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Livelihood assets which are considered and recognised for their life-supporting role contribute significantly and basically to the standard of living of people. These contributions as deemed more meaningful are considered necessary to farmers whenever an opportunity exists to diversify their investment. This study looked at how the benefits from increase in farmers' rice yield contribute to farmers ability to acquire livelihood assets to enhance their standard of living. A sample size of 265 from a population of 880 farmers trained by Japan International Cooperation Agency on sustainable rainfed low-land rice production technology was used. The objective was to establish how proceeds from rice sale influenced the acquisition of livelihood assets by farmers to support their standard of living. Using spearman rho correlation, it was found that a strong positive correlation exists between increase rice output and livelihood assets acquisition. It is recommended that the technology should be disseminated nationwide specially in low-land rice farming areas so that all farmers in the country could benefit.

Within Japanese ELT, private conversation ("eikaiwa") schools are commonly viewed as the bottom rung of the professional ladder. In contrast to "eikaiwa's" marginalized position, language teaching in university is regarded as the pinnacle of the field's professional hierarchy (Nagatomo, 2016). The aim of this paper is to examine first-hand perspectives of teachers who have transitioned between these two 'spheres of experience' (Zittoun, 2006) and analyze perspectives on each context's pedagogical constraints and affordances. Drawing on Zittoun's sociocultural framework related to life transitions, an investigation of the lived experiences of eleven teachers was conducted. This explorative study focused on changes in skills and knowledge, identity, and personal meanings that stemmed from moving from "eikaiwa" to university teaching as well as cognitive and social resources that mediated the transition. Teachers revealed that "eikaiwa" teaching provided them with experiences that contributed to their pedagogical skillset and evolving teacher beliefs. Conversely, university teaching afforded enhanced professional identity due to factors such as increased teacher autonomy and authority in the classroom. This study supports a nuanced view of different teaching contexts that recognizes diverse affordances and constraints rather than subscribing to a linear, hierarchical view of certain ELT settings.

The objective of this research is to discuss how Sociology contributes to identify "the experience of the unconscious gender bias" against female scientists and to assess its impact on their career development. This research is at the first stage of three-year research project. The final aim of this research is to identify the social factors that sustain a positive research environment for the female scientists. This research focuses on the daily communication in the research laboratory settings and tries to find some answers to the methodological questions of how it is possible to investigate the experience of unconscious gender bias by the social research and how it is possible for a person to be aware of the unconscious gender bias against them in the daily communication.

This paper addresses the following two research questions: What role does senior high school choice play, in terms of the choices between public and private and between academic and vocational education in Japan and Taiwan? How do senior high school students matriculate to tertiary education in Japan and Taiwan? Japan and Taiwan have both experienced a rapid expansion of upper secondary education in the process of late industrialization. In these two societies, senior high school tracking decides students' educational careers. In addition, people living in these two societies have been inclined toward the belief that national and public schools are more prestigious than private schools. Therefore, the role of private senior high schools is different in these societies than in Europe or America. In both Japan and Taiwan students with higher grades tend to attend public academic senior high schools, whereas students with lower grades tend to enroll in private senior high schools. During the educational expansion in both societies, private senior high schools have provided opportunities for students of lower grades as well as lower social status. This research confirms the existence of a new trend in private school education: the rise of private academic education in the younger cohort. We need to continue to monitor this trend not only in these two societies but also in other East Asian countries. Keywords: senior high school; tracking; private schools

Considering the great impact the first PISA-results caused in Germany and Japan, this study seeks to provide an explanation for the continuous higher achievement rates of students in the PISA-winner country Japan compared to their German peers. Another great difference between the two participants that was detected in PISA is the correlation between students' social origin and educational achievement, which is still very strong in Germany but not in Japan. The author assumes the reason for these differences lay outside the formal school system, in the sector of shadow education. The so called juku-industry in Japan provides out-of-school lessons that seem to enable all Japanese students to achieve top results regardless of their social origin. In Germany the increased use of Nachhilfe is seen as an indicator for the downfall of the compulsory school system and a problem that seem to widen the gap in education levels all the more. If in Japan almost every household regardless of its social status sends its children to out-of-school classes, the assumption that people do invest in further education in terms of extra classes at juku believing this will have a neutralizing effect on disadvantaged family background suggests itself. Consequently the author intends to refute the prevailing assumption of researchers in Germany and Japan stating that out-of-school lessons just contribute to the reproduction of class structure. Using secondary data as well as PISA-data the author wants to show that shadow education helps to counteract educational disadvantages through the provision of various educational opportunities.

This project explores racial tokenism in the Japanese academy. It grows out of concerns regarding the low status of foreign university faculty in Japan along with a need to evaluate recent government initiatives aimed at fostering "internationalization" of Japanese higher education. In this three-year case study, I investigated the work conditions of faculty hired as full-time instructors for an English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) programme created as part of the internationalization initiatives at one Japanese university. Results indicate that the work of these faculty entailed strong elements of tokenism: all non-Asians, they were highly visible minorities; they lacked professional agency; and the institution sought and derived "propaganda" benefits from their visibility. In addition, these faculty themselves perceived the situation as unfair. Although frustrated, they had access to no institutional mechanisms to alter their status. Ideological underpinnings sustained this situation via a nexus of beliefs surrounding English studies, English native speakers, internationalization, and race. These findings illustrate how policy statements touting internationalization were depleted of transformative moment at the ground level.

This article argues that strong interrelations between methodological and theoretical advances exist. Progress in, especially comparative, methods may have important impacts on theory evaluation. By using the example of the "Varieties of Capitalism" approach and an international comparison of higher education systems, it can be shown that the use of improved data and of advanced analysis techniques changes the acceptance or rejection of the theoretical approach. As a conclusion, the article advocates data improvements, the use of advanced methods, more generally a methodologically reflexive interpretation of comparative research results as well as a closer cooperation between theory and method development.

This article analyzes stylized pronunciations of English by Japanese speakers on televised variety shows in Japan. Research on style and mocking has done much to reveal how linguistic forms are utilized in interaction as resources of identity construction that can oftentimes subvert hegemonic discourse (Chun 2004). Within this research area, scholars have primarily explored language among monolingual speakers of English, and immigrant or second generation L2 English multilinguals who have frequent contact with speakers of other languages (Rampton 1995; Chun 2009). What has not been examined is the use of stylized languages in contexts where English is considered a foreign language, such as Japan. In this article, I investigate Stylized native-speaker English (NSE), or English spoken with a highly enunciated hyper-L1 accent, which indexes a degree of social "cool". I examine the ways in which NSE is stylized in variety shows through an analysis of both oral discourse and textual commentary (telop) produced on the screen for viewers. The article argues that these forms of stylization are used as resources in the social construction of cool identities and demonstrates how the indexical relationship between social cool and Stylized NSE works bi-directionally.

This paper explores how referent honorifics contribute to identity construction on a Japanese TV shopping channel program. Drawing on Ochs' twostep model of indexicality (1993, 1996) and Agah's proposal (1993) that honorifics are not directly linked to social status but index a "relative position within events of discursive interaction" (p. 134), this paper first proposes that the direct index of the Japanese referent honorifics is the act of elevating the addressee and/or the third party (in the case of humble forms, the elevation of the addressee and/or the third party is achieved by the speaker's lowering him/ herself) and then examines how the male guest's dual identities (i.e., those of scientist and salesman) are constructed on the program by qualitatively analyzing the use or non-use of referent honorifics and co-occurring linguistic features. The paper finds that while the female host positions the guest as a scientist by addressee-elevating strategies including referent honorifics, the male guest constructs his own identity as a scientist by employing a detached stance indexed by avoidance of referent honorifics and other co-occurring linguistic forms. In contrast, his salesman identity is indexed by the use of the humble forms. The paper contributes to our understanding that referent honorifics do not simply mirror pre-existing social realities. (Contains 2 tables and 9 footnotes.)

Through a reexamination of the relationship between politeness and femininity in Japanese, this study considers some of the major theoretical issues concerning linguistic politeness in general. While politeness has been regarded as a central feature of Japanese women's speech, recent research has shown that politeness is a speech norm for women, and that in actual practice women do not always speak "politely" (e.g., Okamoto 2004; Okada 2008). However, the normative relationship between politeness and femininity is often taken for granted and has not received sufficient scrutiny. Drawing on previous studies of speech patterns regarded as "onnarashii hanashikata" "womanly ways of talking" in different historical periods' covering both modern and pre-modern times, this study analyzes the structure of normative linguistic femininity, paying special attention to the role of ideology that underlines its structure and hence the possibility that not only actual speech practice but also the notion of speech norm for women itself may be variable, that is, may not be understood in the same way by all speakers. Through this analysis, I critically consider the role of politeness for Japanese women's speech and its implications for the following theoretical issues concerning politeness in general: the view of politeness as a matter of evaluation of social conduct based on the evaluation of the context of use, including the speaker's social group; the variability and multiplicity of meanings of linguistic forms associated with politeness, which suggest the indirect and dialectic relationship between linguistic forms and contextual features; and the notions of discernment and (volitional) strategy for politeness as neither contrastive nor mutually exclusive. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

Foreign-accented speakers are generally regarded as less educated, less reliable and less interesting than native speakers and tend to be associated with cultural stereotypes of their country of origin. This discrimination against foreign accents has, however, been discussed mainly using accented English in English-speaking countries. This study investigates the attitudes of Japanese people towards foreign-accented Japanese and their difference depending on the area of their residency, which will provide a valuable comparison to previous studies on the attitude towards foreign accent. Two groups of participants, one living in a metropolitan area and the other in a rural area, listened to a short Japanese passage spoken by Japanese native speakers and non-native (native English) speakers, and evaluated what they thought of each speaker's likely personality, job and social status. The participants rated native speakers higher than non-native speakers in competence and integrity, and rated both types of speakers equally only in social attractiveness. The results show that despite some admiration of and respect for western culture in Japanese society, when their judgement is based on auditory speech, Japanese participants evaluate fluent native speakers of Japanese more favourably than foreign-accented speakers. (Contains 8 tables and 2 figures.)

This historical paper is an introduction to curriculum thinking in Japan. It discusses contested value frameworks that have exercised professional educators in the light of two "Western" interventions: (1) the modernization initiatives of the Meiji government of the nineteenth century; and (2) the policies that followed Japan's defeat in the Second World War. Overall, it reports on conflicts between value-based and knowledge-based views of curriculum content that still prevail in the twenty-first century. In this article, the author considers the contemporary meaning of Japanese teaching culture through a review of historical processes, building on earlier reviews by Kudomi (1994, 2003) and Nakauchi (1998, 2000). What, in Japan, does it mean to be a teacher? Better still: What is an "appropriate" teacher? The author discusses three dimensions of a Japanese teacher's work: (1) its social status; (2) the teacher's virtue; and (3) the teacher's sense of duty. The author concludes with a brief discussion of the current neo-liberal reform agenda. (Contains 1 figure and 1 note.)

During the last 50 years, private "feeder" schools in Japan came to dominate entry into elite colleges. Intense organizational competition shaped the organizational environment and changed the pathways available to social elites. Compared to Japan, elite private feeders in the US have failed to dominate pathways into elite colleges. In this paper, the authors examine the historical changes in elite pathways between private "feeder" or "star" high schools and elite universities in Japan by looking at changing enrollment rates in the post-war period. A brief comparison between the pathways in the US and Japan is presented. (Contains 5 tables and 3 endnotes.)

This study examined the development of implicit race attitudes in American and Japanese children and adults. Implicit ingroup bias was present early in both populations, and remained stable at each age tested (age 6, 10, and adult). Similarity in magnitude and developmental course across these 2 populations suggests that implicit intergroup bias is an early-emerging and fundamental aspect of human social cognition. However, implicit race attitudes toward favored outgroups are more positive in older than in younger participants, indicating that "cultural prestige" enjoyed by a group moderates implicit bias as greater knowledge of group status is acquired. These results demonstrate: (a) the ready presence; (b) early cultural invariance; and (c) subsequent cultural moderation of implicit attitudes toward own and other groups.

Teachers in Japan are no longer held in high esteem simply because of their position in the Confucian hierarchy of status and authority. Gone is the time when the word of the sensei would bring silence and order to a classroom. Ironically, the fruits of a postwar first-world nation--increased parental education, material affluence, and a liberalization of educational practices--have placed teachers in a precarious position. This research is based on 113 formal interviews with 69 teachers and 44 parents in 10 cities between 1996 and 2001. Consultations with 22 Japanese scholars and activists during the same span of time also assisted in deepening the understanding of the complex changes taking place in Japanese society. The results are discussed within this fluctuating economic, political, and cultural climate while attending to the variation in responsibilities and attitudes across levels of schooling.

L. Mann, H. Mitsui, G. Beswick, and R. Harmoni (1994) studied perceptions of interpersonal rules by Japanese and Australian children. This reanalysis of their data uses principal components analysis to show common and culture-specific patterns of interpersonal rules. Social status and social distance were major dimensions of a large cultural similarity across samples. (SLD)

The high level of college admission of women in Japan is analyzed relative to changes in social and educational values, continuing evidence of gender tracking, persistent doubts regarding "appropriateness" of higher education for women, employment opportunities and related national legislation, and values held by Japanese women themselves about education and social status. Emergence of women's studies courses are also discussed. (Author/MSE)

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Social isolation exacerbates physical frailty and is associated with subjective well-being. Even those with high levels of social isolation may have different health statuses depending on the type of isolation and their subjective well-being. However, the effect of subjective well-being on the relationship between social isolation and physical frailty remains unclear. This study examined whether the risk of physical frailty was the same for individuals with social isolation according to high and low subjective well-being. The study participants included 1,953 middle-aged Japanese adults aged 45 years and older. Physical frailty was assessed using a modified version of the Fried phenotype criteria. Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis was used to classify participants according to social isolation indicators. Subsequently, we focused on the groups with high social isolation and classified them according to whether their subjective well-being was high or low. Subjective well-being was evaluated using the Shiawase and Ikigai scales, which are concepts used in Japan. Finally, we used survival time analysis to examine the relationship between Shiawase or Ikigai and physical frailty in groups with high social isolation. The participants were classified into four groups based on their social isolation status. The physical frailty rate of the high social isolation class was 37.0%, which was significantly higher than that of the other classes. Survival time analysis revealed that among people with high social isolation, those with high Shiawase and Ikigai had a significantly lower risk of physical frailty than those with low Shiawase and Ikigai. All individuals with high social isolation are not at a high risk of physical frailty. The findings reveal that even those with high level of social isolation may have a lower risk of physical frailty if their subjective well-being is high. These results will contribute to promoting the prevention of frailty in middle-aged and older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Urban Food Deserts in Japan" by Nobuyuki Iwama, Tatsuto Asakawa, Koichi Tanaka, et al. explores the factors causing food deserts in Japan, focusing on socially vulnerable elderly people and existing conditions such as decreased access to food and weakened humanitarian relations. The book includes case studies of several cities in Japan and efforts to prevent and solve food desert problems. It discusses the relationship between food deserts and bad eating habits, as well as the impact of environmental changes and social capital. The authors also propose strategies for addressing food desert issues in Japan, including improving food access and implementing new business models. Overall, the book provides detailed information and is highly recommended for understanding urban food deserts in Japan. [Extracted from the article]

This article draws on the concept of the Production of Space (Lefebvre, 1991) to interpret the silence of one female international student from Japan in two semesters of study in a New Zealand Tertiary institution. Data from an English for Academic Purposes course and mainstream courses, and from various sources including video/audio recordings of classroom interactions, interviews, diaries, field notes, institutional documents are presented. The findings show that silence is produced by the academic social space in three aspects of perceived, conceived, and lived. The new perceived space of learning positioned the focal student as unfamiliar in her new habitat. The conceived space also silenced the focal student because the conceived space exerted socio‐academic norms in which the individual was not invested. Finally, the lived space produced a silent individual in the sense that she appeared as less powerful in her interactions with other peers because her sociocultural and linguistic capabilities were not on a par with those of other peers. The study concludes that space is an active, dynamic, and social being that regulates the individual's interactions and that silence should be understood in relation to one's positioning by the social space, and the appropriation of space by the individual in social space. Notably, despite being positioned as a silent individual by the academic social space, the international student exercised agency both to respond to her specific temporal needs in the host learning context and to realize her future aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the social-economic status of women has improved worldwide, with several factors reducing gender differences in labor participation and income equality, a substantial gender gap persists. The goal of this study is to determine how the gender gap is associated with social norms. Specifically, within the context of gender roles, we examine the social norm that wives should not earn more than their husbands. We estimate a model that explains wives' labor force participation in terms of the probability of wives earning more than their husbands by applying an estimation procedure that accounts for potential bias arising from self-selection into employment. Since the impact of social norms can vary in different cultural contexts, we compare the estimation results using datasets obtained from surveys conducted in Japan and the US—representing Eastern and Western cultures, respectively. Our results indicate that a 10 percentage point increase in the probability of wives earning more than their husbands is associated with an 8 percentage point decrease in their labor force participation rate in Japan, whereas the probability of wives earning more is not significant when the model is estimated using U.S. data. Thus, wives' labor force participation decisions can be related to the social norm more closely in Japan than in the US, reflecting the different social status of women in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social exclusion affects the fundamental needs of individuals, and their coping behavior is moderated by their dispositional need to belong. Eating can be one such behavior. However, it is unclear how people with a higher or lower dispositional need to belong respond with respect to food consumption in response to social exclusion. Thus, this study aims to investigate which of these groups eat more food after social exclusion. Ninety-seven university students in Japan participated in two types of Cyberball games (where they either experienced social exclusion or social inclusion) in which their social exclusion status was manipulated. They subsequently participated in a test in which they ate as many cookies as they desired. Finally, they answered questions about their dispositional need to belong. Their BMI was also recorded. Results showed that when socially excluded, individuals with a low need to belong increased their consumption, while those with a high need to belong did not. We suggest that people with a lower need to belong are more inclined to focus on goals other than inclusion and instead use eating as a coping mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Despite the potential burden of social isolation on mental health, it is unclear which component of social isolation (living alone, lack of social support, and lack of social participation) is mostly associated with depression among older adults and whether it varies by gender. Moreover, previous observational studies have suffered from several systematic biases such as confounding, misclassification, and selection bias. We thus aimed to investigate the risk of social isolation on subsequent depressive symptoms among older men and women, fully taking account of such systematic biases simultaneously.Methods: This study included 15,311 adults from a nationwide longitudinal cohort study of older adults aged ≥65 years in Japan. We employed modified Poisson regression models to estimate the adjusted risk ratio (aRR) of elevated depressive symptoms (the Geriatric Depression Scale: ≥5 vs. <5) in 2016 according to the social isolation index (SII) score (0-5 points) in 2013. Non-probabilistic multiple bias analyses with weighting approach and bounding factor were conducted to adjust for possible confounding, exposure misclassification, and selection biases.Results: The mean age (SD) of participants was 72.1 (4.9) years. Adults with the SII score ≥2 showed an increased risk of elevated depressive symptoms than those with the SII score <2 (aRR [95% CI] = 1.57 [1.41-1.76]). All components of SII were associated with elevated depressive symptoms except living alone for women. Our multiple bias analysis showed that an unmeasured confounder needed to have at least moderate relationship (RR=2.0-3.0) with both exposure and outcome to explain away the observed association particularly when social isolation status was independently and non-differentially misclassified.Conclusion: Among older adults in Japan, social isolation was associated with an increased risk of elevated depressive symptoms, even after taking account of systematic biases simultaneously. Increasing social connection may mitigate the risk of depression, which should be the subject of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 6 Kawazu, Takahiro. Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 5 Dasgupta, Romit. Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 9 Monden, Masafumi. Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat 10 Roberson, James E. and Nobue Suzuki, eds. [Extracted from the article]

In this study, a web‐based questionnaire was sent to residents of the Kinki region in the westside of Japan (N = 1053), and a multinomial logit analysis was conducted according to their isolation and loneliness status to examine social prescriptions that would presumably contribute to the prevention of isolation and loneliness. By comparing the marginal effects of social prescriptions on those with four types of isolation and loneliness status through the discrete choice model, we discovered that social prescriptions that contribute to the prevention of isolation and loneliness differ according to individuals by isolation and loneliness status. For example, for those who are not isolated but lonely, an effective strategy would be to encourage involvement in social contribution activities in the community and form high‐quality human relationships expecting to alleviate loneliness. The results also showed that residents in isolated situations tend to be indifferent to social contribution activities and social prescriptions to encourage involvement in such activities have limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exercise motivation (EM) is related to individual capabilities and social support. However, in support facilities for people with disabilities, it is susceptible to a lack of social support. In this study, we classified EM into Autonomous Motivation (AM) and controlled motivation (CM) and then examined the influence of social support. Thirty-three residents from a support facility for people with disabilities in Japan participated in this study. We conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis in which age, gender and time since admission were entered in Step 1, mobility and self-efficacy as individual capabilities in Step 2, and family support, facility support and peer support as social support in Step 3. A significant increase in variance from Step 2 to Step 3 was found for both AM (ΔR2 = 0.504, ΔF = 12.18, p <.001) and CM (ΔR2 = 0.269, ΔF = 3.491, p =.031). The results also showed that AM was higher among those with high family and facility support, and CM was higher among those with low family and high peer support. Social support was a more significant predictor of EM among participants than individual capabilities. Among residents of support facilities for people with disabilities, assessing not only individual capabilities but also social support status can lead to better understandings of exercise motivation (EM). To enhance facility residents' autonomous motivation (AM), it is necessary to intervene after evaluating family and facility support. When family support is not readily available among facility residents, efforts should be made to encourage residents to interact with each other to increase peer support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to describe the politeness approach of the Japanese-Balinese family realm language. The study explores how the use of language politeness strategies is affected by the cultural background of both spouses in intercultural marriages. The study also examines the various factors that influence language politeness strategies in intercultural marriages, including age, gender, social status, and power dynamics. Ethnopragmatics is utilized to examine language politeness methods in the context of the lives of the Japan-Bali intermarriage group. The research design is qualitative and descriptive. It uses observation methodology with strategies for data collecting, including listening, recording, and interviewing. The basic data consists of conversations between Japanese ladies and families from Bali. The approach for data analysis involves identifying, classifying, and importing data. The residence of a Japanese woman who married a Balinese guy was tracked for one year in the Badung and Gianyar Regencies. They were analyzed using purposive sampling to assess the validity of the data. The study's findings indicated that the negative politeness strategy could not be implemented utilizing interrogative words, the bald on-record method, the off-record strategy, or the positive politeness strategy to the greatest extent possible. The findings of this study indicate that the circumstances of the situation and the culture of the speech participants assist the politeness technique. The contribution of this study to linguistic research on the politeness phenomenon of marriage between Japanese and Balinese can add to the characteristics of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, high value and appreciation is ascribed to anything that features the physical characteristics considered to be kawaii (roughly translated as cute in English), particularly infants. As such, kawaii plays a significant role in Japanese popular consumption culture, especially for female consumers. This article applies mixed methods, including review of literature, questionnaires conducted among 692 Japanese women of varying ages and social status, and interviews with 12 Japanese company female employees to investigate perceived positive affective aspects associated with kawaii products, including their impact on emotional states and behavior. The cross-sectional study results reveal the importance of kawaii among Japanese women and positive aspects in consuming kawaii items; for working women, it was found that kawaii products help in dealing with stress and serve as a momentary gateway from the harsh world of everyday life to a romanticized world of one's childhood and for younger women serve as a fashion statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High subjective social status (SSS) is believed to protect health in the current literature. However, high SSS entails social responsibilities that can be stressful in collectivistic cultural contexts. Here, we tested the hypothesis that those socialized in collectivistic societies (e.g., Japan) recognize their high social status as entailing social duties difficult to ignore even when they are excessive. Using cross-cultural survey data ( N = 1,289) and a measure of biological health risk (BHR) by biomarkers of inflammation and cardiovascular malfunction, we found that higher SSS predicted lower BHR for American males. In contrast, higher SSS predicted higher BHR for Japanese males, mediated by the perceived difficulty of disengaging from their current goals. In both cultural groups, females showed no association between SSS and BHR. These findings suggest that social status has differing health implications, depending on the relative salience of privileges and burden-producing responsibilities in different cultural contexts., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Previous research on individual social class (SC) and humor has found support for the hypothesis that those with higher SC will engage in more dominant humor (aggressive humor) that derogates or degrades others. One rationale for introducing this hypothesis is the well-known theory that people with higher SC are more self-oriented; however, it has recently been shown that there may be cultural differences in this theory. In this study, using a Japanese sample objective measures (income and educational attainment) and subjective measures (perceived social status) and examined in relation to humor. Four types of humor assessed by the Humor Styles Questionnaire and two types of humor measured by the Dual Self-Directed Humor Scale were considered to investigate the relationship between SC and humor. Unlike prior findings obtained in Western countries, Study 1 (N = 344) and Study 2 (N = 604) consistently showed that SC and aggressive humor were unrelated. Rather, SC was shown to be positively associated with other-oriented humor in Japan, a country belonging to the Confucian cultural sphere of East Asia. The differences in results from these previous studies were discussed from a cultural contextual perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial polarization is increasing in urban neighborhoods worldwide, prompting substantial attention to its measurement. However, self-evaluations of spatial polarization by individual neighborhood residents have not been fully explored. To fill this gap, we proposed various socioeconomic indicators and incorporated them into a binomial logit model. We aimed to determine how individuals' perceptions of social status were influenced by neighborhood conditions by examining the significance of each variable and measuring its impact on self-evaluation. Thus, we gathered neighborhood data, including growing/declining neighborhood characteristics and respondents' personal attributes, from several national databases. We also collected data from 520 participants from Osaka City, Japan, via a questionnaire self-evaluating their social level and mobility. Our results highlight clear inequalities in social level and mobility self-evaluations between residents of different neighborhoods, as well as various characteristics of growing neighborhoods that positively influence these evaluations. Furthermore, positive effects of neighborhoods tended to correspond to residents with higher incomes, while negative effects tended to correspond to residents with lower incomes. However, as characteristics of both growing and declining neighborhoods were confirmed to be negative, this suggests that homogenization of neighborhood characteristics might negatively affect the self-evaluated spatial polarization among residents in both growing and declining neighborhoods. • The study clarified residents' self-evaluations of their social status and mobility in neighborhoods affected by spatial polarization. • The study identified several characteristics of growing neighborhoods that contribute to residents' positive self-evaluations. • Gentrification and socioeconomic differences impact the self-evaluation of urbanites. • The subjective living levels of residents are linked to neighborhood growth or decline due to gentrification. • Homogenization of neighborhood characteristics might negatively affect the self-evaluated spatial polarization among residents in both growing and declining neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses questions seeking to clarify the nature of personal networking between modern Japan's wealthy economic elite and the Japanese nobility. In particular, to explore whether the social connections between the wealthy and the nobility led to changes in behaviour and formation of social ties, the marriages between the wealthy economic elite and the Japanese aristocracy, will be the focus of this study. The general overview, the motives, causes and effects of marriage alliances will be explored. And the examination of the cases of aristocratic elite who entered into business through the choice of entrepreneurial occupation will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies clarified that many individuals tend to attribute themselves into the middle-class, explaining this tendency by referring to group reference theory. This article aims to explore the formation of subjective social status from a different point of view. To do so, the author analyzed the data from the Stratification and Social Psychology Interview Survey in 2010 (SSP-I 2010) and the Stratification and Social Psychology Survey in 2015 (SSP 2015), which were conducted in Japan. The results of the analyses reveal that the population can be categorized into two latent groups: one demonstrates a middle-class tendency in distributions of subjective social status, and the other demonstrates a clear class consciousness. The former group was composed of wealthy individuals, and the latter group was composed of not-wealthy individuals. Furthermore, the results also clarified that the composition rates of the two latent groups had been stable from 2010 (a period of economic stagnation) to 2015 (a period of economic boom), irrespective of socio-economic changes. Finally, the author discusses the implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Income inequality has dramatically increased worldwide, and there is a need to re-evaluate the association between socio-economic status (SES) and depression. Relative contributions of household income and education to depression, as well as their interactions, have not been fully evaluated. This study aimed to examine the association between SES and depressive symptoms in Japanese adults, focusing on interactions between education and household income levels.Methods: This cross-sectional study used data from baseline surveys of two cohort studies. Participants were 38,499 community-dwelling people aged 40-74 years who participated in baseline surveys of the Murakami cohort study (2011-2012) and Uonuma cohort study (2012-2015) conducted in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. Information regarding marital status, education level, household income, occupation, activities of daily living (ADL), and history of cancer, myocardial infarction, stroke, and diabetes was obtained using a self-administered questionnaire. Depressive symptoms were examined using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Logistic regression analysis was used to obtain odds ratios (ORs). Covariates included age, sex, marital status, education, household income, occupation, ADL, and disease history.Results: Individuals with higher education levels had lower ORs (adjusted P for trend = 0.0007) for depressive symptoms, independently of household income level. The OR of the university-or-higher group was significantly lower than that of the junior high school group (adjusted OR = 0.79). Individuals with lower household income levels had higher ORs (adjusted P for trend< 0.0001) for depressive symptoms, independently of education level. The type of occupation was not associated with depressive symptoms. In subgroup analyses according to household income level, individuals with higher education levels had significantly lower ORs in the lowest- and lower-income groups (adjusted P for trend = 0.0275 and 0.0123, respectively), but not in higher- and highest-income groups (0.5214 and 0.0915, respectively).Conclusions: Both education and household income levels are independently associated with the prevalence of depressive symptoms, with household income levels showing a more robust association with depressive symptoms than education levels. This suggests that a high household income level may offset the risk of depressive symptoms from having a low education level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests whether expenditures on social interactions and ceremonies worked as signals reflecting social status in the rural society of pre-war Japan. For this, we use household panel data collected between 1931 and 1941. Cross-sectional estimations find higher social expenses for households in a higher social position proxied by residential land size. Using rainfall as an instrument for household income, our IV regressions show constant spending on social events regardless of income fluctuations and social positions. Thus, regular spending was necessary for the upkeep of status in closely-knit communities in pre-war Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to examine the association between maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and mental health problems in adolescent offspring. Data were obtained from the population-based Kochi Child Health Impact of Living Difficulty (K-CHILD) study in 2016, and participants were 10,810 children in the fifth grade (3,144 pairs), eighth grade (3,497 pairs), and eleventh grade (4,169 pairs) living in Kochi Prefecture, Japan. Mothers of participating children were asked about their ACEs, childhood social economic status, current mental and physical health, current social economic status, positive parenting behaviors, child maltreatment, marital status, and child behavior problems using the Strength and Difficulty Questionnaire. Children reported their depressive symptoms using the Depression Self-Rating Scale. Children of mothers with a larger number of ACEs showed higher levels of behavior problems (p for trend <.001) and depressive symptoms (p for trend <.001), adjusting for potential confounders. In particular, maternal psychological distress mediated the association between maternal ACEs and child mental health. The adverse effects of maternal ACEs may have a direct intergenerational impact on behavior problems and depressive symptoms in adolescent offspring. Further studies to elucidate possible mediators are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]