Following our research of time use by employed husbands and their wives in Tokyo in 1975, 1980, 1985, and 1990, we conducted in October 1995 the fifth survey of some couples with children living in Setagaya, Tokyo.
This report contains the purpose, method and outline of this survey. The primary purpose of this research is to clarify the existence of unpaid work time, not only in housework but also in gainful working hours. We advertised the purpose of our survey in a newsletter issued by the local administration, seeking volunteers. A total of 162 couples responded, and 136 couples or 272 persons were chosen as effective samples.
The results were as follows :
1) In comparison with the past surveys, both the husbands and their wives spent more time at work.
2) The average housework time by husbands increased slightly.
3) Generally speaking, the couples spent less time for personal care as well as social/cultural activities.

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Japan has the longest working hours of any industrialized nations. This situation is strongly related to the continuance of serious social problems, such as “Karoshi” (death from over-work). This paper aims to clarify not only actual conditions of working hours including “overtime with no pay, ” annual leaves, and holidays, but the influence of these working conditions on time use and family life.
Data obtained from the time use survey and questionnaire in Setagaya, Tokyo (1995), has been used. We have analyzed only full-time couples (79 couples) from perspectives of gender and type of business organizations.
The weekly working hours of husbands employed in private enterprise were longest (about 56 h, including two and half hours of “overtime with no pay”), while the hours of wives in private enterprise were shortest (about 43 h). Those couples whose husbands work in private enterprises showed a stronger gender role than those working in public organizations from the viewpoint of their time use. Wives used annual leaves more than husbands did.
We conclude that working hours must be reduced in order to balance the working couples' time allocation.

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The accumulation of storage proteins in ancient rice cultivars during seed development and the polypeptide composition of the glutelins were studied by SDS-PAGE and two-dimensional electrophoresis for comparison with modern rice cultivars. With the general pattern of protein accumulation, a massive deposition of two glutelins and one prolamin polypeptide with respective MW's of 21, 32 and 15 kDa occurred about 7 to 10 days after flowering (DAF) and steadily increased until reaching at a plateau at about 15 to 25 DAF. In an ancient cultivar, however, the polypeptide deposition was different, a sharp increment in the proteins beginning at 7 DAF and reaching a maximum at 20 DAF, before rapidly decreasing. The maximum amount of deposited proteins at 20 DAF was nearly twice that for the general accumulation pattern with modern and other ancient rice cultivars. The glutelin protein was found to be selectively extractable with SDS solution more than with other conventional solvents including acidic, basic and urea solutions. Some ancient black rice glutelins shared a polypeptide with MW of 19 kDa which was absent or handly detectable in the other glutelins, suggesting the 19 kDa polypeptide to be an inherent protein species of these ancient black cultivars. Two-dimensional electrophoresis of the ancient glutelins revealed two rice glutelin subunits (α and β), but the 19 kDa polypeptide remained unidentified.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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