M. Weber's wiew of Japanese religion is one of the vague problems to grasp because of his few description about it. But fortunately his comparative study of sociology of religion gives us an aid to that. He tried to clear up the cause of “innerweltliche Askese” in Protestantism through the typological method in it. Therefore I think that the knowledge of the frames of reference in his methodology would make possible for us to approach the Japanese religion about which he made only a few descriptions.
He set up three frames in order to understand “innerweltliche Askese” in Protestantism. The first frame is the idea of God, of relief, and of the future life, and the second is the idea of creature, and the third is the idea of way of relief. And he set up various conceptual schemes according to these three frames and characterized the Oriental and the Occidental religions in comparison with Protestantism. He included “Heilandsreligiosiatät” “Sakramentsgnade”, “Glaubensreligiositat”, “Pradestinationsgnade”, “Ritualismus” and “soziale Leistung” in them. Needless to say, he characterized the “innerweltliche Askese” in Protestantism with “Pradestinationsgnade” and a kind of “soziale, Leistung”. On the other hand he characterized the Asian religion with the other kinds of conceptual schemes.
As for the Japanese religion he understood it in the same way as he did Asian religion. He characterized it with “Heilandsreligiositat”, “Sakramentsgnade”, “Glaubensreligiositat”, “Ritualismus” and “soziale Leistung”. Though he found out great similarity between the Shinshu sect and Protestantism, he approach to it only with the conceptual schemes of “Heilandsreligiositat”, “Glaubensreligiositat” and “Gebetsreligiositat”.
Speaking about Japanese religion characterized by these conceptual schemes on the level of value theory, it seems to me that it has a value of “Shijyo” and of “Bundan” in my term in accordance with the “wertrational” and the “zweckrational” value in Protestantism. A value of “Shijyo” is the value found in religious action with which they believe in God or Hotoke for itself on the level of emotion. A value of “Bundan” is the value found in religious action with which their daily lives are systematized relatively from the view of the principle of religious ideal.
These concepts that I mentioned above is shown further in my humble work under the title of “Introduction to the study of Japanese mentality”. Please refer to it.

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This paper denotes that the concepts of the social stratum greatly diferenciated in the course of researches of poverty by several authors.
In our country, the studies of poverty started from the analysis of the house expenditures to the living structures and then to the principles of the social stratum. These authors were eminently influenced by Ernst Engel, Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree. For example, prof. Kagoyama and prof. Chubachi are the followers of living structure theory, and prof. Eguchi explains the developmental treatment about the social stratum. By arranging these studies, it may be clarified that these authors above-mentioned greatly emphasized upon the differences about social stratum rather than the relations between social strata.
In this connection, it may be seen that these authors greatly resemble those of American socialist's school i. e., the analytical treatment with the compound indices. Hitherto on the poverty studies, it can be said, the approaches of the stratum relations merely explain the existence structures of the relative surplus-population.

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Government control policies which were introduced into rural area during the period from 1937 to 1945 had two aspects : those policies for the control concerning production (especially rice) and the others for social control and thought control needed for war time mass manipulation.
Production controls should be understood in relation to the economic and social situation of the period. There had arisen the necessity to supply the rice demand within Japan alone, due to the decrease in the import of rice from Korea. The condition for farming was getting worse - under the pressure of war industry. In order to cope with the situation, the government introduced several policies and official movements ; the staple food management system originally enforced in fall 1941, group work farming, natural fertilizer production movement and so on. In general, these policies supported and tried to raise the farmers (both owners and tenants who produce by thdmselves) of large scale (larger than one hectare of arable land) with more family labor power, while the small scale farmers with less family labor power were pushed out into the part-time jobs and or could not expand their farming.
Both types of control policies were introduced into rural area through the net-work of local administration, the smallest unit of which was buraku-kai (buraku-assembly) settled as such by the government order issued in September 1940 one month before the inauguration of Taisei Yokusan Kai (originally aimed to be the anti-army political organization, though in vain) which also tried to involve buraku in its net-work. Buraku, in most cases, had the same boundary that the traditional neighborhood community (mura), which was formed as such during Edo-era and had continued to be the smallest socio-ecological unit in rural society since then, had maintained. It may be said that, in this period, government began to regulate rural people through buraku-kai, instead of the regulation by way of the landlords' authority upon rural society.
In accordance with the change in the role performed by landlords among Japanese ruling class and the change in the economic structure which had supported thier authority upon rural community, the social structure of the rural community changed. Farmers with larger arable land appeared as leader-representatives who “lead” the community as directed by the local administrators who practice the control policies and “represent” the community's own interest against the administrators. However, in fact, those farmers functioned rather as the agents who practice the control policies, for they could not represent the interests of various strata in the community, but their own, and the control policies were congruent with their interests. The social image of “industrious farmer” indoctrinated by the government through various associations and official movements rationalized the status of those agents as “leader-representative.”
Social structure of rural community in this period is characterized as the prototype of that which appeared after the Land Reform in the sense that the large scale farmers (regardless of owner or tenant) had power in the community, and that buraku continued to be the smallest socio-ecological unit and the lowest unit in the net-work of local administration.

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Recent student movement toward which many countries devise a countermove in spheres of politics, education, labor market, etc., has many different characteristics from the ones of, for example, the labor movement and the past student movement. They are aggressiveness, massiveness, daily activeness, behaviorism, co-movement with laborers and political leaders, out-campus movement and surrealistic ideology.
The author discusses in the paper the ways how to analyze the movement from sociological point of view. A structure of the movement is one of objects of the analysis in this context. Participants, affiliated organization, places, motives, the way to mobilize the movement, objects, countermeasures and growing and declining processes are, among others, items to be analyzed in the movement.
A classification of the literatures on the movement suggests that the past research had been done, firstly, at a historical perspective where ideological influences and its continuity in the movement were main concerns, secondly, at an organizational perspective where size of the organization, the relation between the organization and the movement, goal, integration and non-adaptive function of the organization -and the relation between the leader and followers of the organization were discussed, thirdly, at an ideological perspective where you can see that the movement in Japan could not stand with one and only one ideology. The fourth perspective is a study of the participants. Ascribed as well as achieved characteristics of those who participate in the movement fall in this category. If we agree that participants and leaders are different in their characteristics, we have to set up the fifth perspective as a study of leaders.

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Methodologically speaking, rural sociology in the post war period has developed with special emphasis on the class structure of rural societies. After the land reform, the consideration of rural class structure from the traditional view point of land-tenant relations became obsolete. It is difficult question to develop a new methodology of analyzing the class structure in rural society in Japan.
This report is intended to analize the rural social structure with reference to the development of capitalism. Japanese agriculture is characterized by the small scale farmer. The productive activities of agriculture and the consumption economy of household are combined in a single unit, viz, a family. An aim of production, in the first place, is placed maintenance of household economy that is necessary for reproductive process of labor force. Therefore agricultural activities do not exist fundamentally as an independent system, but are subordinate to household economy. By the increase of the cost of agricultural production through the input of a greater capital, for instance by mechanization, the flow of the surplus from productive sector to the consumption sector of a family becomes smaller and smaller. On the other hand, the cost of household economy is increasing by the rising level of living standard. A small scale farmer suffers from the shortage of money. He is obliged to select an alternative of the enlargement of agricultural scale or the scale of labor in a more profitable market. The agriculture labor system, quality and quantity of the input of labor force to a farming, is influenced by conditions of labor market outside agriculture and by the degree of mechanization of agriculture. The agriculture labor system can be considered as an adaptation of farmers to the development of capitalism in a rural society.
In a capitalistic society, agriculture and “monopolistic” capital are considered as fundamentally antagonistic. The agriculture labor system is a point of contact of these two antagonistic sectors.

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