who symbolically represents Others. Although studies of whiteness in the West generally have made ¡§critical interventions into the discourse of whiteness,¡¨ however, they have not sufficiently addressed its ¡§internationalization.¡¨ I argue that, if whiteness is a discourse, then white bodies are bodies that are discursively white in any particular context, not bodies that are taxonomically white in the Western context. Although Powell is an African American, in his role on the international stage, he literally embodies the cowboy, exercising global white patriarchal American power and helping to fashion the discourse to support it. One discourse of whiteness does not ¡¥trump¡¦ the other, however, even if one is more naturalized. In the body, I examine Powell¡¦s performance, and the power dynamics revealed therein, to examine aspects of the American relation to Vietnam and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Japanese book entitled Brain Pollution argues that there is a link between children/teens whoplay shooting video games 4 or more hours a day and ADHD. The authors compare Japaneseand U.S. videogame sub-cultures and videogame addiction. Primary research (2004-2005) is presented on the videogame habits of 120 American 4th-6th graders at a low-performing New York City public school with a high poverty rate. Discussion of the blurring line between children's video games and video war games, e.g., americasarmy.com as a U.S. Army recruitment and training tool; and America's first digital war division at Ft. Hood, Texas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the changes in intergenerational class mobility in the U.S. and Japan. Using repeated cross-sectional surveys conducted between the 1970s and the 2000s, I analyze trends in social fluidity mainly from a cohort perspective. For the U.S. men, the immobility association decreased up until the cohort born during 1957-66, and has increased since then, while the mobility association decreased over time, but flattened in the cohort born in 1967-76. For Japanese men, the immobility association began to increase starting with the cohort born in 1947-56, while the mobility association increased up until the 1947-56 cohort, but has decreased since then. These cohort-specific trends can explain the period-cohort trends sufficiently. To elucidate these trends in social fluidity, I investigate the change in educational inequality, class returns to education, and origin-destination association net of the effect of education. I also explore whether there are compositional effects. These analyses suggest that the change in educational inequality and the direct origin-destination association and compositional effects contribute to the change in social fluidity both for the U.S. and Japan. These effects on trends in social fluidity were also examined by a counterfactual analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship has shown that in the United States "scientific" sociologies emerged to predict social change and socially control it. On the contrary, Japanese counterparts occurred so as to reform society and make much use of tradition. This difference were backed up by their experiences after the Great War: the wide-spread doubt about "good" direction of its coming change (the U.S.); the sudden confusion about the takeoff from the past (Japan). Although these global impacts of the crisis and persistence in the idea of social "progress" have been known, little attention has been paid to how these wide complicated process affected the "scientific" idea. Therefore, this paper deals with the five sociologists around/after the WWI and examines if the "scientific" method was expected to further the social "progress." As historians saw it, now relatively separated historical and political improvement were more and more dependent on the sociological knowledge based on gathered data. However, their faith in historical or political progress were not so firm as believed, when scientific method itself were develeped in much harder line. Nevertheless, the sociologists across the Pacific were asking themselves what would be the more powerful method if it should further progress in the difficult time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rectangularization of the survival curve refers to a process by which deaths are increasingly compressed with respect to age. This has been observed in many different populations in the past 50 years, but the individual components of this process are not well known. Using data from the United States, Japan, and Sweden, I evaluate the shape of the cancer survival curve and the age-distribution of cancer deaths with two measures. Given that the age-pattern of cancer mortality is highly distinct from that of other causes of death primarily cardiovascular diseases, we might expect large differences in the compression of mortality as well. Since 1970, cancer deaths have become more compressed with respect to age while the modal age at death from cancer increased. This runs contrary to the argument that the compression of mortality signaled that we were approaching the upper limit to human longevity. Cancer deaths show less compression than other causes of death; the overall amount of compression differs between Japan/Sweden and the United States, but the cause-specific pattern is rather similar. As cancer becomes an increasingly large contributor to overall mortality in the next few decades, it is likely that compression will stagnate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Konty (2005) introduced the idea of microanomie—when an individual cognitively gives higher priority to self-oriented values than to group-oriented values. Konty measured values with the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) and found that a high ratio of "self-enhancement" values to "self-transcendent" values was significantly related to deviant behavior. The study also found that the effects of gender on deviance were effectively reduced to zero by including microanomie in the regression model. In this study we replicate Konty's findings using three new samples from the United States, Germany and Japan in an effort to test the generalizability of the concept to other samples. We first test whether or not microanomie predicts deviant behavior at the individual level in a combined cross-cultural sample. Our preliminary results replicate Konty's findings that microanomie is related to deviant behavior at the individual level. A second question of interest is whether or not microanomie varies across cultures and whether or not that variation is related to differences in deviance across the cultures. Again, our preliminary results indicate that it does. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individualism in Japan is somewhat conceptually different from its counterpart in the United States. When I was studying sociology at the master's level in Missouri, some people asked me if individualism existed in Japan. Some of them were quite sure that Japan did not have a concept of the individual and that the Japanese were orientated only toward conformity or collectivism. My answer was "yes" and "no." Individualism exists in Japan, but it has a unique way of being interpreted by the Japanese people as it is tightly coupled with conformity. While working on my thesis in Missouri, I conducted interviews with Japanese students in the US to collect data about compensated dating ("Enjo Kosai") in Japan. Their responses to my interviews indicated that they are orientated toward both individualism and conformity in complicated ways. Rationally these two theses may appear in conflict with each other; however, how people sublate them is explained through my research results. This process helps explain how modernity penetrated Japanese society and transformed traditionalism in Japan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to make clear the determinants of job shift patterns in Japan. Much attention is paid to the process of job shift examined through usage of Japanese mobility data, compared to the result shown in previous studies in other advanced countries. Additionally, this study focuses on the differences between voluntary and involuntary job mobility because the processes through which job shift occurs depends on the context of job shift. The result shows that firm-specific skills and reward made it less likely for employees to quit a job. It corresponds to the reward-resource model. However, there is no evidence that educational credentials would increase the likelihood of quitting a job as is seen in the U.S labor market. The way in which labor market structure influences job shift patterns is almost identical to the model of segmented labor market. In contrast, the way in which macroeconomic conditions for labor market affects rates of job shift in Japan is deviant from the hypothesis for the U.S labor market. It seems to be due to institutional arrangements of labor market specific to Japan. Compared to the previous studies in the U.S, the job mobility patterns in Japan appear to be roughly similar to the ones for the United States whereas it seems that the institutional arrangements specific to Japanese labor market could make the job mobility patterns substantially different from those for the other industrialized countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to investigate the Westernization process of the japanese money-form from the Meiji period to the period under the USA military occupation. Japan is the first country that westernized its money-form in Asia. This study aims to analyze what Japan removed from or preserved in the Oriental money-form and, in doing so, to understand the process in which Japan recognized what Japan-ness is, as well as to understand the 'Orientalness' recognized in Asia before the modern.This research focuses on imperialistic unification of modern money-form in the Asia by the Japan in the early 20th century and the colonization of regional identity which constructed by long traditional relationships of inter-Asian countries under the USA military government in the mid-20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent pension reforms have shifted the public-private mix towards more private responsibility. A variety of govern-ance modes coexist in private pensions across European welfare states, Japan, and the USA, ranging from voluntary firm-provided plans to collective funds negotiated by the social partners to private insurance of individuals. Al-though these are private schemes, the state intervenes by regulating eligibility, funding and benefit conditions through framework laws or tax rules. Therefore, private pension systems can differ considerably in insurance cover-age across employment groups, vesting rights and transferability between firms, funding formula and financial risks. In particular, these differences in coverage and benefit formula will have major repercussions on social inequality in old age. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of research have consistently identified fundamental ethical and normative concepts that are commonly deemed to be critical aspects to Japanese culture. These phenomena influence Japanese behavior in ways that have ramifications for the economy. We discuss how the traditional concepts of wa, enryo, giri, and amae affect Japanese thinking about what constitutes appropriate human relations involving work and employment. The consequences of these cultural concepts lead to greater income inequality by providing naturally occurring social constraints on unbridled market forces. While analyses of rising income inequality in the U.S. and Europe stress how government institutions may sometimes impinge on market forces in order to reduce inequality, our analysis demonstrates that culture is also an important albeit neglected factor in determining the level of income inequality. Ironically, greater status inequality in Japan also has the effect of reducing its level of income inequality especially as compared to the U.S. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences between student movements in Japan and the U. S. in the Sixties have been emphasized so far (Varon 2004: 5; Backman and Finlay 1973). Nevertheless, in the context of rapid development in both countries after World WarⅡ, some similarities may be found. Utilizing date from interviews with former student activists, sociological studies, and documents, this presentation compares the collective identity of student movements in Japan and the U. S. in the 1960s. Especially, I refer to two student movements: the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964 and the Zenkyoto Movement at Tokyo University in Japan in the late 60s. The findings suggest that the collective identities that the students formed in these movements were quite similar, which comprised two themes. In both countries, the collective identity as "radical students against the university" was a combination of the theme of student life and the role of the university and another theme of society and democracy. These themes arose from different sociopolitical factors inherent to each country. However, the idealistic pursuit of democracy and opposition to changing role of the university were common factors in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many doctors consider Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to be caused by mental issues, a clinical diagnosis that patients have struggled against. Patients have argued that the causal factor of CFS is physical malfunction, possibly viral infection. But after the recent publication of scientific articles which show new biological findings regarding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), the situation has been changing for CFS patients. The recent biological findings provide patients some supportive evidence. CFS patients are fighting against existing medical knowledge, existing medical services, and the existing social system by using this new scientific knowledge. Can this phenomenon be considered medicalization, specifically biomedicalization, or, rather, a Health Social Movement? This study addresses this question by exploring the activities of CFS patient support groups, activists, and professionals based on field work and research both in the US and Japan. Through examining the differences and similarities of the activities of CFS support groups, I will analyze the socio-cultural characteristics of both countries and their relevant contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our research explores the utilization of civic legal participation to decolonize the island of Okinawa from the U.S. military occupation. Since the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, the island has become one of many locations in the world assigned under bilateral agreements to house huge U.S. military bases. Since then, instances of soldier misconduct, from hit-and-run accidents, sexual assaults, to drunken brawls, and the problems of noise pollution and environmental devastation caused by military presence have become commonplace on the island, harming residential life. Yet, for decades, Okinawans remained powerless over the proper redress of these issues of victimization and were unable to reprimand their perpetrators, primarily due to the extraterritorial legal barriers erected by the U.S.-Japanese Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]