REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN JAPANESE SOCIAL CAPITAL AS REVEALED THROUGH THE DISTRIBUTION OF COMMON FAMILY NAMES

抄録

Family names of Japanese convey information about their family history. Although a precise inference at an individual level is difficult, an inference made in aggregation at a community level reliably captures differences in historical inflows of migrants across communities. Following an introduction of this rationale, this paper develops the Family Name Index. As anticipated, the Index was correlated with historical residential mobility across Japanese prefectures. In regions characterized by high historical residential mobility, frequent family names overlapped more with nationally frequent family names. Part 2 used the Index to illuminate regional differences in Japanese social capital. Consistent with prior research, the results indicated a negative association between the Family Name Index and social capital. That is, social capital was stronger in regions where frequent family names do not closely resemble the nationally frequent names. Implications are discussed.