Within interdisciplinary space studies (geography, urban sociology, architecture, etc.) in Japan, since the mid-1990s men have increasingly recognized that gender perspectives are important. It is, however, questionable whether men sufficiently recognize their gender positionality, the recognition of which is indispensable to a gender perspective. In this paper, I highlight this problem by taking the example of a social housing project, the South Block of Haitaun Kitagata in Gifu Prefecture, Japan.
The South Block of Haitaun Kitagata is a large-scale social housing estate designed by a male architect, Arata Isozaki, in the latter half of the 1990s. He tried to raise the quality of amenities by adopting a gender perspective and to this end appointed exclusively female designers (four Japanese and three non-Japanese). I have examined to what extent he was able to incorporate successfully a gender perspective into this housing project from four standpointsU the architect himself, the residents, the female designers, and the prefectural government of Gifu.
First, I examined Isozaki's perception of gender issues as expressed in Japanese architecture journals. It became obvious that for him a gender perspective was simply a female one. Hence, he merely expected the female architects to incorporate a gender perspective into the building design, without thinking about his own gender positionality. There was, however, no critical discussion pointing out this problem, even though the building exterior and the concept's uniqueness were commented upon with keen interest in Japanese architectural circles.
Second, through a questionnaire and interviews targeting the residents, it became clear that this housing project had some problems in relation to its amenities. The residents expressed disappointment at the quality of the amenities and attributed this to a lack of feminity in the female designers. This is because they had expected that female architects would place greater importance on amenities for daily living than male architects, due to their feminity.
Third, I examined the ideas of the female designers as articulated through their discourses in Japanese architectural journals. I found that the female designers placed heavy emphasis on the building exterior instead of on amenities for the residents. This means that they had not played the female gender role expected by the male architect.
Fourth, I explored how the prefectural government of Gifu, which is in charge of the management of this housing project, contributed to its construction. It became clear that the male governor of the prefecture had accepted the gender plan of the male architect on the basis of public building policy, rather than on the basis of gender-affirmative policies.
In conclusion, the South Block of Haitaun Kitagata failed to incorporate a design based on a gender perspective and thus ended up being built based upon a design with the conventional male logic. This was because men tend simply to think of gender perspectives as only female concepts and thus are likely to neglect the issue of male positionality when incorporating gender perspectives into space. Thus it becomes obvious that gender perspectives are still not fully understood by men in Japanese space studies.

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This review article reexamines theoretical problems in studies on landscape-as-text, which is one of the most important topics in recent human geography. This paper first investigates the perspectives and background thoughts of the poststructuralist landscape-as-text school existing in English-speaking countries since the mid-1980s. The second point under examination is a philosophical debate on landscape-as-text between poststructuralists and Marxists. Third, comparing theoretical problems in the debate, the paper discusses French-speaking countries' and Japanese contributions to the landscape-as-text approach to give a new perspective on landscape interpretation.
The concluding remarks in the review are summarized as follows. It is essential to make ontologic distinctions among semiotic concepts such as landscape as a built environment and representation of a landscape, as well as materiality of a landscape-as-text and ideas embodied in a landscape. We should examine the difference in the spatial units of the text as well as its elements among each social actor within and outside the landscape. It is also useful to consider that each social actor is simultaneously cognizant of some different semiotic structure of the landscape in their political-economic and social-historical contexts. Furthermore, it is advisable to acquire comparable data on the textual characteristics and conditions of each landscape in different regions, periods, scales, and types.

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After the introduction of the long-term care insurance system in April 2000, the utilization of welfare facilities for the elderly has changed. The use of day service centers is possibly the biggest change brought about by the long-term care insurance system. The effect of the measures adopted by the administration has especially influenced the location of facilities used before the start of the new long-term care insurance system. However, after the institutionalization of the long-term care insurance system, it became possible for users to select a facility freely.
This paper clarifies the changing location and service area of day service centers after the inception of the long-term care insurance system. This was difficult using conventional methods applicable to the municipality level since the service area of the centers occupies only a small part of the city, the residence wards. After the long-term care insurance system began operation, the number of private facilities with small capacity increased. The service area of day service centers changed mainly to the extent that the facilities expanded. As a result, competition is occurring among the day service centers at the residence ward level, and the era of free competition has arrived even in the welfare-related industry in Japan.

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