“The Thousand Skins”, one of the fairy tales collected by Grimm Brothers portrays the fact of an incestuous marriage within a royal family. In the story, a king proposes to his own daughter. In spite of oppositions, the king makes his own daughter as the new queen. His former queen left a will before she died, which said the king had to remarry a woman more beautiful than she was, and whose hair had to be blonde. The king followed his wife's will, and found that his own daughter was the best woman for him to remarry. The former queen's will symbolically expressed the need of sustaining the orthodox royal family structure and more prosperity of the kingdom. It was their own daughter who had proper status, fortune, and welfare
In the 19th century, people did not accept such story of a king marrying his own daughter as a fairy tale. “The Thousand Skins” was revised by the Grimm Brothers in the 19th century, because of the obvious expression of the “incest taboo”, since the king married his own daughter. The revised story has the king's daughter rejecting her father's proposal, and marrying another king. In the revised version, marriage between the king and his daughter had been eliminated completely. However, the revision made the story lose its true meaning.
Incestuous marriage in “The Thousand Skins” has a great significance: Incestuous marriage has been prohibited, since it believed to be unhealthy for genetic makeup. But the recent eugenic study reports that the percentage of disabled offspring produced by incestuous marriages is quite low. Hence, there is a theory that suggests humans tend to lose sexual interest in those they nurtured. It means humans recognize their relatives by social interactions, not by biological fact. This theory was presented. by Westermarck in 1891, and had been ignored until Wolf presented his research about infancy marriage among Taiwanese tribes and children brought up in Kibbutz. Wolf employed the Westermarck's theory that introduces the new dimension to view the idea of “incest” itself, and made the Westermarck's theory come to life again.
“The Thousand Skins” originally tells the story of incestuous marriage among the members of royal families until the modern age. In an aristocratic family, the father does not raise his child. Therefore there is no socially constructed relationship between father and child, and there is no reason to avoid sexual relationship, because they have no such relation as father and daughter.
However, the notion against the “incest taboo” led the Grimm Brothers to rewrite the story and present the new concept of marriage, which is “marriage for love”. This concept demonstrates that for people to marry they do not need any status nor fortune but only need love. But marriage for love was not socially recognized until the 19th century. To change the concept of marriage, the Grimm Brothers found a way of emphasizing the beauty of women. “The Thousand Skins” is the best example that displays the conceptual change of marriage during the 19th century, and reveals the fact of incestuous marriage.
Women living in this modern world make a great effort to look physically better in order to reach a marriage for love. They strive to go on a diet because they believe that if they are beautiful, they will have truly happy marriages. Are they victims of the Grimm Brothers?

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Mary Louisa Molesworth (1839-1921), generally known as Mrs. Molesworth, was one of the most successful children's writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. She published Tell me a Story, her first children's book in 1875, which received a great deal of acclaim from the critics. Molesworth's talents as a children's author were early recognized by her contemporaries, and she published successively Carrots: Just a Little Boy (1876) and The Cuckoo Clock (1877), the works for which she is still best known. Molesworth thus established her reputation as a popular writer at a very early stage, and during the course of her career she produced more than a hundred stories for children. To find out what sort of views and attitudes on family relationships and gender roles are reflected in her works will be a central concern of this paper.
Molesworth created characters in her writing based on certain gender categorizations, and the relationship of adults with children marks a striking contrast in her stories. The typical relationship between male figures-particularly fathers-and children is open and formal: it is always under strict rules, order, and a hierarchy within the household. On the other hand, the female, especially the mother, establishes a close, intimate relationship with children, and this relationship creates a special link between them, emphasizing the mother's emotional and psychological understanding of the child. Such a relationship makes children feel secure enough to confide their feelings, which embraces an intuitive instinct that implies a sub-linguistic bond between them, whereas the father's attitude, which demands verbal explicitness and explication, is often too formal for them to do so. The female acts as a key figure, and the popular image of her is that of an arbitrator, who has the ability for reconciliation and family unity. The ‘male’ and ‘female’ figures in this discussion do not necessarily refer to the actual gender of the characters, but represent rather the two essential ‘cores’ of the adult characters' features with their vital roles to the child protagonists. This therefore enables Molesworth to utilize either way for emphasizing or producing a twist in her characterization, and also to widen the scope of conventional views on gender roles.
In Molesworth's writing, as a whole there is an evident difference between the stories for children and the novel. The latter often rules out the recurring portrait of the caring, compassionate mother. In terms of mother-daughter relationships in particular, Molesworth carefully modified her treatment, according to the nature of book she was working on, and to its intended readership. Mary Louisa Molesworth explored the various states of the Victorian's lives -essentially, the female lives -of both the child and the adult, and her consistent interest in the female is the predominant theme running throughout her books, and for this paper, too.

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Fukuis one of the prefectures whose employment ratio of the woman is highest in Japan. I examine the division of household labor between both sexes using data from questionnaire survey that society for the study of employment and quality of life conducted in Fukui in June 2003.
In spite of height of employment ratio of the woman, gender-role attitude is conservative and the division of household labor between both sexes is not equal in Fukui.
I divide household labor into three categories, according to type of labor, the frequency at which it is conducted, and whether it can be put off or not. The categories are 1) daily household labor that cannot be put off, 2) daily or irregular household labor that can be put off, 3) care for child and the old. Women tend to take the largest responsibility for the most of the household labor, especially daily chores that cannot be put off.
In order to examine the linear effects of time availability and gender-role attitude bargaining on the division of household labor, I use the number of working hours per week and the gender-role attitude as explanatory variables. The variables that have a significant effect on the division of household labor between both sexes differ with types of household labor. The working hours of men has a significant effect on the all of daily household labor of men that cannot put off and on sweeping and care for child. The working hours of women has no significant effect on all types of household labor of women but sweeping and expensive purchase. The gender-role attitude of men has a significant effect on all daily household labor of men that cannot put off but daily shopping and on sweeping. The gender-role attitude of women has no significant effect on all types of household labor of women.
Social primary factors such as industrial structure, family forms, aging of population, spatial mobility and cultural tradition vary largely according to the locality. Such factors have a large influence to the working hours per week and gender-role attitude. The comparative research which inserted regional quality in range of vision is needed.

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These research notes were compiled in an effort to consolidate advanced studies, and conclusively provide two pointers for future research work, concerning the ideas of Helene Stöcker, a radical feminist activist working towards sexual liberation, amidst maternalist feminism as found in the contemporary Germany's bourgeois mainstream women's movement.
From the latter half of the 19th century to the early 20th, sexuality was only accepted to the extent that it was for reproductive purposes between a woman and a man bound in matrimony rooted in a controlling Victorian sexual morality demanding virginity from women. In regard to these highly oppressive sexual ethics, Stöcker refuted the patriarchal institution of marriage for subjugating the female sex and put her energy into creating a new morality that would recognize free sexual love outside of the constraints of marriage as well as positively accept children born from such relationships. Also, based in her vocal attestations for the dignity of each individual and respect for their right to self-determination in matters of sex, she stood affirmatively for homosexual relationships.
In 1905, Stöcker established the Maternity Protection League so as to improve the legal standing and economic independence of children born out of wedlock and their mothers. She also put emphasis on sex education, including assistance in avoiding the misfortune of unwanted births by spreading information on contraception, while developing a movement calling for the decriminalization of abortion centered on a woman's right to decide the fate of her own fertility.
In 1919, the Weimar Republic was formed and equality between women and men was guaranteed by the Weimar constitution, wherein women obtained political suffrage. Birth control and family planning were implemented extensively and the number of abortions increased. The Maternity Protection League extended its movement so as to spread accurate information on sex to every region, but gender roles and gender-specific expectations were barely swayed making it difficult for most women to actually enjoy the new sexual standards.
Consequently, given these matters, by closely examining Stöcker's works written particularly in this period, I believe that hints into how current conditions regarding sexual freedom and reproductive rights should be handled may be derived as guiding principles for future research.
It may be off the mark to think that she had a vision here on the structure of a society ready to support self-determination. I would like to carry out closer examination into this matter.

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The Law on Prevention of Spousal Violence and Protection of Victims came into effect on October 13, 2001. Through this enactment domestic violence began to be firmly treated as a crime by a legal standpoint. Although some points are insufficient, the law provides definite support to the victims of violence. However, in the articles of the law almost no statement can be found regarding the recovery of abusers, which is an indispensable measure to effectively prevent domestic violence.
Realities of domestic violence, as well as the backgrounds of violent act and the batterer's rehabilitation programs from American and Japanese cases are emphasized in this paper.
Men's Resource Center in the United States provides various programs for recovery and prevention from abusive acts, not only for hetero -sexuals, but also for the gay batterers. In Japan, the development of such programs still lay far behind. For instance, many problems lie ahead on how to deal with an arrested batterer in prison. The major feature of Japanese programs is that of strongly emphasising
“Non -Violence” rather than “Batterer's Rehabilitation”.
On examining the American cases, it will be noted that the programs for the batterers are actually offered as one of the means to support the battered women suffering from domestic violence. When women are in danger of spousal violence, immediate procedures are taken to ensure their safety. After their security is well assured, then come the batterer's rehabilitation program. In addition, these programs are managed by two facilitators, male and female, taking equal roles with each other, which give an efficient example on how a desirable relation between man and woman should be.
Various trials and experiences must be considered and applied diligently, in order to improve the Japanese methods of batterer's rehabilitation programs. Education of participating staff is also an important subject, and certainly, gender equality concepts must be taken into account Moreover, it is desirable that batterer's rehabilitaion programs should be geared not only to domestic violence, but also focus on sexual harassment and child abuse.

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In the middle of the 1990's, Japanese transgenders started self-help activities to improve their lives and social status. Trans-Net Japan (TNJ) is a self-driven group founded by Honoho Morino. The activities of TNJ vary greatly and include; providing a place for transgenders to study and communicate, publishing documents, holding symposiums for the public, and responding to the media to enhance public awareness of their issues. There have always been problems with running this group because all the programs are staffed by unpaid volunteers due to the lack of public funding for the transgender groups. This lack of funding makes certain programs and activities, such as peer counseling, more difficult to maintain. However, TNJ has held more than one hundred events as of January 2004.
During the past ten years, TNJ, other groups and professionals have actively worked together to improve the social situation surrounding transgenders This collaboration has lead to major changes: the Japanese Association for Psychiatry and Neurology established guidelines for the diagnosis and the treatment of GID (1997), the first publicly announced SRS was conducted with recognized justification by the medical ethics committee (1998), a transgender was elected to the Setagaya Ward Congress (2003) and a law allowing transgenders to change the gender on their family registration (equivalent to birth certificate) passed the diet (2003).
In the processes of changing the social system, the public view towards transgenders has shifted from
“som ething about sex cultures” to “something about medical and human rights issues.” The concept of the mental disorder, GID, was spread in our society as a term to describe transgender individuals. This situation generated a debate in the transgender community about whether the purpose of transgender activities is to acquire the welfare as handicapped people depending on the concept of GID or to deconstruct social norms based on the male/female gender dichotomy.
One answer is that the primary purpose of the self-driven activity is empowerment of the community. TNJ provides opportunities for the empowerment in their activities; the participants share a common problem, learn from each other and find strength in themselves. If all transgenders make the transition from passivity to self-reliance, they can confront the psychological and social issues in order to change their own lives and break discrimination based on gender issues.

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