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To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00903.x Byline: RAY FORREST (1), YOSUKE HIRAYAMA (2) Keywords: neoliberalism; housing; generations; Japan; UK Abstract: Abstract Neoliberalism has dominated policy discourse and policy formulation for at least two decades and has been particularly influential in reshaping housing systems and housing opportunities. The timing, pace and impact of these policy developments have, however, varied between and within societies. This article explores the experiences of Japan and the UK as a way of illustrating that while there has been a shared discourse of neoliberalism, there have been important contextual differences in relation to the economic cycle, welfare systems and political complexion. These have affected the progress and development of neoliberal policy reforms in housing and in other related spheres and the extent of global financial integration. In both countries, a key social change is the striking reduction in levels of home ownership among younger age groups. The article explores the common and different causes and consequences of these trends and points to the significance of these emerging generational fissions for the neoliberal project. Resume Cela fait au moins vingt ans que le neoliberalisme a envahi le discours et la formulation de l'action publique. Son influence a ete considerable sur la reconfiguration des systemes et des opportunites de logement. Le moment, le rythme et l'impact de ces evolutions politiques ont neanmoins varie d'une societea une autre, et au sein de chacune. Les experiences du Japon et du Royaume-Uni sont examinees ici afin de montrer que, malgre un discours neoliberal commun, on peut reperer de nettes differences contextuelles en lien avec le cycle economique, les systemes de protection sociale et la coloration politique. Ces facteurs ont pese sur la progression et l'ampleur des reformes politiques neoliberales dans le domaine du logement et d'autres spheres connexes, ainsi que sur la portee de l'integration financiere mondiale. Les deux pays revelent une transformation sociale cruciale: les proprietaires de leur logement sont en forte diminution dans les tranches d'age les plus jeunes. L'etude s'interesse aux causes, communes et differentes, ainsi qu'aux consequences de ces tendances, tout en marquant l'importance, pour le projet neoliberal, de ces ruptures generationnelles recentes. Author Affiliation: (1)School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, UK (2)Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, University of Kobe, Japan Article note: Ray Forrest (R.Forrest@bristol.ac.uk), School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, 8 Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TZ, UK and Yosuke Hirayama (yosukeh@kobe-u.ac.jp), Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, University of Kobe, Nada, Kobe 657-8501, Japan.

Despite the fact that women's rights have been increasingly defined as equal to men's in law and policy, in post-Second World War Japan women continue to be at a disadvantage in many aspects of social and economic life. Drawing from a survey of 2,205 Japanese women, this article focuses in particular on women's home ownership as a new catalyst behind increasing social stratification in Japan. The women's experiences are closely linked to Japan's institutional 'familism': the development of social policy that has been explicitly connected to the male-breadwinner model. We argue that a wide range of institutional and policy practices--mortgage provision, property ownership, social security and taxation and labour market mechanisms--has combined to define the housing asset status of women. We discuss the women's current housing asset portfolio, and also recent socio-economic changes that have begun to redefine their position in a home-owning society. The case of Japan--a patriarchal but shifting home-owning democracy--contributes to our understanding of the contemporary dynamics of women's interaction between family, work and housing in the institutional context.

The state‐guided housing system in Japan during the "post‐war growth period" has consistently driven the expansion of the family‐owned housing sector, in association with an increase in independent nuclear households. Nevertheless, Japan entered a "post‐growth era" in the 1990s, characterized by a more precarious economy, aging population, and policy shifts toward a more neoliberal course. People's housing paths have since noticeably diverged, in relation to both individualization and familization in life‐courses. However, government housing policy has remained directed toward family home ownership while excluding unmarried individuals, one‐person households, and renter households. This is beginning to widen social inequalities. Using the case of post‐growth Japan, this study focuses on the roles that individualization and familization play in reshaping housing paths, and examines the extent to which home‐owning societies centered on conventional nuclear households are sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home ownership was a significant element of social change in the post-war, mature, capitalist economies such as the United Kingdom, United States and Japan. This growth of individual home ownership occurred, however, within a particular demographic, economic, social and political context. This distinctive set of conditions include the atomized, nuclear family; suburbanization; high growth; the conventional mortgage market and a young, working population. These conditions have changed and coalesce in the constitution of what we refer to as ‘late home ownership’. The paper conceives of contrasts between ‘real estate families’ or ‘accumulating families’ which maintain or further accumulate valuable multiple property assets over generations; ‘dissipating families’ which are forced to deploy and diminish their property assets accumulated in the exceptional era; and propertyless ‘perpetual renter families’. It is argued that these emergent divisions are pivotal in understanding new forms of social re-stratification in which the patterns of ownership of residential property, the income flows from residential property investment, a changed demographics and intergenerational dynamics are key drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's post-war housing system has been dominated by family-owned housing. However, the centrality of family home ownership has declined since the 1990s. Housing careers and family formation patterns have diverged leading to the re-organisation of boundaries separating owning and renting. Using Japan as a focus, this paper explores the role of individualisation and familisation in transforming homeowner societies. On one hand, the individualisation of younger generations in Japan has encouraged a notable increase in one-person households living in private rented housing. On the other hand, a growing number of young households have purchased houses with assistance from their parents. This has been interpreted as an intergenerational familisation of access to home ownership. There is also an increasing number of unmarried adults living in their parents’ homes, which reflects the individualisation of younger cohorts and simultaneously the familisation of adult children's early housing careers. Moreover, it has recently been pointed out that Japan's system of extended family households and the related practice of transferring family properties across generations, has not declined. This paper argues that individualisation and familisation are combining to reorganise the ‘edges’ of home ownership, by helping determine who can enter owner-occupied housing sectors, and who is excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Functional analysis of Bifidobacterium genes is essential for understanding bost-Bifidobacterium interactions with beneficial effects on human health; however, the lack of an effective targeted gene inactivation system in bifidobacteria has prevented the development of functional genomics in this bacterium. Here, we report the development of a markerless gene deletion system involving a double crossover in Bifidobacterium longum. Incompatible plasmid vectors were used to facilitate a second crossover step. The conditional replication vector pBS423-&Dgr;repA, which lacks the plasmid replication gene repA, was integrated into the target gene by a first crossover event. Subsequently, the replicative plasmid pTBR101-CM, which harbors repA, was introduced into this integrant to facilitate the second crossover step and subsequent elimination of the excised conditional replication vec-tor from the cells by plasmid incompatibility. The proposed system was confirmed to work as expected in B. longum 105-A using the chromosomal full-length &bgr;-galactosidase gene as a target. Markerless gene deletion was tested using the aga gene, which en-codes &agr;-galactosidase, whose substrates include raffinose. Almost all the pTBR101-CM-transformed strains became double-crossover recombinants after subculture, and 4 out of the 270 double-crossover recombinants had lost the ability to assimilate raffinose. Genotype analysis of these strains revealed markerless gene deletion of aga. Carbohydrate assimilation analysis and &agr;-galactosidase activity measurement were conducted using both the representative mutant and a plasmid-based aga-comple-mented strain. These functional analyses revealed that aga is the only gene encoding a functional &agr;-galactosidase enzyme in B. longum 105-A. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The housing system in post-war Japan has consistently driven the growth of the owner-occupied housing sector, where many people have followed a conventional life-course in terms of ascending the housing ladder towards homeownership. Since the 1990s, however, a more insecure economy combined with the reorientation of housing and social policies has led to divergence in people's housing pathways. The conservative nature of public policy has largely been maintained, advantaging middle-class family households in accessing homeownership. However, in response to economic stagnation and within the context of pervasive neo-liberalism, the government has moved sharply towards accentuating the role of the market in providing housing and mortgages. Neo-liberal policies have become more pronounced while conservative institutions have firmly been ingrained in Japan's post-war society. Conventional middle-class families, protected by conservative policies in moving up the housing ladder, have maintained their relatively advantageous positions in the market economy. Neo-liberal policy has especially affected the housing conditions of specific groups who have been beyond the protection of conservative institutions, i.e. unmarried individuals, low-income households and those in unstable employment. The combination of conservative and neo-liberal approaches in policy practices has thus had strong diverging effects on people's housing opportunities. This paper explores the fragmentation of housing paths in Japan's insecure economy with particular reference to transformations in housing and social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades housing pathways have become increasingly differentiated between generations, particularly in advanced societies dominated by owner-occupied tenure systems. Demographic transformations caused by aging and falling fertility rates, along with a more volatile economy and a neo-liberal reorientation of governance have combined to restructure housing conditions. Drawing on empirical research in Japan, this paper illustrates the social origins and impact of generation-based differentiations in housing patterns in that country. It considers the housing experiences of three cohorts: baby-boomers, baby-busters and the 'lost generation'. The contrast of housing pathways between these generations in Japan illustrates the contemporary dynamics of housing and social processes in homeowner societies.[image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The housing system in post-war Japan formed a structure to link economic growth, an increase in middle-class families and the expansion of home ownership. However, since the 1980s, the stability of home ownership has weakened. The rise and fall of the bubble economy, an increasingly volatile economy and an amplified fragmentation of society undermined the traditional conditions of the post-war housing system. Over the past decade, a prolonged recession and a sharp decline in house prices has been experienced. The 1990s has been called the “lost decade” in Japan. The nature of home ownership has started to change under the fast moving conditions. From the immediate post-war period to the 1970s, the housing system was associated with a clear social direction. Housing construction accelerated economic development. people climbed up the housing ladder and the middle-classes accumulated assets through their own housing. In contrast, since the beginning of the “lost decade”, homeowners have been suffering from negative equity and the housing ladder has been collapsing. Families in the past invested in housing for their future while people today purchase housing as a consumption commodity to fulfil their present necessity. The connection between housing and a sense of social goal has become less and less transparent. This paper will illustrate these changes in home ownership and economic conditions in Japan today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the housing recovery policy carried out in Kobe, a disaster city heavily damaged by the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 17 January 1995. The housing problems in the earthquake-hit city resulted not only from direct damage by the disaster. Urban restructuring, underway beforehand, had been generating socio-economic polarisation and geographical disparity in housing conditions. The earthquake caused especially heavy damage on the inner-city housing of low-income people and the elderly. Housing recovery progress in the post-disaster period has also been unequal. This paper shows the growing socio-economic and spatial polarisation. The framework of Japan's housing policy is a two-tiered system. On the one hand, most people are encouraged to obtain their own houses by their own efforts on the market, whereas on the other, public housing as residual welfare housing is directly provided for those who are marginal to the market. The housing recovery policy followed this framework, and functioned to socio-spatially isolate low-income and/or elderly victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes basic housing conditions in Japan and offers an assessment of them against the background of progress over time and within the context of housing conditions in several Western countries. Discussion of the emerging affordability crisis for renters and owners within broader context of housing provision and review responses to it; Illustration of how affordability varies across population and groups.

Objective: To elucidate the performance of a shock-absorbing floor material with a mechanical metamaterial (MM-flooring) structure and its effect on the gait and balance of older adults., Methods: The drop-weight impact was applied to evaluate the shock-absorbing performance. The falling weight was adjusted equivalent to the energy exerted on the femur of an older woman when she falls, which was evaluated on the MM-flooring and six other flooring materials.Nineteen healthy people over the age of 65 years participated in the gait and balance evaluations. The timed up and go and two-step tests were adopted as gait performance tests, and the sway-during-quiet-balance test with force plates and the functional reach test (FRT) were adopted as balance tests. All the participants underwent these tests on the MM-flooring, shock-absorbing mat and rigid flooring., Results: The shock-absorbing performance test revealed that MM-flooring has sufficient shock-absorbing performance, and suggesting that it may reduce the probability of fractures in the older people when they fall. The results of the gait performance test showed that the participants demonstrated the same gait performance on the MM-flooring and the rigid floor. In the quiet standing test, MM-flooring did not affect the balance function of the participants to the same extent as the rigid floor, compared with the shock-absorbing mat. In the FRT, no significant differences were found for any of the flooring conditions., Conclusions: MM-flooring has the potential to prevent fractures attributed to falls and does not affect the gait or balance of older adults., Competing Interests: Competing interests: Flooring materials were provided by Magic Shields, Inc. TS, YH and HS are company stockholders of Magic Shields, Inc. The other authors have not received any financial support and have no shares in the company., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Transposon mutagenesis systems are still under development in bifidobacteria, partly because intrinsic active insertion sequences are not well characterized in bifidobacteria. Here, we isolated an active insertion sequence, ISBlo11, from Bifidobacterium longum 105-A using a sacB-based counterselection system, which is generally used to screen for active insertion sequences from bacterial genomes. ISBlo11 is 1432 bp long and belongs to the IS3 family. It has a single ORF encoding a transposase and 25-bp inverted repeats at its termini. Full-length copies of ISBlo11 are specifically conserved among certain B. longum genomes and exist in different sites. Transposition analysis of an artificial ISBlo11 transposon using an Escherichia coli conjugation system revealed that ISBlo11 has adequate transposition activity, comparable to the reported activity of IS629, another IS3 family element initially isolated from Shigella sonnei. ISBlo11 also showed low transposition selectivity for non-conserved 3- or 4-bp target sequences. These characteristics of ISBlo11 seem suitable for the development of a new transposon mutagenesis system in bifidobacteria., (© FEMS 2015. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Bifidobacteria are well known as beneficial intestinal bacteria that exert health-promoting effects in humans. In addition to physiological and immunological investigations, molecular genetic technologies have been developed and have recently started to be applied to clarify the molecular bases of host-Bifidobacterium interactions. These technologies include transformation technologies and Escherichia coli-Bifidobacterium shuttle vectors that enable heterologous gene expression. In this context, a plasmid artificial modification method that protects the introduced plasmid from the restriction system in host bifidobacteria has recently been developed to increase transformation efficiency. On the other hand, targeted gene inactivation systems, which are vital for functional genomics, seemed far from being practically applicable in bifidobacteria. However, remarkable progress in this technology has recently been achieved, enabling functional genomics in bifidobacteria. Integrated use of these molecular genetic technologies with omics-based analyses will surely boost characterization of the molecular basis underlying beneficial effects of bifidobacteria. Applications of recombinant bifidobacteria to medical treatments have also progressed.