1) On Methodology. We have many differentiated sociological perspectives in the conflicting directions. In order to innovate the functionalist paradigm characterized as a normal science, we propose to combine dual counteracting perspectives : functionalism and interactionism.
2) On Structure. A social system can be defined as a living system of resource-processing controlled through information-processing. Its structure is consisted of several structural components : values, norms, decision-making structure, operation structure, and resources, which are not only hierarchically arranged, but also cybernetically controlled to satisfy requisites of the system. The requisites can be classified into three layers : basic, mediating, and specific requisites. But there are inherently structural strains both within and among those components.
3) On Social Change. Three major variables (strains, external requests, and system's ability to satisfy its requisites) will determine the changes in system structure. And the changes will be facilitated by the means of multiplytyped innovations against the structural components under strains. An effort to remodel Smelser's “logic of value-added process” has lead us to a more comprehensive analytical-scheme, which can described as “a total movement process” with a series of seven phases.

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Starting from J-J-Rousseau's thesis which is concerned to the relation between private wills in particular groups and General Will in society, author locates him in one side of the contemporary disputes in modern sociology around problems of power. In Rousseau's view, particular groups should be excluded in order to accomplish the general will of the society. Some similarity to his conception was found in the so-called non-conflict interpretation of socialist society. On the other hand, liberalistic theories insist the possibility or desirability of particular groups to participate in in public power. There are different applications of the philosophical connection between categories : general-particular-individual.
Theoretical postulates of both types of power theory has been in unresolvable contradiction. Author distinguishes power concept of “sozial” character (particular level) from that of “gesellschaftlich” character (general level). The aim of this paper is to explain the relationship of both concepts.
In the perspective of marxist theory building, author discerns the particular theory of “das Soziale” from the general theory of “das Gesellschaftliche”. The latter has been investigated so well in the historical materialism, but the former poorly elaborated. The theory of “das Gesellschaftliche”, the fundamental concept of which is the okonomische Gesellschaftsformation, is the product by application of Marx' natural-historical method to social realities. In this theory, marxist sociology presents laws of social development as natural-historical ones. The theory of “das Soziale” can be established only on the foundation of it.
“Das Soziale” in capitalistic society relates only to the working class. The reason is this- : according to the theory of “das Gesellschaftliche”, in this society social relations (gesellschaftliche Verhaltnisse) are reified and individuals appear as indifferent beings each other. In its framework Verhaltnisse never transmute to das soziale Verhalten. But revolutionary movements of the working class are Verhalten to break through capitalistic Verhaltnisse and to rise from its particularity to generality by establishment of its dictatorship. In this meaning, author speaks of das Soziale in capitalistic society. Marxist sociology would be completed on condition that both theory of das Gesellschaftliche and that of das Soziale were articulated in the system.

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More efforts were urged to be invested in the study of the interrelationships between the family and society, and in theory construction in the field of family sociology.
The paucity of the research works focusing on the relationship of the family with society was illustrated, taking as an example the subfield of research into double income families. Tentative theoretical models were presented to be used in the study of interrelationships between the family and society, especially in the study of how society influences the family.
It was also pointed out that the kind of research just mentioned is to constitute the essential portion of the study of family change, which is another urgent issue to be investigated by family sociology.
As regards the task of theory building, the low level of theory construction in the Japanese family sociology was pointed up relative to the number of scholars specialized in it and to the number of their published works. Several strategies and tactics to be used to remedy this deficiency in family sociology were developed.

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After the World War II, especially since 1960, as the agricultural policies of Japan's monopolistic capitalism have made the maintenance of Japanese agriculture which is constructed by the extremely small farming difficult, rural society of this country changed so largely as to be called “Collapse of Mura (village community)”.
The Japanese village community has been said to be autonomous and self-sufficient and has had two functions, one of which is to maintain community life itself and the other to complement the local administration in the community. But the disintegration of the village community makes it impossible to perform these functions so that, one the one hand, government tries to reorganize rural people into a new “Community” and expects it to continue functioning as the lowest unit in the net-work of local administration.
On the other hand, the autonomous nature of the village community has to be reconsidered in relation to the present situation of rural disorganization. Some sociologists take that specific social system of the community which is adaptive to but not fully determined by the government policy for the community “autonomy”. But such an “autonomy” should be regarded as a negative one, and especially in the cource of rising of the citizen movement, it must be defined as a positive one, i.e. the autonomy which is established consciously against the agriculture destruction policy of the monopolistic capitalism. How can we find such an autonomy in our rural society ? And what is the tasks of today's rural sociology ?
I want to present three tasks as follows :
(1) To study the present situation and trend of cooperative groups for agricultural production.
(2) To investigate the increasing interrelations of the farmers to the nonfarming people in the community on the basis of enlarging socialization of the community life.
(3) The research field of rural sociology has also to be enlarged in accordance with the development of local solidarity of laborers and farmers to build up their own autonomy. This enlargement of the research field implies the necessity of the interdisciplinary studies of the local community and rural sociologists ought to take part in them.

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According to A. Reiss, D. Martindale and S. Greer, after the World War II American urban sociology was in the critical conditions, in the other words, in the theoretical breakdown. On the other hand, America was in the age of urbanization. What can be said from this paradoxical state? We understand this as follows ; traditional cities transformed into new metropolis, and urban sociologists lagged to grasp this phenomenon. In Japan urbanization took place rapidly in 1950s with the high economic growth. Japanese urban sociologists had to look for new images (or theories) toward the new phenomenon. And there appeared community studies, regional theory, or life style theory.
By the way, urban sociology was studied in the four main areas traditionally, namely, social structure, life style in the city, social consciousness or personality, and urban problems and city plannings.
The writer reconsidered these theories from the viewpoints of urbanization. If urban sociology can be survived without merging in community studies, it must be reconstructed with the aid of a new integrative image on cities. This image is urbanization itself. If we try to reconstruct urban sociology with the help of both the results achieved in these four areas and the new image of urbanization, we must answer next question. Why urban sociology must be transformed into the sociology of urban society? Or, what is the reason to maintain the frameworks of urban sociology as the sociology of urban society? The writer answers tentatively as follows ; forming new urbanism is the major object urban sociology as the sociology of urban society must look for.

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The purpose of this article is to outline the real state and the future of industrial sociology in Japan. Industrial sociology was introduced from U.S. after the World War II and has achieved rapid development. However, at the present time it seems to me rather stagnant in its research, and we have marked a turning point in its development. I sure that the industrial sociology in Japan has had some weak points and they are basically caused by the triple backwardness of it. Therefore, to overcome the backwardness is the most important problems for us to solve.

The first backwardness is that of industrial sociology itself in applied sociologies in Japan. As mentioned above, its history is shorter and the accumulation of achievements in the field are less than the other advanced field such as rural sociology and sociology of family. The second backwardness is that of sociology itself in social sciences in Japan. All of social sciences, including sociology, were introduced from the West in the early Meiji era, then sociology had not any backwardness at the outset. But after that in the process of their development sociology has been behind the other social sciences, especially economics, law and political science. Such kind of backwardness has given sociologist a kind of inferiority complex and let them to engaged in marginal fields where the advanced sciences did not study. The third backwardness is that of Japanese social sciences as a whole comparing to those of western advanced countries. Japanese social sciences have been developed through the introduction of the western social theories and created few original theories.
Considering such backwardness, we should try to find out the new direction of industrial sociology. We must positively accumulate the data of research on it. We must enlarge its field of study to all kinds of industrial phenomena together with the other sciences. We must endeavor to create original theories on the basis of social facts in Japan. Moreover, I would like to propose following two issues. The one is that since industrial sociology is one of applied sociologies, it should attach importance to social research again. These researches should be directly connected with life in society. The other is that as the word “industrial” is rather vague, industrial sociology needs to be divided into three fields according to its research fields, that is, managerial sociology, labor sociology (or sociology of labor) and industrial relations.

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The remarkable development of the media of mass communication in modern society has ushered in an abundance of information to the society at large. On the other hand, it has brought about a communication condition in which information that is really necessary for the daily lives of each individual is lacking. Modern man and woman can make full use of a wide variety of mechanical and technical innovations in the way of receptors, however transmission devices are still extremely limited. This imbalance between transmittors and receptors has arisen a situation in which so-called “anonymous communication” dominates - the general type of communication provided by mass media.
In this situation, modern man senses an enormous lack of cognitive clarity when he wants to know what he needs to know. It has generally been thought that the lack of cognitive clarity occurs when the information source ceases to function in some way or another, creating a situation conductive to the circulation of rumors. Although our age abounds in information provided by official news sourses, information generated, for the most part, serves only to define situations partially, and this tends to prevent modern man from acquiring cognitive clarity based on that information. People lacking cognitive clarity due to the anonymous communication provided by mass media, constitute a diffuse crowd. They are drawn together temporarily by a common interest which provided by mass media and they come to be involved in circular reaction through the world of anonymous communication that is similar to the situation of compact crowd. It is worthy of note that in our modern society, the process of rumor formation, which is believed to occur under the condition of a compact crowd, is observed in the world of anonymous communication.
In this situation, we need to reconsider the function of mass media by clarifying the process and mechanism comprise stereotyped definition of the situation made up collectively. For this purpose, attention must be paid the fact that anonymous communication provided by mass media fulfils the function of self-fulfillment prophecy advanced by R.K. Merton. It must be pointed out that generalized beliefs provided by anonymous communication cause modern man to be excessively sensitive to social incidents. This suggests there exists a strong possibility of producing, albeit temporarily, an irrational situation in modern society, in spite of highly developed mass media. Consideration upon the situation where by mass hysteria is produced, and the process and mechanism of mass delusion, are pressing theme of the sociology of mass communication in Japan. This, in itself, would show how submissive we are in the understanding of “news”. To study the function of mass media in this way would also mean a disclosure of a image world which we believe to know through the information provided by mass media.

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The theme I was given by the editorial committee of the JSR was to discuss the future tasks of sociology in the following three domains - social welfare, social pathology and social problems.
Firstly, however, I must dare to say a word or two about the way to treat this theme. For, I think it can be no easy job at all to search for the proper subject of sociology in these three domains without any special analyzing viewpoint. Let's take social welfare as an example. My standpoint is that it is one of the most dangerous thoughts that sociology of social welfare can be brought into existence even in the case of lacking in the special analyzing viewpoint. My assertion is based on the following two points.
1, The learning subjects of social welfare, social pathology and social problems are the problems of practice in the actual social life. So each sociology of each domains as an academic science will be impossible to be realized, chiefly because the academic subjects always need to have a certain distance from the social practice.
2, What I call “the tendency of complimentality” in today's our Japanese sociology is one of the most essential causes of its prosperity. But, at the same time, - here is my emphasis - it has prevented sociology from developing in its proper, ideal course.
Therefore, as for me, I fix the medicine and medical problems in the core of my original viewpoint. From this point, I discuss about society, medicine, human beings and so on.
Why do the medicine and medical problems stay only in the medical technical application to sufferers? Why so they restricted to the biological ones in the course of medical practice ?
If we can make efforts to change these conditions mentioned above, we will be able to expect sociology a great part in searching for the renewed relationship between human beings and the medicine and medical problems.

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