Search

SHUKO TAKESHITA, Department of Asian Studies, Chukyo Women's University, 55 Nadakayama Yokone-cho, Obu Aichi, 474-8651, Japan. The Passing CCKs in Japan: Analysis on Families of Cross-Border Marriages between Japanese and Brazilian Since an amendment to the Immigration Control Act in 1990, which granted 2nd and 3rd generation Japanese unlimited visa status to work in Japan, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of Brazilians of Japanese descent coming to Japan. As a result, there is a large number of couples comprising Japanese and Japanese-Brazilian in Japan. In this paper, I investigated the conditions involving Cross-Culture Kids (CCK) born of these marriages. The children's first language is Japanese, and an overwhelming number of parents want their children to learn English as a second language rather than Portuguese. Regarding the children's name, there were few cases in which the child used a Brazilian name. In Japanese society, which emphases uniformity and homogeneity, using a Japanese name is one method of resolving the issue of being different from others. Parents with children who are not immediately recognizable as CCKs based on characteristics of outward appearance have developed strategies for avoiding discrimination and prejudice through passing. However, passing offers little possibility of enjoying the advantages of multicultural society. CCKs with two nationalities and cultural backgrounds should be guaranteed the right to enjoy the benefit of maintaining and developing an identity as a Japanese, in addition to one more identity. We need to encourage a new awareness of CCKs as agents for a transition from a monocultural system to a multicultural system, not only in Japanese schools, but in Japanese society as a whole. SHUKO TAKESHITA, Department of Asian Studies, Chukyo Women's University, 55 Nadakayama Yokone-cho, Obu Aichi, 474-8651, Japan. The Passing CCKs in Japan: Analysis on Families of Cross-Border Marriages between Japanese and Brazilian Depuis qu'un amendement a la loi sur le controle de l'immigration de 1990 a accorde aux 2e et 3e generations de japonais un visa illimite pour travailler au Japon, il y a eu une augmentation notable du nombre de bresiliens d'origine japonaise a venir au Japon. La consequence en est un grand nombre de couples mixtes composes de japonais et de japo-bresiliens au Japon. Dans cet article, j'ai enquete sur les conditions de vie des enfants dotes d'une double culture (Cross-Culture Kids, "CCK") nes de ces mariages. La premiere langue de ces enfants est le japonais et une grande majorite des parents preferent que leurs enfants apprennent l'anglais comme deuxieme langue plutot que le portugais. En ce qui concerne le nom de l'enfant, tres peu de familles choisissent un prenom bresilien pour leur enfant. Dans la societe japonaise, qui insiste sur l'uniformite et l'homogeneite, choisir un prenom japonais est une des methodes permettant de resoudre les problemes de discrimination. Les parents dont les enfants ne sont pas immediatement reconnaissables comme CCK par leurs caracteristiques physiques ont elabore des strategies de dissimulation des origines pour eviter la discrimination et les prejuges. Toutefois, cette dissimulation offre peu de possibilites de beneficier des avantages d'une societe multiculturelle. Le droit de jouir des benefices d'une identite supplementaire developpee en parallele de 1'identite japonaise devrait etre garanti aux CCK qui possedent deux nationalites et deux origines culturelles. Le Japon d'aujourd'hui rend necessaire une education dans le cadre d'une coexistence multiculturelle, une education qui enseigne aux enfants a comprendre et a coexister avec des gens differents d'eux-memes. SHUKO TAKESHITA, Department of Asian Studies, Chukyo Women's University, 55 Nadakayama Yokone-cho, Obu Aichi, 474-8651, Japan. The Passing CCKs in Japan: Analysis on Families of Cross-Border Marriages between Japanese and Brazilian Desde que una enmienda al acto del control de la inmigracion en 1990, concedio a los descendientes de Japoneses de 2da y 3ra generacion el estado de visa ilimitado al trabajo en Japon, ha habido un aumento considerable en el numero de brasilenos de descendencia Japonesa que han venido a Japon. Consecuentemente, hay una gran cantidad de parejas que involucran a Japoneses y Japoneses-Brasilenos en Japon. En este estudio, he investigado las condiciones en las que se encuentran los hijos nacidos de estas uniones de culturas distintas (llamados aqui "CCK" por las siglas en ingles de "Cross-Culture Kids"). El idioma principal de estos ninos es el Japones, y un numero abrumador de padres desean que sus ninos aprendan Ingles como segundo idioma en lugar del Portugues. Con respecto a los nombres de estos ninos, eran pocos los casos en los que el nino tenia un nombre Brasileno. En la sociedad Japonesa, que pone enfasis en la uniformidad y homogeneidad, el usar un nombre Japones es un metodo para resolver el problema de ser diferente a los otros. Los padres de ninos que no son inmediatamente reconocibles como CCKs basado en las caracteristicas del aspecto exterior han desarrollado estrategias para evitar la discriminacion y el prejudicio quedandose el prejuicio intentando pasar desapercibidos. Sin embargo, el deseo de pasar desapercibidos ofrece poca posibilidad de gozar de las ventajas de la sociedad multicultural. A los CCKs con dos nacionalidades y contextos culturales se les debe garantizar el derecho de disfrutar de la ventaja de mantener y de desarrollar una identidad como Japones, en adicion de una identidad mas. El Japon de hoy requiere educacion en la coexistencia multicultural que ensena a los ninos como entender y coexistir con gente diferente a ellos mismos., INTRODUCTION In Japan, there were 44,701 cross-border marriages in 2006-the highest number ever on record. Currently, one out of every 16 marriages in Japan is a cross-border marriage. This increase […]

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 prevalence of risk levels in a number of biological risk factors across two populations of United States and Japan are compared. It helps provide a better understanding of risk factors that lead Americans to have a much lower life expectancy as compared to the Japanese.

High-income countries like Japan and some European countries are likely to have an increase in fertility rates in the following decades. Fertility rates in high-income countries are determined by social processes that exert effects beyond relative wages, income, and labor force participation.

Economic development in Japan has brought a specialization in gender roles and the decline in legal status of wives. Wives in the Meiji era received institutional enshrinement and protection due to their homemaker specialist status.

ABSTRACT In recent years, the population of foreign nationals and individuals from diverse cultural, racial, ethnic, and linguistic populations has consistently increased in Japan. An apparent failure by the health [...]

The influence of marital satisfaction decline on subsequent chances that married women in Japan allocate more time to market work and/or to housework, conditional on their labor market position, is investigated to test the gender display hypothesis as an alternative to the human capital accumulation hypothesis. The evidence supportive of gender display hypothesis in Japan has implied that the extent to which could economically prepare them, is constrained by gender display in ideological and institutional settings similar to Japan.

A panel discussion on Japan's population problems is presented. Issues of fertility rates, number of births per woman, declining number of children and increasing number of senior citizens, are becoming major issues in Japan. A minimum fertility rate of 2.08 is required to sustain the population. However, the country recorded a 1.57 rate in 1989. The causes for this decline are discussed and the measures that can help in reversing the trend are suggested.

Among all the industrialized countries, Japan has the fastest rate of population aging and the highest life expectancy at birth. It is projected that the proportion of elderly people will reach 35.7% in 2050. In this demographic environment, Japan launched a social insurance program for long-term care for the elderly in 2000. What were the forces that led Japan to establish a long-term care program for elderly people? What are the provisions for financing, benefits, and service delivery? What aspects of policymaking in developing such a program are unique to Japan? This article presents answers to these questions. KEYWORDS. Long-term care, social insurance, elderly, Japan

A study on tax reforms that shifts focus from taxing labor income progressively to taxing expenditure progressively is presented based on the tax reforms relating to aging population in Japan.

Objectives. There is limited knowledge concerning how the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on mortality interact with gender and age. In addition, current studies are largely based on data from the Western nations. The validity of prior observations needs to be further evaluated. This research examines socioeconomic inequalities in old age mortality in Japan, with a special emphasis on how inequalities interact with gender and age. Methods. Data came from a 5-wave panel study of a national probability sample of 2,200 elderly Japanese conducted between 1987 and 1999. Hazard rate models involving time-varying covariates were used to ascertain the direct and indirect effects of SES. In addition, interaction effects involving SES variables with age and gender were evaluated. Results. In contrast to prior findings from the Western developed nations, there is an educational crossover effect on mortality among older men, in that, at advanced age, those with less education live longer than those with higher education. On the other hand, there is some evidence that educational differences in the risk of dying tend to converge in the 70-79 age group. More interestingly, there is a crossover in the effect of education among the 80 and older age group. Discussion. The observation that educational crossover exists only among elderly men may be because of gender and SES differences in causes of death, morbidity, and health behavior. On the other hand, possible explanations for age differences in the educational crossover include selective survival and cohort effects.

David J Staley evaluates three trends affecting Japanese society: economic restructuring, demographic changes, and the emergence of the 'new breed' of Japanese youth.

Unequal status of self-employed workers in Japan have produced lower wages and fewer start-up firms, reducing employees chances of progressing to management level.

Research is presented on the onset of growth spurt among adolescent Japanese based on data accumulated since 1915. Timing of maximum growth has decreased for both sexes, with the onset for growth spurts among boys decreasing and for girls remaining mostly constant, occurring generally between 6 and 8 years of age.

This article examines the Rapport Fujisawa, a unique nursing home and in-home care support center for the elderly in Japan. The author maintains that Rapport Fujisawa ensures that an independent lifestyle for each person is maintained, all remaining capabilities of the elderly are utilized, and the human dignity and self-choice of each person are respected.

An extended logistic model of growth where the carrying capacity increases dynamically in a distinct pulse is presented. The effect of this dynamic carrying capacity on the trajectories of simple growth models is analyzed. The new model is then employed to re-analyze two actual cases of human population growth. In testing the model against the population histories of England and Japan, the two cases of population growth seem to verify the model.

There are a number of reasons why Japan's birth rate continues to go down. The fertility rate in 1996 was 1.43% but dropped further to 1.39% in 1997. One of the reasons is the shift in Japanese society from a group-oriented to an individual-oriented lifestyle. There is also a weakening of social and cultural norms over the issue of having children in Japan. The rising costs of child care and childbirth plus the lack of affordable housing are forcing Japanese individuals to marry later.

Remains of a 2,000-year-old human Chinese population has relevance to the origin of the modern Japanese population. Molecular genetic analysis has been carried out using DNA from human remains excavated from the ancient Yixi site on the Shandong peninsula in China, where people lived about 2000 years ago. PCR amplification was used to determine nucleotide sequences for the mitochondrial D-loop regions of 414 mtDNA types from 1298 bodies. . Two indices were used to compare the ancient Yixi people with modern Asian and Pacific-area populations. The closest genetic relationship was between the ancient Yixi and the modern Taiwan Han Chinese. Yixi people are closer to Mongolians, mainland Japanese and Koreans than to Ainu and Ryukyu Japanese. They are less close to Yayoi and Jomon people, contemporaries and predecessors, respectively, in ancient Japan.

There were around 1.5 million registered non-Japanese people living in Japan at the end of 1997, of whom around 645,000 have legally declared themselves as Korean. Most of them have spent their whole life in Japan, but they are not entitled to vote. The Japanese government and much of the media seek to present Japanese society as homogenous, but in fact there is considerable ethnic discrimination, both formal and societal. Many Japanese fail to take account of the fact that they have obtained a significant part of their cultural heritage from China through the Korean Peninsula.

There is growing awareness in Japan of the need to make structural changes to the labour market. This trend, along with the changing nature of the Japanese labour force in relation to the country's aging population, means that unemployment will probably not become as severe as in some European countries. Growth of the labour supply has slowed down in the 1990s as a result of the aging of the population, and the supply is forecast to fall from 2005. The aging of the population has also led to an increased proportion of older people in the labour force itself. It is becoming clear that Japan will now have to make more efficient use of the labour market mechanism.

A sample of 67 married Japanese men and 79 married Japanese women, ranging in age from 25 through 85 years, were interviewed to clarify the relationship between marital adjustment and social adjustment. For the whole sample, the total score of the Short Marital Adjustment Test (SMAT: Locke & Wallace, 1959) and its subcategories, dyadic consensus and satisfaction, was significantly correlated with 5 subcategory scores of the Social Adjustment Scale-II (SAS-II: Weissman, 1978): household adjustment (except the spouse), external family adjustment, work adjustment, social leisure adjustment, and general adjustment. These correlations were present also for the women: for the men, they were present only for social leisure adjustment and general adjustment. Among men, the dyadic consensus scores of the SMAT had stronger correlations with the social adjustment scores; among women, correlations with the marital satisfaction scores of the SMAT were stronger. Thus, marital adjustment may be a part of social adjustment for women, but the two may be discrete for men., Behavioral adjustment in a variety of interpersonal situations is important to clinical psychologists because it is often linked with the onset and continuation of mental and psychosomatic disorders (Birtchnell, 1988; [...]

People aged over 65 account for 15% of Japan's total population and could account for 27% by the year 2025, compared with around 20% in Europe and North America. Japan must prepare social resources to care for its aging population and the issue is perceived to be one of the country's most critical forthcoming problems. Life expectancy has grown 50% in recent decades, but the need for care of the chronically long-term ill has become more widespread. The organisation of society can change through the aging population, with social expectations requiring adjustment.

Population aging poses a serious challenge in Japan because of the unparalleled increase in the number of people age 65 and older. Since the country experienced earlier accelerated declines in fertility and mortality, it will have the world's oldest population by the 2030s. The government has been trying to shift some of the financial costs of the aging population from the social security system back to families. However, this approach is not expected to succeed due to such factors as increased female employment, decreased coresidence and weakening values of filial piety.

It has been widely supposed that human mortality from all causes increases with age nearly exponentially (at a constant rate) through adult ages except for very old ages, and that this exponential increase also holds fairly well for most major causes of death (CODs). However, the present analysis of death registration data for Japan, 1951-1990, reveals that the rate of age-related relative increase in mortality (the life table aging rate) changes with age significantly and systematically for many CODs. Above age 75, the mortality increase decelerates for most CODs; under age 75, it remains at a relatively stable pace for ischemic heart disease, decelerates for most major cancers, and accelerates for diseases related to a declining ability to maintain homeostasis (pneumonia, bronchitis, influenza, gastroenteritis, and heart failure). These results seem to suggest that significantly different types of senescent processes may underlie atherogenesis, oncogenesis, and immunosenescence.

This study examines the competing risk of cognitive impairment, mortality and study attrition over a three year period within a national probability sample of Japanese elderly (n = 1506). Younger age and fewer chronic conditions were related to recovery, while older age, being married, poorer self-rated health and depression were related to mortality. Impaired, urban respondents were move likely to drop out of the study than impaired rural respondents. For those 'intact' at baseline, the probabilities of impairment, death and non-response were 7, 6 and 16%. Older, less educated individuals were more likely to become impaired; older, males, less educated, married, those in poorer self-rated health with poor functional health were more likely to die; and younger, single, urban living individuals with poor self-rated and functional health, a past smoking history and high levels of depression were the most likely to drop out of the study. A Japanese elder aged 65 is expected to spend about 14.6 years (81%) free from cognitive impairment and about 3.45 years (19%) experiencing some degree of cognitive impairment throughout the remaining lifetime. Key words - cognitive impairment, active life expectancy, competing risk models

Japan is the most rapidly ageing developed country in the world. Economic, political, and social changes will be necessary in the next 20 years as Japan attempts to adjust to the rapid ageing of its population. This paper examines survey responses by Japanese men and women regarding their attitudes toward the ageing of their country's population, concerns about the impact of anticipated demographic changes on their economic well-being in retirement, and preferences among alternative policy options for changes in the Japanese social security programme. Responses to a nationally representative survey, conducted by Mainichi Newspapers in 1992, were analysed. Key findings indicate that: (1) the Japanese are concerned about the impact of population ageing on their economic well-being in retirement, (2) most Japanese anticipate that earnings will be an important source of their retirement income, but they are worried about employment opportunities, (3) they favour increasing social security taxes instead of cutting retirement benefits, and (4) they favour raising the age of eligibility for social security benefits. KEY WORDS - Japan, population ageing, social security, older workers, retirement.

The effects of Japanese housing price determination mechanisms are examined by applying the housing demand index of demographic factors developed by Mankiw and Weil (1989). Short-term and long-term effects are compared using an error correction model and the cointegration concept. Regression estimates show that short-run adjustment processes in the housing market allow demographics to significantly affect prices.

This paper analyses how value change and economic and social change have jointly affected fertility in Japan since 1950, and especially since 1973 when fertility resumed declining after some 15 years at near-replacement level. The resumption of fertility decline since 1973 has been driven primarily by underlying economic and social changes. Value change has tended to lag behind fertility change, and this lag has tended to be larger in Japan than in other advanced nations, primarily because underlying economic and social conditions have evolved more rapidly in Japan, and because it takes time for values to adjust to changes in underlying conditions. Because of Japan's high degree of cultural homogeneity, values tend to be widely and quickly shared, so that under certain conditions value change tends to occur in spurts. In Japan, many of the more important value changes affecting fertility in recent decades are bound up with major educational and job gains by women, which have led to greater economic independence and more emphasis on values of individualism and equality between the sexes.

Migration, instead of infanticide, caused the stagnant population growth in Japan during the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. Japanese wives were left alone when their husbands migrated from their homes to get better economic returns from work. The frequency of conjugal unions was reduced significantly due to work related migration, which negatively influenced population growth. The multiple components of demography worked together to make growth stagnant. Simplistic explanations based on mortality or fertility fail to explain the phenomenon.

Shinjinrui: who are they and why did they become who they are? Japanese in their 20s and early 20s differ so much from preceding generations that they are called - [...]

Seasonal variation of mean birth weight (MBW), mean gestational period (MGP), and MBW at 40 weeks of gestation ([MBW.sub.40]) in the 15 different prefectures of Japan were analyzed using vital statistics from 1974 to 1983. MBW generally shows a bi-modal pattern with two peaks in spring and autumn and two troughs in summer and winter. Seasonality exhibits a general geographic trend: The autumn peak loses its height and the spring peak increases its amplitude as one moves from north to south. This trend suggests that environmental factors are associated with the creation of seasonality in MBW. For MGP the pattern is relatively unimodal with a deep trough in winter; however, a late summer small dip is observed in most cases. According to an analysis of coincidence between the two time series (MBW and MGP) and correlation analysis, the seasonal variation in birth weight basically depends on the gestational period. For [MBW.sub.40], which represents the fetal growth rate, the seasonality shows a pattern similar to that of MBW. A statistically significant coincidence and a correlation are observed between the time series of MBW and [MBW.sub.40]. These results suggest that the two processes of fetal growth (gestational period and fetal growth rate) are associated with the creation of seasonality in MBW., The existence of seasonality of birth weight in humans has been reported by several researchers around the world (Selvin and Janerich 1971; Roberts 1976; Bantje and Niemeyer 1984; Matsuda et [...]