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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]

This paper argues that the relentless logic of commodification has served to undermine a key element of the social cement of contemporary capitalism: home ownership. In addressing this issue, the paper explores the development of the post war ‘social project’ of home ownership with particular reference to mature home ownership societies such as the USA, Japan, Britain and Australia. The paper then outlines the new fault lines and fractures which have emerged in post-crisis home ownership systems and the way in which a more vigorous, financialised private landlordism has emerged from the debris of the subprime meltdown. A key argument is that in a new and more intensified process of housing commodification, the social project promise of home ownership for a previous generation has shifted to a promise of private landlordism for current generations. In summary, the social project of Keynesian-embedded liberalism has been undermined by the economic project of neoliberalism. [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]

Social life in Japan has been historically orientated towards hierarchical networks of social integration starting in the family home and extending to the neighborhood, company, and nation. In the postwar period, households and life courses were largely fixed, mediated by company society, a standard breadwinner family model and an ascent up an owner-occupied housing ladder. The bursting of the economic bubble two decades ago, and the subsequent 'lost decade', disrupted established flows into employment, family life, and owner-occupation. We examine recent restructuring of life courses around the home which has become characteristic of social changes and a medium of individualization. The home, once ingrained with notions of the eternal Japanese family, has become a conduit of atomization for younger generations who have experienced radical shifts in social and economic conditions. Since the 1990s numbers of single-only and couple-only households have ballooned while marriage and fertility rates have declined. Although homeownership norms have persisted, new patterns of renting and single living in the city, or remaining in the family home as a 'parasite single', are increasing. We consider how the reconstitution of 'home' under more insecure housing and employment conditions is embedded with the reshaping of life courses, housing pathways, and patterns of urban space and living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. Résumé Cela fait au moins vingt ans que le néolibéralisme a envahi le discours et la formulation de l'action publique. Son influence a été considérable sur la reconfiguration des systèmes et des opportunités de logement. Le moment, le rythme et l'impact de ces évolutions politiques ont néanmoins varié d'une sociétéà une autre, et au sein de chacune. Les expériences du Japon et du Royaume-Uni sont examinées ici afin de montrer que, malgré un discours néolibéral commun, on peut repérer de nettes différences contextuelles en lien avec le cycle économique, les systèmes de protection sociale et la coloration politique. Ces facteurs ont pesé sur la progression et l'ampleur des réformes politiques néolibérales dans le domaine du logement et d'autres sphères connexes, ainsi que sur la portée de l'intégration financière mondiale. Les deux pays révèlent une transformation sociale cruciale: les propriétaires de leur logement sont en forte diminution dans les tranches d’âge les plus jeunes. L’étude s'intéresse aux causes, communes et différentes, ainsi qu'aux conséquences de ces tendances, tout en marquant l'importance, pour le projet néolibéral, de ces ruptures générationnelles récentes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [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]

Japan's condominium sector expanded rapidly along with post-war urbanisation and high-speed economic growth. However, the bursting of the bubble economy in the 1990s undermined land and housing markets. Capital losses on condominiums have been disproportionate, especially in cases of older, smaller or non-centrally located condominiums. This analysis incorporates socio-cultural elements in explaining emerging patterns of fragmentation among homeowners and property values. It illustrates relationships between the meaning of housing commodities and the context of indigenous production and consumption processes in urban Japan. The paper specifically draws upon data from interviews with Japanese homeowners to illustrate the significance of values and perceptions in the modern condominium sector and their relationship to changing socioeconomic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

Heterologous gene expression in bifidobacteria requires weak, strong, and inducible promoters depending on the objectives of different expression studies. Weak promoters in Escherichia coli can also be desirable for stable heterologous gene cloning. Here, we developed a reporter system using the Bifidobacterium longum α-galactosidase gene and investigated the activity and inducibility of seven bifidobacterial promoters in B. longum and their activities in E. coli . These studies revealed diverse promoter activities. Three promoters were highly active in B. longum , but only slightly active in E. coli . Among these, two phosphoketolase gene ( xfp ) promoters exhibited strong activity in B. longum cells grown on glucose. In contrast, the promoter activity of the fructose transporter operon ( fruEKFG ) was strongly induced by carbohydrates other than glucose, including fructose, xylose, and ribose. These promoters will allow strong or highly inducible expression in bifidobacteria and stable gene cloning in E. coli . In contrast to the functions of these promoters, the promoter of sucrose-utilization operon cscBA showed very high activity in E. coli but low activity in B. longum . Other three promoters were functional in both B. longum and E. coli . In particular, two sucrose phosphorylase gene ( scrP ) promoters showed inducible activity by sucrose and raffinose in B. longum , indicating their applicability for regulated expression studies. The diverse promoter functions revealed in this study will contribute to enabling the regulated expression of heterologous genes in bifidobacteria research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]