(1) Buddhism is a religion founded about five or six centuries before the Christian era by Gautama, the Buddha, who was born in Central India.
According to H. G. Wells' Outline of History published in 1920, it is about a half century since the life and teachings of the Buddha was clarified. His teachings are simple and plain easily understood even by the modern.
(2) During the few centuries following the death of the Buddha, however, the Buddhist order lost its elasticity assuming a state of ossification. It lost sight of the real raison d'etre and came to hold its maintenance and prosperity as its highest aim.
The ossification was due to the fact that the four factors which formed the Buddhist order-priests and lay believers of both sexes-lacked harmonious co-operation for the furtherance of their common end. In the days of the Buddha, there was teamwork among these four factors and they together strove for the realization of the supreme objective of Buddhism-the attainment of Buddhahood. In later times the priests, having been held in great reverence by lay believers, came to consider themselves as superior beings, and in order to sustain their respect and also to show a strong front to other religions then in existence, built up a sort of philosophy of great complicity. Such philosophy was foreign to Buddhism in its original form. It aimed at the salvation of one's own self through the renouncement of the world.
(3) To relieve the situation, there arose the so-called Mahayana Buddhism. It rejected the sense of superiority and the self-complacency of the priests and insisted that those who had grasped the essence of the faith, be they laymen, were more in accord with the will of the Buddha than the priests who adhered to the fixed formalities. Thus it was that the idea of Buddhisattiva, the prominent feature of Mahayana Buddhism, was born.
(4) As its characteristic, the idea of Boddhisattiva treats man as a social being. In this connection the Sutra of the Lotus, one of the scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism, says, “Not stained by the ways of the world like the lotus in water.” In this context both “the world” and “water” signify society. Man, being a social being, so teaches the idea of Boddhisattiva, he could not achieve his own salvation independent of society. Here strong emphasis is laid on the ethics of creative altruism. May this not be interpreted as a discovery of “society” in Buddhist thought ?

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Poverty is directly related to the family as a unit of living and is closely associated with the functions of production and consumption of the family. The functioning of the family is dependent on its structure. We have what is called a condition of poverty when the function of production in the family is not given full play. This occurs when the family income is very low, which results in the function of comsumption being checked by the lack of.adequate income, i. e. the desires of the family members are not sufficiently satisfied.
According to my studies, a low-income is caused mostly by earning power and results, in many cases, from the lack of a perfect supporter in the family. Thus we have the malfunctioning of the family unit. Poverty is a phenomenon of social maladjustment and mulfunctioning of the family unit. It is therefore closely connected with family disorganization.
Before describing the patterns of family disorganization, we must first analyse the organized family unit, for the former is a co-ordinate concept as compared with the latter.
The conditions of the organized family unit have been induced for the purpose of this study as follows :
(1) to consist of father, mather and children
(2) to include not more than 3 or 4 children
(3) to have all members healthy
(4) to have a harmonious interrelationship
(5) to be in a state of social adjustment to society
In this abstract, the family unit which meets the five abovementioned requirements is considered as the organized or normal family unit. (1) and (2), above, are associated with the composition of the family, (3) with the physiological conditions of the family members, (4) and (5) with the content of the family. Therefore, the disorganized or abnormal family unit can be defined in a manner corresponding to those conditions of the organized or normal family unit.
I divide the types of the disorganized family unit into three groups : disorganized as to form, disorganized internally, and disorganized both internally and as to form. I have named the first of these, “the broken family, ” and have subdivided it into two sub-groups : (a) the family composition is broken, (b) one or more member is invalid. The second group is “the discordant family, ” and also is divided into two sub-groups : (a) internally discordant, (b) externally discordant. And the third is “the disrupted family.”
The observed patterns of the disorganized family unit are as follows
A mother and children-no father
B father and children-no mother
C all old persons (or old persons only)
D all children
E both parents but too many children
F one or more invalid members
G seriously disrupted family
H under-privileged family
I multiple combinations of the above
The correlation of the organized (normal) family unit and the disorganized (abnormal) family unit is as in following diagram.
Thus we can measure the standard of (family) living first to observe the form of the family and to analyse the harmonizing conditions of it, and then to see the job of the master of the family and to study his income. Those families on public relief which are employed have such jobs as day laborer, laborer in small factories or shops, odd job man, entertainer, home worker, peddler, second-hand dealer, masseur, carpenter or domitory nurse.

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It is a well-known fact that the sociological research of fishing community (village and town) is far behind compared with that of agricultural community (village and town) and city community. And the following three points can be assigned for the reason :
(1) A half agricultural and half fishing village (Buraku) has been regarded as a fishing village and treated as a similar type of a agricultural village.
(2) Therefore, the social stucture of a fishing village and that of a agricultural village have been thought nearly alike, and no profound research has ever been made about the character of pure fishing village (chisaki buraku or front village).
(3) No careful attention has ever been both for the “fishery group” (Yakubito system of okiage and okamawari), or the living groups peculiar to fishing village and for “emigrant fishers” of chief constituent members of those groups.
It may be said that the importance of the sociological research of fishing community has been hindred considerably by the above-mentioned sociological view point. I should like to advocate a theory that a fishing community as a village community (Sonraku community), has much common in character with a agricultural community, but it has still its own peculiarity.
(1) The difference between the character of the arable right (included, forming right) and that of the fishery right, which comes from the common ownership of arable land and fishery (sea-areas, fishing-areas).
(2) The characteristics of class-relations between a fisher's employer (Amimoto or Oyakata) and fishers, emigrant fishers (Amiko or Kokata) in fishery group (Teiti or drift-net fishing) and between a ship-owner and ship-fishers (Noriko) in engin-ship fishing and the problems of the blood (or consanguinity), regional (mother land relations in a each other) and occupational relations union of emigrant fishers and the problem of their local, occupational dissolution and mobility.
(3) The problems of compared with farmers, more blocked-minded (exclusive or conservative) and characterized with the deep-rootednees of a family union with a house. in its center and the feudality of social consciousness and the problems of power relations based on the kinship and unionship (included, guildship) in the generational consciousness of fishers who are, the strong of fixational natme (permanently dwelling) over the old generations.
The sociological characters of these fishing community constitute the fundamental areas of studying the “sociology of fishing community” as sociological problems or subjects. I have mentioned, as subjects of the sociology on fishing community.
(1) the sociological character of fishing community, (2) the sociological structure of fishing community, (C3) the group structure in fishing community, (4) the structure of sociological consciousness of fishers, but these problems (sociological character on fishing community) are, at the same time (broadly speaking), the character on fishing community as a village community, (5) the character on fishing community in comparison with a agricultural community and city community.
The most difficult problem in studying fishing community is that of “the types of fishing community.” No type of a fishing community has ever been made from the sociological point of view.

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This report constitutes a part of the research at Takenoura, a fishing village in fishery area of Sanriku, Tohoku district.
We believe we can most clearly comprehend the social structure of relatively small community through the investigation of its stratification system. From such a point of view, we have performed the survey of the social structure of one fishing village as a community, taking a careful sight of the first consideration to its stratification system. It can be said taht the stratification system of the community members is ranked by their self-evaluating attitudes. According to this interpretation, in the first place we have seized its stratification system through the strata ranked subjectively by its own members (by means of the classification of the name cards of all the heads of families by the selected twelve informants). Thus through the ranking by themselves. we have been able to obtain the next nine strata; upper-upper, middle-upper, lower-upper, upper-middle, middle-middle, lower-middle, upper-lower, middle-lower, lower-lower.
Secondly in order to clarify the internal structure of this stratification system, we have correlated the evaluated strata with three standards respectively which are chosen by observer; those are the economic scale, the family grade, and the power status.
In consequence, we have been able to apprehend that in this fishing village the prestige hierarchy constituting the ground of the stratification system is first of all founded on ranking with the economic scale, and from there the power evaluation by its memders is also conceived by correlating with this scale. In contrast with this, the evaluation rested on the family grade in this community, though commonly available to define the estate, can be considered less effective in practice because of the absence of consciousness of it as the ranking scale of the stratification system. The reason, we believe, lies in that the hierarchy in this community, or generally speaking in the fishing villages more or less all over, is temporal, and so little tends toward crystallization owing to severe transition of fishery management.

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To the developement of the theories of social system, two ways are considered. One is from the point of view of social origin, the other is from efficiency. The former is taken up by structural aspect, the latter is functional.
In handling administrative groups as social system, analyses should be carried out, in the first place, with functional aspect. Administrative groups, such as industries, schools, labor unions, ships' crews, and orchestra, having their goals in terms of efficiency, and therein lie their formal and informal organizations.
Networks of human relations, from mere membership to intimate clique, are interwoven in various ways. Structural-functional analyses of these complex networks are followed by complementarity, substitutability, friction etc. of the elements by which groups are organized. Hypothesises are verified, patterns presented, and equilibrium theories exhibited in this way.
However, there are also, in accordance with conditions linked up with up-side social systems in which the groups as social systems are contained, types of interdependencies of social systems.
Linked up structures 'and functions are shown in external as well as internal range, as we could get concrete frame of reference. I am not saying too much when I say that the problems of the theories of social system can be focused on how to unite micro-analyses with macro-analyses.
The data are (1) a case that the value system in white collar labor union of Closed Institutions Liquidating Commission (Marunouchi, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo) is involved in unique system of the commission, (2) a case that the efficiencies in management and labor of W Textile Mfg. Co. (Notobe town, Ishikaw a Pref.) are reflected from ways of life of the community, especially EBOSHI relation, and (3) a case that adolescent girls of T High school (Horinouchi, Suginami Ward, Tokyo) are destined to have threefold relation which could be generalised to all adolescent groups.

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