Cultural anthropology tends to approach the problem of policy from two standpoints: the intention of the policy, and the reaction of the taker. Policy, however, is not always implemented as intended, and the taker is not an entity which exists as such but is created in the process of implementing the policy. There is a possibility that for both the policy planner and the taker, the effect of the policy will provoke some differences from the planned intention or some unimaginable socio-cultural by-products. Section I "Introduction" briefly shows such problems. This article, using archive materials, periodicals, and fieldwork data collected by the author, examines several effects of Soviet cultural policy upon the Buriats (a native ethnic group in Southern Siberia), with the emphasis on the 1920s. The former Soviet Union was under an unprecedented regime that combined the socialist ideology of rapid social development and enlightenment, and federalism based upon titular national republics; all of which was reflected in its cultural policy. Especially for the Buriats, who were considered a nomadic people that were situated in the backward stage of development, the implementation of the cultural policy, or "socialist cultural construction", greatly changed the Buriats knowledge of themselves. Section II "Components of the Soviet Socialist Revolution" formulates the Soviet conception of development with special reference to the collectivization policy, and the characteristics of Soviet federalism. The Soviet regime of titular national republic federalism was not only a political arrangement for a multinational situation, but also a cultural scheme in that it gave shape to the systematic collection, edition, and formation of ethnic knowledge within the framework of a titular (autonomous) republic. In this context, the development of Soviet "ethno"graphy and "ehno"history was a great political as well as cultural project. Section III "The Soviet 'Culture'" explains the phenomenon of the culture as defined in the Soviet environment. The Soviet "culture" was addressed in a Socialist program named "Cultural Construction [kul' turnaia revoliutsiia in Russian; soeloi khbubiskhal in Buriat]". It included not just the construction of "cultural" facilities such as schools, houses of culture, hospitals and so on, but also enlightenment and the "modern" lifestyle that should be achieved in the course of the collectivization. Section IV "Practices of the 'Culture' : Literacy Education and Local Studies" ethnographically describes and analyzes the phenomenon of "cultural" practices in Buriatiia, especially the Selenga District, within the Soviet context presented in the first two sections. First, the author gives some accounts of literacy education propaganda. It is pointed out that the social arrangement of the Soviet "culture" should not be seen as mere Sovietizaion or even Russification. In addition, included in literacy education itself, going beyond literacy learning, was a further long-term program to gradually gain new political and local-cultural knowledge about the homeland. It was the local studies [kravedenie in Russian] movement that was closely related to this Soviet construction of homeland as a lifeworld of the villagers. To exemplify the point that "homeland" was recognized and conceptualized in practice, the author introduces the Third Pan-Russian Conference of Local Studies held in Moscow in 1927. It is clear that the local studies movement was considered to have highly political goals which could be used in a period of all-out war. This movement was used as a method for searching out and developing human resources, and as an interdisciplinary ethnic knowledge framework which ran abreast of

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Today finds the concept of "safety-first" already incorporated into daily life as a symbolic code to call people's attention to danger. The term "safety-first" often appears in media coverage regarding major hazards and accidents caused by recreational equipment and revolving doors. Today "safety-first" is recognized as a self-evident slogan. The safety-first philosophy was originally introduced to Japan as a personnel administration technique from the United States of America and the later revised according to Japanese interpretation during industrial modernization on national scale beginning in the Taisho Era (from 1912 to 1926). This paper analyzes how the national policies implemented during Japan's modernization pervaded the daily lives of Japanese citizens in terms of the popularization of safety-first philosophy. In particular this analysis targets the period of Japan's high economic growth after the second World War. The implementation of national policies during this specific period, including the income-doubling policy (in 1959), resulted in a rash of labor accidents as the Ministry of Labour (now the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare) emphasized the adoption of safety-first philosophy as an industrial concept to bolster workers' morale, raise the efficiency of production, and reduce occupational injuries. For the objective of this analysis, a study was conducted on the safety of the workers at Yawata Iron & Steel Co., Ltd (now Nippon Steel Corporation Yawata Works) and related political issues. This particular steelmaker, a mainstay of Japan's steel industry that was essential to national interest, had been publicly owned prior to Word war II, but was privatized after the war. It played an important role in leading the iron market in Japan before and after the war. Nippon Steel is recognized as having amply demonstrated advanced corporate innovation in the field of safety management and various other fields in line with Japan's modernization. As mentioned above, this paper discusses problems posed in the development of Japan's high economic growth in relation to implementation of safety-first policy, and the power wielded by employers from the standpoint of the statements constructed by the concerned parties. The introduction of safety-first policy for the purpose of personnel administration caused a conflict between labor and management. The main point in dispute was with "death" being defined as "being killed in the line of duty." Exceptional death due to occupational injury was thus defined based on the relation of power between labor and management. At that time, corporations adopted the safety-first philosophy (proposed by the Ministry of Labour) based on the assumption that "being killed in the line of duty" was an occupational hazard. Undefined death was not only rationalized as "being killed in the line of duty," or due to a valid occupational injury, but also began being treated as "nullified death"-cases that are simply reported, field away as digital data, and then eventually forgotten. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Labour continued to encourage keen competition among corporations in promoting the safety-first strategy. Through a funeral at Seietsu Temple, corporations officially recognized employees killed in the line of duty as martyrs and treated them as corporate heroes. To ensure corporate permanence, memorial services were held for said martyrs on an annual basis. On the other hand, workers were able to recognize the misleading nature of such corporate discourse, and labor unions collectively launched tactical activities by raising strong objections to authority and attacking the views of the corporate system. However, a spate of corporate downsizing served to repress labor union activities and forced labor union members to

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Modern social theories usually view a community as an outdated social unit based on the primordial sense of belonging. They see these communities as gradually being replaced by modern associations. In fact, it is not unusual to see such communities transforming their functions and principles of communality and surviving in the modern world. This paper discusses the new form of communality in modern situations through the analyses of the Balinese cremation ritual. Cremation is the most important ritual among the Balinese rites of passage. Its purpose is to purify the soul of the deceased which has been polluted by death, and to liberate it ti become an ancestor spirit. Due to its high cost, the ritual was usually held only by wealthy families who used it to display their high social status. Since the independence of the Republic of Indonesia, however, the Balinese traditional belief has been officially recognized as a Hindu religion, and the cremation ritual was positioned in the Hindu doctorine as one of the indispensable duties of the Hindu. The doctorine also mentioned the ritually polluted state caused by the dead bodies which were left un-cremated for long periods of time. This condition was considered an obstruction to proper temple celebrations. In this situation, the Balinese Hindu leaders introduced collective cremation as a new form of cremation ritual in which many families jointly hold the ritual at the same time and place to reduce the ritual expenses. This innovative ritual style was practiced for the first time during the preparation period for the great ritual at the Balinese central Hindu shrine, Pura Besakih, in 1963. Since then, this new style gradually became prevalent on many parts of the island. In this stage, the holder of the ritual was still the bereaved families, but the aim of the ritual changed from status display to fulfillment of religious duty. In 2003 I observed a drastic change in the cremation ritual system in which the holder of the ritual was shifted from the joint bereaved families to the village ward (banjar). Although the bereaved families still bear the majority of the expenses, the ward members also are required to contribute labor and materials such as bamboo and coconuts. This arrangement was unanimously agreed upon at the ward assembly on the grounds that it might reduce the economic burden on the bereaved families. In the assembly meeting, the pollution of the whole community caused by the un-cremated bodies was also mentioned. Thus, the holder of the religious duty of cremation was extended from the bereaved family to the whole community. These changes in cremation ritual suggest that the communality of village and ward in Bali has also gradually changed: from a constellation of various families who accidentally gather and live together in a place through a particular historical process to a Hindu congregation who cooperatively shoulder the religious duties. This change of communality was caused indirectly by the state policies on religious matters. The new communality shows the adaptive form of community in today's modern social situation in Indonesia.

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In this article, I examine the boats of Sumiyou-Yamma Village on Amami Oshima. Through field surveys and observation, I have found that over time one type of boat is substituted for another and that some types disappear all together. This paper determines which type of boat succeeded during these processes, paying special attention to changes in environmental factors like nature, society, and the culture of the village. Before the 1940s, the number of subune or dugout canoes was steady. Then the entire number of vessels increased in the 1950s and '60s only to see the subune disappear abruptly. Plank built boats called itatsuke and ainoko were substituted for the subune. In the 1970s, temma or Japanese plank built boats and mota-sen or powered itatsuke and ainoko appeared. Temma grew in number rapidly and were substituted for other types of boats. FRP-sen or modern fiberglass boats appeared in the 1980s, but the total number of vessels decreased. There were also cargo-passenger ships called kakyaku-sen that appeared in the 1950s. They increased in the 1960s and then disappeared suddenly afterwards. All boats in the village were for multipurpose use: tools of fishery, transportation, agriculture, freight, and for the village festival. The dugout canoes were community property, and this was true for a few of the plank boats as well. The mota-sen and FRP-sen, however, were completely privately owned. The culture of boats in the village including the system of construction and their ownership had changed. The village's festival, called the "Hamaori", which was clearly a farming festival in the 1960s, now uses many boats as a festival to bring safe seas and a big catch. Some ainoko which belong to the Sumiyou Village Office are used in the festival's boat race, and most of the FRP-sen take part in the boat parade. As the festival itself changed, boats have taken over the role that agricultural played in the past. All these changes occurred in the '60-70s. Boats of Yamma Village changed not only in quantity but also in quality during the period. Moreover, the biggest feature, the multipurpose-ness disappeared completely. Meanwhile, forestry practices and loading changed, the number of people employed in agriculture and fisheries decreased, the use of LP gas spread, and the number employed in the manufacturing of pongee cloth and the amount of cloth produced increased rapidly. Also observed over this period was a rapid increase in the number of males enrolled in high school. Meanwhile, the land transportation network of the village had changed completely. In the late 1960s, as a result of the changes in the village's social environment, the residents flowed out of the village and the "Hamaori" festival was temporarily discontinued. Moreover, because shore protection construction was done as a part of highway maintenance, the water current was changed, and sludge accumulated at the shore. The temporary discontinuation of the "Hamaori" festival can be considered a result of this. The change in the social environment was accompanied by a change in the natural and cultural environment of the village, but both the people and village adapted. The substitutions, disappearance, and partial succession of types of boats occurred not only in Yamma Village and Sumiyou-son but also in whole areas in the Amami archipelago. Therefore, we can assume that limited events like the substitution, disappearance, and succession of different boats in Yamma Village reflect changes that occurred all over Japan in that period.

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On September 19, 2003, in the Powley case, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its unanimous decision on the existence of the constitutionally protected Aboriginal rights of the Métis people in Saulte Ste. Marie, western Ontario, recognizing their Aboriginal rights to hunt for the first time in history. The Supreme Court had ruled on Aboriginal land and fishing rights cases for "Indian" claimants and had established a test to determine the existence of these rights. The basic principle of the test entailed that Aboriginal claimants had to prove their exclusive use and occupancy of a contested territory before European contact. This test could not apply to the Métis claimants because their distinctive culture and identity evolved after European contact or rather because of it. Having recognized a discrepancy in applying its own test for the Indians to the Métis people, the Supreme Court in the Powley case modified the test on the basis of the ethnohistorically proven evidence as well as on the ideas of ethnogenesis. This study note discusses the significance of this Powley decision and argues that an in-depth analysis of this decision can help us better understand highly contested Aboriginal rights issues and the critical roles Canadian courts have played in defining Aboriginal rights. It also examines how the court used ethnohistorical evidence expert witnesses presented and how it purposely selected some parts of the evidence to create its own version of Métis ethnogenesis and rights. It also briefly discusses the response to this decision from the Métis National Council germane to the extent to which the Supreme Court defined their Aboriginal rights.

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