Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to make a brief survey of the theoretical development of welfare sociology in postwar Japan, to assess its success and to examine the problems which remain today from the author's perspective.
To achieve this purpose, t his paper examines, firstly, Tadashi Fukutake's paper on sociology and social policy published in 1948 in connection with the theoretical trends of social policy studies in postwar Japan. It is argued that Fukutake's paper had the potential for the theoretical development leading to a social democratic model of welfare state studies, but that this potential was never to be realized under the circumstances surrounding social sciences in the 1950s and the 1960s. Secondly, this paper analyzes the theoretical development of social development studies to social planning and social indicator studies in the 1960s and the 1970s. It argues that the contribution of social planning and social indicator studies in this period to the development of theoretical framework and analytical tools for applied sociological studies is to be highly evaluated. Thirdly, this paper analyzes the development of comparative welfare state and social policy studies in the 1980s and the 1990s, paying special attention to the interdisciplinary nature of this field of research. Fourthly, this paper examines the contribution of Yoshiya Soeda's work to the development of social welfare studies focusing specifically on his theory of welfare sociology.
The paper concludes by raising three theoretical issues that n e e d to be considered in the analysis of the historical development of welfare sociology, and in the examination of the problems which confront welfare sociology today.
