A most important contemporary task of family sociology lies in studying dynamic aspects of the family. Accordingly, family change and family development are the two major fields of research, while the methods worthy of special note for research along these lines are historical study making use of documents and panel interviewing. In addition to studies of dynamic aspects from the dimension of time, contemporary family sociology requires cross-national comparative studies in the space dimension and also cumulative studies on organizational lines.
These tasks will be valid by and large for other branches of contemporary sociological enquiries. How these emerge and what characteristics they demonstrate in such a field as family sociology where one may boast of rich accumulation of significant contributions is the problem which the present article attempts to discuss.
The author acknowledges other tasks facing contemporary family sociology than those to be treated here. They will be handled in the articles that follow in this special issue. In this sense, one can say that the subject of the present paper will hopefully be treated throughout the whole issue.

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According to the National Censuses, the proportion of nuclear family households to the entire family households in Japan was 55.3 per cent in 1920 and 63.4 per cent in 1970 respectively. Shortly, it increased about 8 per cent in a span of 50 years. This number of 8 per cent gives us an impression that nucleation of the family in Japan is not so serious as widely circulated. To be sure, as far as these figures are concerned, the progress of nucleation must be said to be slow in tempo.
We must not, however, be deceived by statistical figures. First, it is partially because of the recent increase of one-person households that the percentage of nuclear family households has not shown marked increase. If one-person households are eliminated from the calculation, the proportion of nuclear family households rises remarkably. Second, a quite different picture emerges when numbers of nuclear family households and extended family households are compared directly with each other. The ratio of nuclear family households to extended family households was 1.4 : 1 in 1920 and 2.5 : 1 in 1970 respectively. Third, what is particularly noticeable is that the number of extended family households including both grandparents has been decreasing rapidly in the past 10 years, whereas the number of those including only a grandparent left almost remains on the same level. These facts seem to be enough to suggest that the nucleation of the family is now going on in Japan at a considerable pace and that it has been occurring in the way that young married couples prefer neolocal residence, rather than in the way that an existing three generational family splits into two nuclear families.
There is, however, another evidence which seems to show that there still exists a hardly negligible tendency toward the preference for the three generational family. According to the governmental opinion researches on the old age which where carried out in 1969, 1971 and 1973, it was made clear that overwhelming majority of Japanese old people prefer living with their married children to living apart from them and that they prefer living with their married sons to their married sons to their married daughters. These opinions held by Japanese old people give us an impression that the traditional family system based on patrilineal descent and patrilocal residence still remains strongly in Japanese culture, which cannot be rooted out so easily as noised abroad, and, accordingly, will survive on equal intensity in the future. But can it be supported? Doubtful.
First, we have to pay attention to the fact that such opinions as mentioned above are those held by people aged 50 and over who were born roughly before 1920. They are the prewar generation who, brought up and educated by traditionally oriented parents and teachers, have internalized enough the traditional family system orientations.
Second, in connection with this, it must be noted that the forms of the family in a given period of time are the reflection of the past, in a sense that families existing in the present time are those formed by husbands-fathers and wives-mothers who were born years ago. Thus, the conditions of the family investigated in 1970 National Census are more or less reflecting value orientations of those people who were born in prewar time.
In the traditional family system, one of the sons, ordinarily the eldest, is made an heir, who takes a wife and lives with his parents in the same household, whereas his brothers, when they grow up, leave their home to form their own families of orientation, this is to say, unclear families. Thus, the proportion of nuclear family households to the entire family households in a given time is affected by the number of children, especially male children, each family has.

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This study is an effort to provide a descriptive overview of the social network of the modern Japanese family. Though the study is basically of exploratory nature, it is aimed at examining two aspects of family social network : one is the aspect of decline in the importance of the generational contunity in the Japanese family system ; the other is viability of kin linkages in the multiple context of family linkages with other social units in modern Japan. Social network and linkage are the basic concepts utilized in this study and exchange theory provides the basis for interpretations of findings.
This study is a secondary analysis of the data from Cross-National Research Studies on the Family. The questionnaire on family interaction was administered to a sample of 129 families who were purposively selected for studying the particular phase of family transactions with kin and other social units. The sample families are the residents of a housing development in Metropolitan Tokyo. Family transactions with other units are examined in terms of activation of potentially existing linkages with other units in ordinary need and hypothetically created crisis situations. Path analysis is employed to examine the logical feasibility of the proposed theoretical framework in this study as well as the multivariate relationships among our variables : eleven family structure variables, the variables on two types of kin linkage (parent-child vs. sibling, and husband's kin vs. wife's kin), and the variable on kin viability in two sets of need situations.
Findings indicate a positive association between the higher activation of matrilineal kin and the higher activation of non-kin linkages. This suggests that the degree of the importance of patrilineal kin may be a useful indicator of social change. Operationalization of concepts remains to be a problem in studying viability of kin in modern, industrialized society. Generalizability of the findings in this study is confined to the theoretical framework and related methodology.

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In this paper the writer attempts to consider some problems concerning kinship relations in modern industrial society from the view-point of fit relationship between industrial society on the one hand, and family, kin on the other hand. Especially three themes, namely the significance of kinship relations, the structure of kinship relations in modern industrial society, and the changes of kinship relations in Japan, are considered.
1 The significance of kinship relations in modern society :
Kinship relations are secured their viable possibility and effectiveness to the goal-attainment by their functional sharings with the bureaucratic organizations and adaptation to the professional and geographical mobility. And they also have an important function to the tasks which need no face-to-face encounter but need long-term commitments, namely personal careers and attitude formations.
2 The structure of kinship relations in modern industrial society :
Firstly, the character of elements which compose modern kinship relations and the logical relationships between a unit family and kinship relations, secondly, the basic structure of modern kinship relation as a kinship system are considered. In this attempt Talcott Persons' “isolated nuclear family” theory is examined. As the result, the concept of isolation is explained as a situation that lacks principles of grouping on specific decent lines, and has the primacy of kin obligation in a person's own family of procreation. Therefore “isolation of nuclear family” is a kinship set which fullfils the prerequisites of systemness and does not reject more wider kinship bondages. Then the concepts of network and kindred indicating the basic structure of modern kinship relations are considered. The former is useful in explaining relationship forms of modern kinship, and the latter, a concept supposing functions of ego-centered bilateral kinship system in contrast with ancestorcentered unilateral kinship is also indispensable in explaining the basic structure of the families today.
3 The changes of kinship organization in Japan
The traditional kinship organization in Japan is characteristic of a coexistence of Dozoku and Shinseki. The former is a patrilineal decent group, and the latter is a prescriptive kindred but is influenced its structure by Dozoku. And the change of kindship organization in Japan is supposed as a transition from a point dominated by Dozoku and coexisted Shinseki with it to a point where the Dozoku is disorganized and a new Shinseki relation as a optimal system gets to appear. Between these points there is a continuous process in which a type of kinship changes little by little to another is supposed. Therefore the structural characteristics of kinship organization of contemporary Japan can be made clear when they are properly placed on this continuum.

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