抄録
This paper attempts to follow the process of formation of the "post-war family system" in Japan by overviewing the trend of change in Japanese families mainly since the end of World War II, and to search the future direction of transmutation of contemporary Japanese family system, confirming availability of conceptual framework of the structural-functional approach in family sociology, based on the system theory. The post-war family system in Japan had been formed through the period of the rapid economic development(from 1955 to 1975), with the decrease of the pre-war family system as a type of extended family. It was characterized by the form of nuclear family based on fixed gender-role differentiation and had two main family functions; the stabilization of adults' personalities and the basic socialization of children. In contemporary Japan, however, this family system has been changing in all aspects of family form, family role structure and family function with progress of the social diversification. I propose that these changes are meanings of not the expression of "the crisis or fall of the family, " but the creation of the "post" post-war family system, that has so flexible structure and various functions in response of numerous changes in the social environment.
