Abstract
This article resolves the relationships between the system of classificatory schemes and social class, using data from a random sample survey of men and women in Japan. I find the class differential in prestige ratings of various cultural activities to be explicable in terms of class habitus and developed a social analysis of taste by P. Bourdieu. The capacity to discern values of various cultural activities, which is the sense of distinction or one kind of cultural capital, is linked to the socio-economic status and cultural consumption. Class differences in the capacity to discern cultures are from the different positional perceptions in social world and from the different advantageous attributions. Furthermore, the effect of intergenerational social mobility on the capacity ids different between men and women. Men's perspective on cultures tend to change and acculturate by their mobility, but women maintain the scheme of their origins.
