In Japan the cultural point of view about death seems to have been more taken into consideration than in western countries. But the cultural study of death contains at least two problems. Firstly it tends to fall into the relativism and cannot determine what is the "correct" answer to the question what is death. Secondly the cultural study of death itself constructs and stresses the cultural difference concerning death, which makes it all the more difficult to argue on the cross-cultural and universal dimension. Many of the cultural studies of death in Japan have insisted that the western medicine as a whole be based on the Cartesian body-mind dualism, which I think is not correct. In this paper I reexamine the cultural "difference" between Japan and western countries through the historical review of the modern western medicine and its definition of the human death, and try to show the similarity of them rather than the difference. Also I suggest the concept of the "family as a body" which seems to be able to explain the not negligible difference of the people's attitudes to the organtransplantations among the countries.

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Since the Japanese nation state started in 1868, there have been differences between customs among the Japanese people and legal institutions over 'approval' of death, treatment of the remains and worship of the dead. Although the nation and the people have compromised the differences, from now on the legal institutions have to be more regulated because of the thorough changes of family, community, work environment and etc..
The differences have been found in three phases of death, i. e., (1) 'approval' of death, (2) treatment of the remains and (3) worship of the dead which have been embedded the traditional family system, 'ie'.
On the approval of death the Meiji government made the regulation in which a dead body should be diagnosed by modern medical doctors though all diagnoses could not be done because of the shortage of doctors. In the process of modernization for one century the regulation had been realized and the difference has disappeared. Another big difference occurred in the dispute about cadaver organ transplantation which accompanies a diagnoses of 'brain death'. As a compromise of the long time dispute there are legally two kinds of death, i.e., 'brain death' and 'heart death'.
On the treatment of the remains the big difference was formed in the military system. In the pre-war system the remains and spirits of dead soldiers belonged to the government, and the rights of the soldiers' families were secondary. On the third phase of death, worship of the dead, the spirits of dead soldiers were deified in Yasukuni-jinja, a Shinto shrine though most Japanese dead spirits were worshipped in Buddhism.
Accompanied with globalization of economic systems Japanese social structure is basically changing which certainly brings changes of the Japanese people's custom over death. Now the regulation of the matter becomes much more necessary than before.

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By one's death, the cessation of a life, the whole relationship of a person may be supposed to come to an end. The person's social relationship, however, survives his/her death for some more time. For example, a person who is remembered in other people's memory continues to affect other people's life. Also the person's social relationship may change well before his/her death. For example, a person can envision his/her death in some future to change his/her behavior tremendously. Indeed a person's death is an evolving set of events in life both of him/ herself and for others. In cases of a tragic massacre, the deaths are unexpected and public event causing an extensive societal reaction. From this standpoint, a death may be viewed as a distinctively social phenomenon, a process being comprised by various social, i. e. personal, familial, professional, legal, and etc. experiences.
In view of delineating the relationship of phenomena of death as represented in actions of law and death affecting people's lives, this paper takes up 4 types of social experience of death, i. e. (1) hidden death, (2) envisioned death, (3) lived death, (4-a) death as being seen off, and (4-b) death as fuelling other people's life.
In the first case, a death is hidden both in medical and in some public discourse. Talking death realistically is a socially restricted behavior. In the second case, a death is envisioned personally as accomplishment of one's life, reflecting cultural activism in the modern society. In the third case, a death is composed of the communal experiences of intimate people through the ceremonies. The norms of commemoration seem to emerge based on this experience. In the fourth case, a death publicly causes a protest or other enduring activities.
In dealing with the above aspects of death, the paper generally pursue to collect various insights in the analytical tradition of ethnomethodology, social constructionism, the action theory of Talcott Parsons, and the theory of civilization of Norbert Elias. The author suggests that both the "living law" and "positive law" may emerge from these experiences. The sociology of law should analyze the mechanism of norm emergence and social functions of legal roles, (i. e. legal profession, parties of the legal case, or ordinary people) in those areas, such as succession laws, litigation for life damages, legal regulations to the terminal medicine, and law's contribution to the culturally problematic definition of death and life, among others.

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Genetic sciences, especially in the area of molecular biology, pose serious challenges and problems to us in the 21st Century. Genetic information of individuals gives new hopes and worries to patients and their families in their medical decision-makings. New technologies may also make human germline engineering possible and safe in the near future.
The first half of the paper discusses the autonomy of patients and of their families in medical decision-makings, while we face awesome developments in genetics and genetic information. If a simple informed consent represented the autonomy in the last decades of the 20th Century, should our autonomy in the 21st Century include our right (or duty) of letting our family and relatives know of their potential genetic information and genetic (advantages or) risks? Should it also include our and their right to "remain in blessed ignorance"? The novelty facing us in this century is that newly accessible genetic information of individuals (1) does not change, in that his DNA sequences stay the same life-long, (2) does not necessarily indicate the current physical condition, but could predict probabilities of certain diseases, (3) may lead to such prediction that may bring about discrimination, and finally, (4) may lead to presumptions on genetic information and conditions of families and relatives. The individual autonomy in this century, therefore, may afflict and conflict with the autonomy of others, even more than it did in the last century. The paper cites and discusses in details a lawsuit decided on April 25, 2003 in Tokyo District Court, then later on January 27, 2005 in Tokyo High Court, where the plaintiffs (parents) were awarded generous compensation for not being informed by physician (s) of genetic risks of having new babies, even after their first born had a severe genetic disease. The paper proposes that professional genetic counseling would be a key solution to such newly arising (legal) problems of this century.
The second half of this paper discusses reproductive human cloning and germline engineering, i.e. "Designer Children." Japan, in step with several other countries, prohibited reproductive cloning by law. There still are, however, limitations to the current regulation of genetic technologies in the international community. This paper discusses the recent "trial and error" by an Ad Hoc Committee and Sixth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly on an International Convention Against the Reproductive Cloning of Human Beings. They failed to agree on this treaty to ban reproductive human cloning despite the prevalent consensus that cloning babies should be prevented. The paper discusses then how the miscarriage of the International Convention might have closed the path to a future multilateral agreement to regulate or prohibit germline engineering. The discussions cover the "charm" as well as the risk, and the pros and cons of designing children. The paper contends that any potential regulation of germline engineering must consist of pragmatic measures that are viable within existing legal and social structures.
Finally, the paper discusses how law and regulation, including timely provision of appropriate genetic counselors and counseling, might fail to keep up with the rapid development of science and technology. A common criticism voiced in Japan is that law, legal regulation, and social controls cannot level with the fast development of science and technology. The solution would be proposing and stockpiling possible and pragmatic measures well in advance, before another Dolly II the Designer Sheep would alarm us. Also, we probably should not expect a one and only truthful answer to all the bioethical questions on novel biotechnology and life sciences. Diversity, be it on the national or the international level, requires and should tolerate diverse responses to those questions.

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The needs for the protection of personal genetic information are increasing with the recent development of the life sciences. Personal genetic information is unique to each individual and unchangeable for life. Each individual has strong personal connection to her/his personal genetic information. The members of families and racial groups, however, share a part of their genetic information. One's personal genetic information has possibilities to provide the person with some advantages or disadvantages. The needs for the protection of personal genetic information are based on the possible disadvantages from the information and on the unique personal connection to each individual. The Personal Information Protection Act, enacted in 2003, covered only a small part of these needs. Especially, genetic information held by research institutes for academic research is exempt from the jurisdiction of the Act. Several guidelines issued by agencies and advisory committees also protect personal genetic information. These guidelines use anonymization as the main method for the protection of personal genetic information. These guidelines generally require to anonymize personal genetic information. It is sure that anonymization reduces the possibility to provide a person with disadvantages from the information. Anonymization, however, does not disconnect the unique personal connection between the information and the person. The protection systems of personal genetic information should focus on this unique connection as well as on the possible disadvantages from the information. Enactment of Fundamental Policy Act for Gene could be one of the methods to manage the issues.

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In practice nurses play a key role in genetic services provided for patients or counselees in and out of hospitals in Japan. But in the present medical system, it is not evident what position should be given to nurse among other medical professionals. And the ethical, legal and social issues relevant to genetic nursing are not yet analyzed and settled sufficiently.
The author argues that it is quite necessary to empower nurses by reforming the Public Health Nurse, Midwife and General Nurse Law established in 1948 and not fully accommodated to the recent highly developed nursing, although it has been revised several times in minor items. Also he discusses about the differences between genetic counseling and genetic nursing and maintains that Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) in genetic nursing should be established by the Japanese Nursing Association.

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A ritual is in this paper regarded as a kind of social norm in that it is a manner of behavior traditionally or habitually formed through regular performance in everyday life. Focused on how a ritual (a pattern of repeated performance) to a relatively "new" incidents which seems to need serious response, and how the constructed ritual concerns with the way we think what familial relationship is, or ought to be, this paper addresses how social response to child abuse as constructed through mass media and professional discourse presumes a model of care relationship. Also it argues society has an obligation to care giver because of the difficulty care relationship itself inevitably involves.

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The concept of "cemetery" in Japanese law, the ground which build graves, has been affected by the idea of ancestor worship, because the Code Civil of Japan positioned the graves as a device for ancestor religious services, which are entrusted with his descendant, and the graves which ancestor buried are reburied as the unrelated grave, if the descendant disappear.
In Europe, the burial laws have regulations about "burial compulsion" and "burial duty", but in Japan the decisions whether the dead should be buried, are referred with his family or his descendant.
The current system of Japanese burial and cemetery is not be effective, because it is not possible to produce an Atotsugi (successor), the continuation of religious worship is threatened due to the changing family structure and a declining birth rate.

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The purpose of this article is to analyze memorial services as a social interaction. I try to define the functions of funeral ceremonies, which is one of the most general cultural and social actions related to death. A funeral ceremony has four functions; (1) the burial or disposition of a dead body; (2) the inheritance of social status or economical assets; (3) the restoration and preservation of social networks; (4) co-memorializing of the dead. Focusing on the fourth function, social interactions between the survivors and imagined dialogues with the dead are discussed to analyze the mechanism of co-memorializing of the dead. The conceptual framework of memorial services suggests that the consciousness and action of the living are affected by the accumulation of memories of the dead.

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In arguments concerning death and its definition, the social aspect of death, which is beyond the range of natural sciences such as biology and medicine, has often been referred to. The purpose of this paper is to consider this social aspect of death by re-examining the concept of "social death."
First, this paper looks into existing usages of the concept of social death and attempts to clarify its meaning. Social death is distinguished from biological death, clinical death, legal death and ritual death. This paper suggests that the defining feature of social death is the termination of one's social existence in the lives of others.
Secondly, the relationship between modern social changes and the changing profile of death is considered from the point of view of social death. In contrast to traditional society, social death in modern society has become individualized and can be interpreted in various ways. In cases of the death of persons who are non-intimately related, the process of social death tends to move comparatively quickly, and may sometimes move more rapidly than the process of biological death. On the other hand, in cases of the death of persons who are intimately related, the process of social death moves comparatively slowly and may continue for a long time following biological death. It is pointed out that this discrepancy between the two cases can often poses problems.
Finally, the social background of legal death is examined in the light of social death. There are discrepancies between legal death and social death, which pose problems. In many cases, there are "continuing bonds" between the bereaved family and the dead which still exist even after biological death. The paper concludes with an examination of legal professionals' attitudes toward these continuing bonds.

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After the Second World War, Japan has attained rapid economic growth. Speaking briefly, this growth may be represented by cars. Not only the output of cars has grown more markedly than any other comodities such as iron and ship, but also cars have played an important role in economic growth as means of transportation. On the other side, many people have been killed by traffic accidents during this period. The purpose of this article is to consider how we have treated these accidential deaths.
Generally speaking, the compensation for the death is done through paying money. But the money is the medium of exchange and the life of human being is not a commodity for exchange. The life cannot and should not be exchanged for money. Therefore our method of monetary compensation is not a necessary way but a mere convetional one.
Moreover, as too many accidents happened every day, we accepted this method for compensation as if it is a business transaction. As a result, the compensation is done automatically on the basis of certain 'standard' by the specialists such as lawyer, judge and property insurance company. Consequently, the victim does not see the wrongdoer's face and vice versa.
This comes from the fact that we accept the traffic accidents as daily happenings, not as crimes. The death of human being forced by traffic accident has been treated on the economic principle. We may regard efficiency and convenience as more important than other's life.

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The term "karoshi" was first used by Dr. Tetsunojyo Uehara and others in the latter half of the 1970s. Thanks to the activities of the Karoshi Hotline since 1988, "karoshi" has become part of the Japanese language.
Karoshi is defined as "death from overwork and stress". The phrase "suicide resulting from overwork, " as a form of karoshi, is now established in Japan as well. When reported overseas, the term "karoshi" is either left in the original Japanese as karoshi, or is translated into the phrase "death from overwork" and is regarded as a symbol of overworking Japanese society.
Karoshi has great significance for the following two reasons: firstly, the word explains the social factor of "overwork and stress" that leads to death; and secondly, the word has an easily understandable meaning for the Japanese people. For these two reasons, karoshi has become a locomotive for the movement of social reform in Japan.

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This paper is an introduction to the Study of Sociology of Law in contemporary China. It is made up of three parts. The first part introduces the changes which took place in the 20th century Chinese Study of Sociology of Law. It covers three periods of changes. The first period ended at the establishment of the People's Republic of China, and was replaced by the second period which ran until the adoption of the open policy. The third period started from the adoption of the open policy and continues up to the present stage. The second part describes the present situation of research and educational activities engaging the Study of Sociology of Law in China. Finally, the third part introduces the research project on "People's Law" led by Professor Xie Hui of the Shandong University. This project has attracted much attention as the latest trend in the Study of Sociology of Law. Examination of the future of this new development is also included in the third part of the paper.

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