NHK-JAPAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION LOOKS AT THE 1980s.

This article reports on findings of a survey conducted by NHK/Japan Broadcasting Corp., collecting views of intellectuals regarding social and economic changes in Japan during the 1980s. According to this survey, expert opinion seems to suggest that: social changes in Japan in the 1980s will largely be caused by the so-called "postwar revolutions"; phenomena occurring at the interfaces between social changes and changes relating to personal behavior will become increasingly important; and in the context of social interaction such phenomena will increasingly produce antinomies as it were, with the result that Japanese society as a whole will become more and more opaque. For this survey, researchers have selected a total of 47 items from technical papers, newspapers and magazines. These items were then submitted to experts for their opinions. The respondents for the most part mentioned the following five elements as being the ones most likely to produce social changes in this country as it marches toward the 1980s: increase in urban population; numerical preponderance of postwar generation; increase in recipients of secondary and higher education; continued prevalence of pollution; and technological progress in information and transportation.