This paper focused on popular stereotypes of the adoptive family in Japan, i.e. adoptive parents, adopted children, and their birth mothers. An adoptive mother was invited to talk about her experience to university students in three classes. The effect of the lectures was examined by comparing the before-lecture questionnaire and the after-lecture report. It was found that the students had stereotypically regarded adoptive parents as compassionate, adopted children as pitiable, and birth mothers as irresponsible before the lecture, but they came to consider each of them ‘normal’ and not ‘special’ after the class. Careful analysis of the after-report, however, suggested that this change did not necessarily lead to complete alteration of students’ stereotypes, although just a few of them seemed to be aware of and get over their implicit preoccupation. The difficulty in changing stereotypes was discussed as stemming from two norms; the norm to take marriage, pregnancy and childcare inseparable and the norm to emphasize self-responsibility for one’s own choice.

　　　This action research aimed at supporting victims of the 2011 East Japan Earthquake by providing a series of calligraphy lesson in a small village in Iwate prefecture named Noda-mura, one of many affected areas of the quake. One of major characteristics was that the lessons were carried out without explicitly referring to restoration from the disaster. The first author himself played a role of teaching calligraphy while doing participant observation.

　　　The lesson created a new ‘community’ including even residents who had never met until the quake. Most participants in the lesson not only enjoyed calligraphy actively but also developed new human relationship among them. In this sense, it was suggested that the lesson provided a precious opportunity that victims could not experience because they were occupied with restoring their livelihood.

　　　Finally, the findings were discussed from the viewpoints of the legitimate peripheral participation theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Specifically, (1) The victims tended to be assigned a passive role of ‘the helped’; (2) The calligraphy lesson emancipated them from the passive role and transformed them into active participants in the new community. (3) In parallel, the calligraphy lesson developed new discourses that expressed active attitude, which could compensate dominant discourses, i.e., discourses directly related to restoration and discourses as the helped.