Since the middle of the 1970s the proportion single among those who are in the reproductive ages and the mean age at first marriage have been steadily rising in Japan. These phenomena have occurred without the concurrent increase in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock fertility which Western society hasexperienced since the middle of the 1960s. While these trends are more or less common to all social and economic segments of Japanese society, they are more conspicuous among women with higher levels of education. According to decomposition analysis, neither growing urban population, growing population concentration in the three largest metropolitan areas, nor rising employee-status or white-collar jobs have contributed to any great extent to such phenomena, while the rise in higher levels of education has somewhat done so. Through the review of surveys on attitudes and behavior related to marriage, it can be asserted that the rapid rise in women's social status has made them economically more independent, weakened the economic necessity of marriage for them and, at the same time, aroused their discontent with a family system based on a fixed division of labor by gender, or the breadwinner-homemaker system. This, in turn, has acted to raise the proportion single and the postponement of marriage.

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This paper examines changes and increasing variations in marriage timing among several contemporary birth-cohorts in Japan. Data came from research applied to samples in two cities (Tokyo and Fukushima), for those born between the years of 1914 and 1958, and conducted by the project team for Social Change and Human Development (Waseda University) in 1988 and 1989.
The results are : (1) In the 1954-58 birth-cohort of both sexes, a delay and increasing variations in marriage timing were observed. (2) For both sexes with higher academic backgrounds in the 1934-38 and the 1944-48 birth-cohorts, the age of first marriage was relatively high, but most in these groups had experienced their first marriage by a given point in time. (3) For females with higher academic backgrounds born after World War II, in the case of the 1954-58 birth-cohort, a delay and increasing variations in marriage timing were observed. This seems to indicate increasing alternatives of marital behavior for the members of that group. (4) For a portion of males with lower academic backgrounds in the younger cohorts, a delay of marriage timing was observed. This trend parallels growing competitiveness in the marriage market, which acts to the disadvantage of younger people with limited resources.

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The rerationship between husband and wife in Japan in the 20th century can be categorized into two types; the “Pre-World-War” marital relationship, common among Japanese before the 1950s, and the “Contemporary” common after 1975.
In the “Pre-World-War” relationship, people did not marry for romantic love, but rather thought of marriage as a means for realizing stability in their lives.
The marital structure of the relationship in general was characterized by the husband's dominance, the clear existence of traditional gender roles among wage earning families, and a lack of emotional function.
On the other hand, in the “Contemporary” marital relationship, both men and women place the most emphasis on the free choice of a mate, with the woman's will being more important than the man's when decaiding to marry.
For both parties, equal partnership and motional satisfaction are considered to be the most important factors in the relationship.
When these goals cannot be realized, the wife generally takes the initiative for a no-fault divorce.
There are still many doubts, however, so to whether this type of relationship will become more common in Japanese society.

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In contemporary Japan, both the marriage rate and the birth rate have been declining. Many studies suggest that the main reason for this is increased female participation in the labour force. Other research, however, makes it clear that the number of unmarried women who attach importance to their careers is not so high. If this is the case, then, why do so many young women not marry? This paper will investigate this question by reconstructing the realities of marriage from essays written by young women.

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This paper comments on certain aspects of the theme session on “The Shape and Meaning of Marriage, ” proposed by the program committee of the Third Family Sociological Seminar at Odawara; Kanagawa Prefecture.
The highly industrialized modern society in which we live is the first in history in which almost all adult females and males may have the opportunity to get marry, and can marry by a certain age. Such a marriage-oriented society is the result of decreasing socio-economic impediments to marriage, irrespective of social classes and gender. However, in the last two decades, the mean age at marriage has rapidly risen from 24.2 for females and 26.9 for males in 1970 to 26.0 and 28.4 respectively. This trend towards later marriage and accompanying changes in the meaning of marriage have attracted attention in various fields.
This paper highlights the changes in social norms concerning to the appropriate age at marriage; a converging life course pattern in the youth; the diverging temporal sequence patterns of the events which young female and male may experience in the early period of family formation; the increasing uncertainty of both marriage as an event and the expected extension of conjugal life; and the deflecting aspects of contemporary marriage and conjugal life which have both public and private implications.

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This paper seeks to explain the changing pattern of mate selection and marriage for successors of rural stem families, by comparing the behavior of mate selection and marriage among generations through repeat interviews conducted by panel survey in Katsunuma-cho, Yamanashi Prefecture. The findings are : (1) the style of marriage has changed from arranged marriage to love match, the geographical pool from which most selection occurs has widened; the decision maker in mate selection has changed from parents to the concerned parties themselves; (2) the family-oriented pattern of marriage which was populer before World War II has been replaced by an individual-oriented pattern after the war, under the impact of spreading democracy and a growing economy; (3) such changes in marriage patterns mean that the concept of a conjugal family has entered into the stem family. (4) The changes have happened so gradually over three generations that no precise point of departure in time could be identified; (5) a double standard between males and females has remained throughout these changes.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current family system in Japan from the perspective of the independent living (civil rights) of people with disabilities, and to discuss the future family system and its social conditions.
We can define the family system of current Japanese families as the Japanese type of “modern family system”. This is based on the division of sex-roles and has the large responsibility of social security for family members.
The two main issues for current Japanese families are as follows. As compared to the Western type of modern family system, they do not have resistance power against the larger society and the state. Second, there are not equal relationships among family members. In other words, they do not support adult members with disabilities in independent living, because they still cast them in the role of dependent children. They do not promote the social position of women outside the home, because women are seen as care-providers in the family. These characteristics of the Japanese type of “modern family system” arise from Japanese social policy which has been based on a “residual” welfare model since modernization.
If we can define the future family system in the new post-industrial society as a post-modern family system, it must consist of equal relationships among each family member based on the dignity of human beings. Such a family system will only be achieved, however, through a social policy of universal application of a welfare model to all individuals and without gender bias.

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This study aimed to examine the stress buffering effects of family crisis-coping resources on the relationship between stressors and stress responses of family caregivers for the impaired elderly. The sample consisted of 873 family caregivers for the impaired elderly living in Nagano prefecture, of which 712 (81.6%) were valid responses. A questionaire was developed to investigate the present circum stances of caregivers.
Family crisis-coping resources were divided into three categories : family caregivers' personal resources, family system's internal resources, and social support. The stressors were measured by four scales determined by the qualities and quantities of the elder's mental status and her physical ADL.Stress responses were expressed as emotional distress. Analysis of variance was conducted to identify stress buffering effects.
The results showed significant effects of coping resources on stress responses, with no significant interactional effects in 35 of 64 analyses. Eight analyses demonstrated different features from the other analyses, and can be devided into three groups : first, second and third. The analyses of the first group reveal a pattern of interactional effects of the stressor and coping resources, which asserts that under high stressor conditions the stress response level is so high that it can not be influenced by any benefical resources, even though coping resources are effective under low stressor conditions. The analyses of the second group reveal a pattern of interactional effects of the stressor and coping resources, which asserts that coping resources are effective under high stressor conditions, even though under low stressor conditions coping resources are ineffective. As for the third group, there exists a crossover interaction between stressors and coping resources in the analyses.

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