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In this paper, we introduce a project on singles' intimate practices conducted during COVID times as a case study of quantitative social research with a particular focus on qualitative reflections. We thematize the topic of self-reflexivity, which is considered an essential category in qualitative research but largely neglected in quantitative research. We discuss three methodological issues through the lens of self-reflection: 'translation issues'; the problems of asking 'sensitive' and the 'right' questions; and the problematics of 'the present' in particularly fluid times. We show that this approach promotes contextualization of the measurement tool, the data and the findings and can be a way for doing quantitative research on intimacy outside the 'standard' nuclear family in pandemic times. Overall, this paper underscores the ways that scholars as individuals and teams are inextricable from our research site, as we navigate disruption even while seeking to understand its implications on our informants.

This study examined the factor structure of sibling relationships in Japanese female university students. Two hundred and fifteen Japanese female university students participated in this study. The Adult Sibling Relationship Scale (ASRQ, Stocker et al., 1997) was used to measure sibling relationship cognition. The model was constructed as a result of confirmatory factor analysis. "Acceptance," "Admiration," "Emotional Support," "Intimacy," "Instrumental Support," "Knowledge," "Similarity," "Antagonism," and "Maternal Rivalry" emerged as first order factors. Seven factors, namely, "Acceptance," "Admiration," "Emotional Support," "Intimacy," "Instrumental Support," "Knowledge," and "Similarity" converged into "Warmth" as a second order factor. The fit indexes of the model were adequate (RMSEA = 0.075, CFI = 0.906 = IFI = 0.907, AIC = 12686.57).

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the development of conflict management strategies, focusing on 3- and 5-year-olds, through a comparison of 3 neighboring Asian cultures, those of China (n = 114), Japan (n = 98), and Korea (n = 90). The dual concern model of conflict management was adopted to probe which strategy children would prefer to use in 2 hypothetical conflict situations. Results indicated that, first, for disagreement, 3-year-olds in the 3 countries equally preferred the dominating strategy. For competition for resources, 3-year-olds differed in their strategy preference across all cultures. Second, the observed strategy preference of 3- to 5-year-old children in this study was more or less different from that of older schoolchildren, regardless of culture. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest the significance of the context, the complexity of the phenomenon of the development of cultural differences, and the significance of cohort sampling.

The purpose of these studies was to examine the frequency and stability of relational and physical aggression and their associations with social-psychological adjustment or peer victimization, and how friendships are involved in the relations between forms of aggression and peer victimization in Japanese children. The sample consisted of 452 (Study 1) and 138 (Study 2) children who were in the fourth and fifth grades. Results of Study 1 demonstrated that relational aggression was uniquely and more strongly associated with internalizing adjustment problems than physical aggression. Moreover, Study 2 revealed that relational aggression and physical aggression were stable over a 6-month period and the stability of relational aggression was reinforced by negative friendships (i.e., high levels of exclusivity and friend victimization). Further, the association between relational aggression and relative increases in relational victimization was attenuated by positive friendships (i.e., high levels of intimacy, companionship, and friendship satisfaction). Interestingly, friendships were unrelated to physical aggression and its relation to physical victimization. The age and gender of the children in the two studies were also examined. Cultural and developmental processes involving forms of aggression, friendships, social-psychological adjustment, and peer victimization were discussed.

In recent decades, Japan has been undergoing an extensive societal change, centred mainly on family, employment, and patterns of social interaction. Later and fewer marriages lead to a growing amount of single households; the de-stabilization of employment produces new living conditions; the virtualization of communication generates new formats of interaction, often linked to the problem of alienation, especially among the younger generation. These processes have produced not only objective trends but also a subjective climate of instability, often framed by the discourse on Japan's precarity. A society that for decades has viewed itself as a homogeneous middleclass entity, Japan is still affluent but undergoing a long economic stagnation and, more importantly, increasingly experiencing itself as a fragmented society filled with social maladies. This article explores one outcome of these conditions -- a new form of housing commonly referred to as the 'share house.' It first introduces the 'share house' phenomenon, then places it in the context of changes undergone by Japanese society. I suggest that the 'share house' represents a new institution addressing the growing need for alternative social alliances, particularly among young single adults seeking substitute modes of intimacy and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singles—here understood as unmarried or never married individuals—are a growing subset of the Japanese population that has not received discrete attention in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article addresses the ways in which the pandemic and its associated interventions—calls for social distancing, self-restraint, or the avoidance of the '3Cs'—affect singles' (non)familial personal relationships and practices of intimacy (platonic and romantic), as well as perceptions of singlehood and 'solo activities' (sorokatsu). Based on exploratory analyses of data from an original cross-sectional online survey conducted in early 2021 (n  = 4.000; unmarried residents of Japan aged 25–49 years), we show that while practices of intimacy are changing throughout the pandemic, the changes are less dramatic than we anticipated. In addition, changes are highly gendered and seem to support contemporary media and public discourse on how individuals are managing COVID-life and its concomitant uncertainties. We see two diachronic developments: an increase in social isolation and distress on the one hand, and an increase in acceptance of being single and doing 'solo activities' on the other. Our findings contribute to an understanding of the ways that singlehood, marital status, and extra-familial relationships are shaped, and shape the experiences of this pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I explore how scripts underpinning reproduction and infertility impinged on the experiences, decisions and opinions of 45 Japanese married mothers who have used assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) to become pregnant. Aged between 29 and 45, the mothers offered their viewpoints during sets of two semi-structured interviews lasting approximately 60 minutes each. Honoring a symbolic interaction-istperspective, analysis suggests thatfeminization, infertility and homosociality are the three axes along which an understanding of the use of ARTs among these mothers can be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accelerated greying of its population along with birth rates plummeting below replacement levels synergise into one of the most acute social issues in contemporary Japan. Although singleness, childlessness, delayed marriage and late-in-life-childbirth have become endemic, official records nevertheless reveal an increase in childbirth among women aged 15–19 in 2013. Furthermore, official statistics for 2010 show that 50% of Japanese women aged 25 or younger who married were expecting a baby. This paper focuses on 17 Japanese mothers who had a ‘shotgun wedding’ (dekichatta kekkon) – a ceremony organised due to an unplanned pregnancy. Aged between 29 and 35 years, the mothers came from Tokyo and Kanagawa and were interviewed for the purposes of exploring their experiences with and viewpoints on unplanned childbirth, contraception and marriage. Grounded in a symbolic interactionist perspective, the analysis of interviews suggested that shotgun weddings largely stem from contraception issues, the will to get pregnant in order to keep a partner and homosocial pressure to prevent the termination of the unexpected pregnancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese aid has long been criticized for its focus on infrastructural projects, but Japanese aid actors have also valued non-infrastructural soft aid, especially through NGOs. Drawing on twenty months of fieldwork conducted with a Japanese NGO and its training program in sustainable agriculture in Myanmar, this article examines how Japanese and Burmese aid actors engaged in what I call an aid ethic of 'muddy labor'-an emphasis on shared physical and relational labor that produced a collective form of intimacy. Scholars have tended to formulate humanitarian moral sentiments as responses to a distant suffering stranger. In contrast, I argue that the ideologies and political effects of a collectivist form of aid emerge in physical, relational, and geographic proximity. I demonstrate how the collective intimacy of physical and relational labor generated a meaningful sense of belonging among aid workers, while Japanese official discourses of soft aid indicated that this ethos of solidarity was also based on hierarchical views of Japanese superiority. The article ultimately asks how this ambiguity of the ethics of muddy labor challenges capacities for critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws attention to ‘everyday articulations of prostitution’: the diverse, performative ways that people reproduce and rework meanings of ‘prostitution’ as they mobilize the term in their day-to-day lives. The article offers an ethnographic illustration of this process by exploring why and to what ends a group of Filipina wives of rural Japanese men referred to the behavior of another Filipina woman in their community as ‘prostitution.’ It demonstrates that when mobilizing this term, these Filipina women were not categorizing sexual–economic relationships (like ‘prostitution’) in terms of payment systems, as other scholars have assumed. Rather, geographical and cultural factors, such as the stigma associated with these women's migration histories and their long-term residence as wives and mothers in the small rural communities where they had worked in bars, led Filipina women in Central Kiso to describe such relationships according to the sentiments motivating them, the ways one utilized gifts or money from a sexual partner, and whether or not one demonstrated appreciation of this financial support. The article maintains that attention to everyday articulations of prostitution such as these expands our understandings of the situated meanings people can invest in this term. It illustrates how culture and geography shape the ways discourses of prostitution are mobilized to stigmatize some intimate-economic behaviors and, thereby, legitimize others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Through an exploration of intimate expectations, ideals, and male freeters' romantic relationships, this article examines the ways in which expectations and practices of intimacy are shifting in gendered ways in contemporary Japan. Whilst women's expectations of intimacy and marital roles have changed and expanded, many male irregular workers continue to practice more conventional ideals of intimacy and gender roles, rooted in notions of responsibility, obligation, and duty. This article argues that there is consequently a significant miscommunication between male and female desires relating to the practice of intimacy that is contributing to both a perceived difficulty in getting married, and, after marriage, considerable stress about what is constitutive of intimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines how contemporary Japanese women are negotiating neoliberal standards for independence in relation to cultural norms and personal desires that encourage dependence in romantic relationships. In recent decades, neoliberal standards of maturity have become increasingly visible in Japan, and many marital counselors offer advice suggesting that independent, atomized selves are a key to happiness. Yet many women express ambivalence at this formula and instead find romantic possibility in dependent relationships. I examine how women are contesting these opposing standards by focusing on advice surrounding naming practices between spouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the deployment of social mobile media expands earlier modes of civic engagement and media, it also departs from previous media by providing various modes of networked visual and aural communication with greater affective personalisation. In news media of late, much has been touted about the agency of social and mobile media in the events of political uprising or at times of natural disasters and crisis management. While these events didn't happen because of social media, the media did impact upon how we experienced the situation. This leads us to ask: just how helpful are social mobile media in maintaining relationships in times of crisis management and how, if at all, do they depart from previous media and methods? Drawing from case studies conducted with participants living in Tokyo at the time of the horrific events surrounding Japan's earthquake and tsunami disaster of 11 March 2011 (3.11), as well as a historical discussion of media usage in times of crisis in Japan, this article reflects upon the role of new media in helping, if at all, people manage crisis and grief. We argue that while social media provides new channels for affective cultures in the form of mobile intimacy, it also extends upon earlier media practices and rituals such as the postcard. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to study the new social risks in the light of the sustainability of family life in contemporary Japan. The discussion begins with a brief description of the controversies over the balance between work and family life, which is one of the major 'new social risks' in most of the industrialized societies. It is attempted to identify how different social attributes of individuals are linked to social injustice and vulnerability. The different capacities of individuals' response to risks tend to be influenced by one's commitment to risks in intimate human relationships. This point will be clarified through the analysis on problems of domestic violence in private sphere and on current policy responses. Such violence itself is the intimate risk that is not made explicit in the debate of new social risks. This paper attempts to add the perspective on intimate risks to the risk society discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses qualitative interviews with 135 Japanese in their 20s to discover the meanings and purposes they associate with tsukiau ("going steady") relationships. Relating our findings to Sternberg's triangular theory of love, we find that all three components of intimacy, commitment, and passion are emphasized in tsukiau relationships, though in culturally specific ways. The findings suggest that in a society in which people marry later than before, dating relationships can be a new type of comfort zone for young Japanese adults redefining the boundaries of the "inner" and "outer" self, often replacing or displacing family ties as the context for displaying a backstage "true self." The tsukiau relationship thus represents a transitional life stage for heterosexual Japanese young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intimate relationship between the same sex is often seen as homosexual love, or just as friendship. That tendency which uses "homosexuality or friendship" model is based on a simplistic dichotomy, while female intimacy has been thought as having more successive dimensions with respect to maternal affection or friendship itself. In modern society, where the separation between the public and the private should be discernable, intimacy may be put into the private sphere. Furthermore, it has been argued that the private sphere was formed by "romantic love ideology" which consists of the trinity of sex, love, and marriage. However, maternity and female intimate relationships were not always harmonized. This is typically realized when asking whether "plastic sexuality." which is free from reproduction and located at the center of romantic love. was practiced by women. In modern Japan. intimate relationships among students at girls' schools have been addressed using the viewpoint of a "morally correct" friendship or "deviant" homosexuality, but their practice of intimacy should be recognized as a form of romantic love. Such an intimacy was accepted as one of the steps toward sound growth, but on the contrary, it was classified as "deviant" after their leave from school, and also seen as incompatible with maternity, Such a viewpoint finally led to the stereotyped notion of the "old miss." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine characteristics in the human cognition of intimate relations, using the historical formation of the social cognition that defines the "family" as an irreplaceable site of "exclusive intimacy" in modern Japan as a backdrop. The subject matter is examined from two aspects: the first is conservative family-state ideologues, who created the notion of "familial harmony"; the second is socialists. We study the structure of the socialists' idea of "reformative" exclusive intimacy and its impact. Family-state ideologues justify affective relations by calling it a human instinct. However, what they take as "instinctive" behavior takes place only when acted out intentionally by members of a family. On the other hand, opponents find in "familial harmony(or affection)" their ideology's point of contact with reality. Family-state ideologues and socialists were in competing camps, but they were exactly alike in terms of their "contribution" to the creation of the notion of exclusive intimacy. We find that the dual structure formed from the ideologies of "conservative" family-state ideologues and "reformative" socialists provided a flexibility that maintained the duality of "ie" and "katei" of the Japanese family in different situations. It is perhaps difficult for us to imagine harmony and affection without oppression, at least in the framework of modern family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]