Japanese Sociological Review
Online ISSN : 1884-2755
Print ISSN : 0021-5414
ISSN-L : 0021-5414
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Volume 62, Issue 4
Displaying 1-15 of 15 articles from this issue
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Special Issue
  • [title in Japanese]
    [in Japanese], [in Japanese]
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 422-427
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.422
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Social Changes in Japanese Urban and Rural Community from the Perspectives of Social Mobility and Generations
    Studying the Formation of a Widespread System in Japanese Society
    Yusuke YAMASHITA
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 428-441
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.428
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This article investigates social changes in postwar Japanese society in terms of social mobility and generations. First, we discuss the relationships between social change and social mobility, arranging the current history of Japan as per social mobility between the metropolitan and the provinces or between cities and villages. From this perspective, we observe the aspect of social disorganization, while from the perspective of family and generations, we see the adaptation aspect. Following these arguments, the formation of a widespread system that is made by mobility in the last sixty years influences the present stage of Japanese society. Although the studies remain, discussing about risks of the widespread system, the subject getting over the risks, and its decision making process, the prospect of the social change in Japanese society is indicated as much as we can at present.
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  • Family and Community Studies in Relation to Recent Developments in Urban Research
    Kazushi TAMANO
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 442-458
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.442
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This paper presents a new perspective on family and community studies in Urban Sociology. Social processes and social networks in the urban setting have been studied following the tradition of the Chicago School. However, the Marxian approach to urban studies gained prominence after criticism from the New Urban Sociologists. The urban studies conducted by the New Urban Sociologists were inspired by the political economy, and were fully developed using the idea of globalization and the new international division of labor. However, it seems difficult to explore the social structure made up of families and other social groups in the community, because the social networks spread out beyond the local community in the capitalist world economy. How do we study the family and community in the global city-regions? The capitalist world economy constructs the spatial structure through the property market and state policy. Particular places or communities in the city-regions are allocated their own product function and are requested to produce the necessary labor power. We can study the family in the local community as a unit of the production of labor. It is this perspective that enables us to analyze the family and community in the city-regions in the capitalist world economy.
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  • Changes in Regional Structure and Local Cities in the Globalization Era
    A Case Study of Cities in the Chugoku Region
    Takeo NISHIMURA
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 459-475
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.459
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    After the Meiji period, Japanese capitalism facilitated spatial restructuring by exploiting a regional gap to expand its accumulation. Through this process, the regional structure of Japanese society shifted from the dual structure of the developing-country type, with a division of labor between the urban and rural sectors, to the integrated “center-periphery” structure of the advanced-country type reflecting a division of labor by regions and industrial sectors based on the unitary homogeneous system of production.
    As companies develop an internal international division of labor with globalization, the “center-periphery” structure has been reinforced further, and the industrial structure and the labor market of “peripheral” regions have been restructured under the influence of corporate location strategies.
    Given these, this paper divides prefectures in Japan into six regional clusters based on indicators of “the prefectural income per capita and the benefit-burden ratio regarding fiscal investment”. Furthermore, each cluster is characterized on the basis of social statistical data to reveal the characteristic features of the “center-periphery” structure of Japanese society (in other words, the regional gap).
    On the basis of the above analysis, municipalities in five prefectures in the Chugoku area are classified into seven clusters in accordance with occupational data by industries to characterize the regional structure of each of those prefectures. Furthermore, the paper focuses on Shimane and Hiroshima prefectures, which are classified as a “peripheral agricultural area” and a “semiperipheral industrial area”, respectively, in a regional gap cluster analysis, to characterize the regional policies of both prefectures. At the same time, taking Izumo and Hamada of Shimane prefecture as well as Kure and Higashihiroshima of Hiroshima prefecture as examples, it is revealed how local cities are forced to implement regional restructuring due to the trend of corporate location strategies.
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  • State Rescaling and Urban Governance in Japan
    A Case Study of Territorial Restructuring in a City Municipality
    Masao MARUYAMA
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 476-488
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.476
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    Since the 2000s, the state rescaling perspective has expanded its influence in critical urban studies. This perspective has made it possible to understand scalar reconfiguration of state power and its political-economic mechanism. This provides a new point of view on the nature of the modern capitalist city. While the notion of a city had been understood as a fixed, bounded, self-enclosed, static, or pre-given spatial unit in established human ecological urban sociology by the Chicago School researchers and the political-economic urban studies by the neo-Marxist social scientists, it has been grasped as being on a geographical scale, in the sense of being “global”, “regional”, “national”, or “local”, developed within the context of capital accumulation and state territoriality strategies in the rescaling perspective. In addition, this perspective clarifies the fact that urban governance is seen as critical for the rescaling processes and strategies of capital accumulation and state territorial strategies. By this approach, therefore, we can understand the political-economic process of territorial restructuring through urban governance under the impact of economic globalization and neoliberal restructuring of state apparatus. This article starts to examine the major theoretical arguments and empirical findings from the state rescaling perspective. In the next section, we analyze the political-economic process of territorial restructuring of the urban state, by using this perspective and analyzing a case of municipal merger in a Japanese middlesize industrial city. Through the case analysis, we consider some points for future research and debate state rescaling in Japan.
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  • Local Manifestation of Poverty and Social Exclusion
    Destabilization of Life among the Urban Buraku
    Shingo TSUMAKI
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 489-503
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.489
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    This thesis aims to indicate local communities as variables that are fundamental to figuring out phenomena of poverty and social exclusion and shaping the countermeasures through an examination of the process of reproductive destabilization and its causes, based on the study that we conducted in “A” area, of a discriminated community of people called Buraku in Osaka.
    The situation in “A” area—one of extreme poverty and social exclusion—was greatly improved by a social inclusion project conducted on a long-term basis. However, once the project ended, affirmative action, in the form of assistance provided to the Burakumin (a Japanese minority group) in gaining employment as public employees, was abolished. At the time, the employment situation in Japanese society was unstable. These circumstances reduced the employment opportunities for young Burakumin. The middle class moved outside the community and the lower class moved in. This tendency reinforced the accumulation of poverty.
    The accumulation of poverty groups itself restricts life chances. Among the Buraku, the after-effects of the accumulation of a number of poor people in the community, and the unintended consequences of the project conducted by the “the Buraku Liberation Movement” led to a lifestyle which prevented the development of individual strategies for improving lives and restricted successful models. The function of strong ties in the community became weak because of the project end and the outflow of young people in the area. The accumulation in the area of poverty and social exclusion makes the poverty levels deeper and more concentrated and works as a specific mechanism, which cannot be explained in macro social changes and policies, or class culture.
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  • Migrant Women in a Big City Entertainment Area
    Changes Brought about by Filipino Women in the Sakae-Higashi Area of Nagoya City
    Sachi TAKAHATA
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 504-520
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.504
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    This paper aims to clarify the steps that a migrant women's group has taken to alleviate the social problems and tensions in a local community “where globalization has brought about the new locality of hybridity” (Machimura 2006).
    The Sakae-Higashi area of Naka-Ward, Nagoya City is a local community categorized as a “newcomer dominant, inner-city in a big city type” multicultural area (Watado 2006a). This area has seen a massive inflow of young Filipino women since the mid-1980s. A number of Filipino entertainers who worked in “Philippine Pubs” in the area started to marry Japanese men from the 1990s onwards. They organized themselves and started the “Filipino Migrants Center (FMC) , Nagoya” in the area in 2000.
    The FMC has functioned as the most effective “window” through which the local Japanese society could observe the immigrant community. Compared with other immigrant communities, they are thought to be the ones with the most good will because of their readiness to cooperate with the local people. They have therefore played an important role in multicultural community development. This has been influenced by the fact that the vulnerability of migrant women has necessitated support from the local government, which further promoted their settlement. At the same time, Japan's multicultural local policy and administration needed a group of migrants who could work together with the local government. One particular problem was that migrant men were sometimes undocumented and therefore invisible, but through the women-led FMC, the local people were able to start talking with them too.
    To summarize, in the Sakae-Higashi area, an inter-ethnic relationship was first established between the local people/administration and migrant women. This relationship was nurtured by a local multiethnic project functioning as a “window” to the ethnic community. When the local people needed to talk with migrant men, they utilized this “window” and attempted to alleviate the social problems and tensions.
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  • Security and Community Formation in a Multicultural City
    Yasumasa IGARASHI
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 521-535
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.521
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    Cultural diversity has come to be celebrated in cities nowadays; even a marginal cultural uniqueness is considered a productive asset, though the commodification of a culture may often leave its bona fide practitioners behind. Moreover, we must not overlook the fact that tourism-centric urban development in multicultural cities is inclined to pursue cultural zoning because the celebration of diversity within a city is often incompatible with the celebration of diversity between cities. In light of this perspective, I focus on the anticrime patrol in the multicultural downtown area of Ueno 2-Chome in the Taito ward of Tokyo, where cultural zoning is very difficult to implement. The main purpose of the patrol is to discourage street solicitation and thereby improve the image of the area, and in this activity, we can find the conjunction between security and community formation, which has been criticized by liberal urban theorists. However, I hesitate to completely criticize the anticrime patrol in this area, mainly supported by the owners and managers of restaurants and taverns whose businesses are difficult to segregate from sex-related businesses in this area not only spatially but also temporally. Only security can be the logical first step for community formation in highly diverse and fluid neighborhoods such as Ueno 2-Chome, namely, distinctly urbanized places, and a shared orientation for community policing can be a catalyst for communication among locally diverse shop owners and managers, helping to overcome static and exclusive zoning-oriented multiculturalism.
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Articles
  • Parent Identity in Action
    A Conversational Accomplishment of a Parent Who Knows Best
    Tetsuri TOE
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 536-553
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.536
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This article describes a sequence of actions routinely performed in conversations about an infant between its parent and another participant, and demonstrates that it is an action sequence through which a parent (or a caregiver) can establish her/his parent identity. The sequence consists of two paired utterances, occasionally followed by a third, further-response-pursuing utterance, plus a response to the latter. In the first pair part of the sequence, the participant who is not the parent describes the infant's behavior that can be observed “here and now”. The description invites the parent to account for the behavior in light of her/his knowledge about the infant's everyday behavior patterns. Therefore, the sequence here can be called an “account-inviting sequence”. This sequence is shown to be based upon an “epistemic gradient” (Heritage 2008) between the parent and the other speaker. Describing the infant's behavior that is accessible to anyone present marks a lack of intimate knowledge about the infant on the part of the first speaker. In responding in the second pair part, the parent conveys epistemic primacy in relation to her/his infant. Two different types of response can be observed. The first type of response by the parent accounts for the infant's behavior based on his/her everyday behavioral patterns, thus presenting evidence for epistemic primacy regarding the infant. The second type only confirms the previous description and does not give any ground for epistemic primacy as a parent. When the latter type of response is given by the parent, the previous speaker can explicitly request such an account. Through engaging in these “account-inviting sequences”, the parent can be seen to be claiming her/his identity as a “responsible” parent “in action”.
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  • The Construction of an Alternative “Intimate Sphere”
    A Case Study of NGO Support for Migrant Filipinas in Japan
    Sachi TAKAYA
    2012 Volume 62 Issue 4 Pages 554-570
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: November 22, 2013
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.62.554
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    The aim of this paper is to address the NGO support for migrant Filipinas in Japan as an alternative “intimate sphere” and analyze its activities by focusing on the relationship and difference between the NGO and the families of migrant Filipinas.
    Recently, many scholars have been interested in a new kind of relationship as the basis of the people' lives—an “intimate sphere” alternative to the modern family. While considering the possibility that the new relationship could replace the family, they seem not to focus on the relationship and difference between the “intimate sphere” and the family.
    In this paper, I will argue that the NGO gives the Filipinas the freedom from the family in which they have suffered domestic violence by protecting them. The NGO also tries to help them identify themselves positively as “Filipina” and share the responsibility of childcare among them. Moreover, it tries to help migrant Filipinas reflect the expectations, desires, and norms which they have for a family.
    Through these practices, the NGO seeks not to negate the value of the family but to encourage migrant Filipinas and their children to live their lives in single-parent families.
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