Abstract
Stratification study in Japan seems to be activated journalistically these years. Nevertheless, specialists also point out the complicated tasks of this research field. This paper reviews the footsteps of the study, which has developed in consonance with the SSM (Social Stratification and Social Mobility) Survey in Japan since 1955. Then I point out that comparing the period of industrialization after WW II, recent two decades as research objects remain not fully explained. This seems to form a background that Hara and Seiyama (1999) proposed the studies of 'inequalities in the affluent society' as a basic perspective of contemporary stratification study in Japan. However, their ideas are still involved with the anachronistic understanding "After the War." Thus, the traditional frameworks are sustained in the longitudinal comparative analyses, and not very new conclusions are repeated without enough explanation of the current reality of these two decades. On the other hand, the delicate class differences in the affluent society, on which they stressed, reveal to the younger sociologists that the importance of the stratification study to the broader social aspect gradually diminished.
