Abstract
This paper was based on a speech made at the 27th annual meeting of the Japanese Society of Health and Medical Sociology held in May 2001. In this paper, first, an outline of how health sociology as the sociology of health/illness and health/medical care has emerged and developed in the latter half of the 20th Century is given. Then, recent research and teaching undertaken at the Department of Health Sociology, Graduate School of Health Sciences and Nursing, University of Tokyo, which has been taking a key role in the development of health sociology in Japan, is presented. Through the discussion of this work, the academic characteristics, theory and methods of health sociology to be continued and further developed in Japan in the 21st Century are presented.
