This paper analyzes the logic and structure of making residents subject to the lower stratum of urban society—that is, the slum. The slum of Kyoto City has been spatially segregated by the Dowa administration, and constitutes the slum area and the Dowa district. The slum is adjacent to the Dowa district and is the area where numerous Korean Japanese (Zainichi) have lived. It seems that the slum is Zainichi and the Dowa district is Buraku people. Therefore, we tend to misunderstand that Zainici are out of accord with Buraku. However, Buraku people have transferred to the slum and their collectivities have been nurtured by both mixed environments. Advanced research does not adequately provide an understanding of this reality. This paper studies the factors that make residents subject to the slum, revealing the conditions of reorganization and uniting the subjects as well as demonstrating the residents' power. The slum is considered high mobility. The factor of making residents subject to Buraku and Zainichi in the area is a commonality among the residents; thus, there is the intention of antidiscrimination against attribution and region. Based on these points, rigid community organization, flexible and equal youth groups, and Christians have become the medium of both, which has created a diverse relationship. Moreover, through the tension and hostility toward the local administration, the development and autonomy of the local community has carried on.

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The argument that the size of the immigrants threatens the native population is a classical research theme pertaining to xenophobia. In Japan, it has been observed that the impact of the size of foreign populations on the Japanese people's xenophobia differs according to their nationalities. However, it is unclear what causes this difference. This study aims to explain the cause of the difference, focusing on the “split labor market.”
According to the group threat theory, xenophobia intensifies when immigrants are viewed as a cultural or economic threat. Previous research in Japan has tended to overlook the latter form of threat. The manner in which the immigrants are perceived as an economic threat can be explained by the split labor market theory. The theory assumes that xenophobia intensifies when immigrant labor is concentrated in low-paying jobs; in such a situation, their tolerance of low-wage and poor work conditions is perceived to worsen the standards of wage and work conditions in the host society. The differences in the impact of the size of the Korean population and other foreign populations, as have been discussed in preceding research, are assumed to stem from the differences in their positions in the Japanese labor market.
The following results were derived from the analysis of the Japanese General Social Survey conducted in 2006 (JGSS-2006). First, an acutely split labor market has intensified xenophobia in Japan. Second, differences in the impact of the size of the foreign populations, divided by nationalities, are explained on the basis of the extent of the split in the labor market. These results indicate that we need to adopt a macro-perspective, such as the positions of immigrant labor in a labor market, of individual factors when examining the factors that affect xenophobia.

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In early postwar Japan, the democratization of social relationships was the most essential and inevitable ideal. Scholars at that time in the field of family studies have tried to consider how the “democratization of the family” was realized. These studies certainly had limitations, in that they regarded the familial relationship as exceptional when compared to other social relationships. However, their ideals don't lose significance in themselves. Although the ideal of “democratization of the family” has been criticized and ignored by sociologists, we must reconsider these criticisms and take this ideal back.
Recently, Anthony Giddens has idealized “intimacy as democracy” or the “democratic family,” with the emergence of what he calls a “pure relationship.” His ideal, which might seem to be an anachronism, has been criticized by many sociologists in terms of his ignorance of economic factors, his optimism and so on. However, I regard these criticisms as being derived from misunderstandings of Giddens's idea of the transformation of intimacy. This paper will reconsider the intention of Giddens and clarify why “democratization of the family” matters in late modernity. The result will suggest that the democratization of the family depends on the “decentralization of the family,” though that sounds paradoxical. To decentralize the family is the ideal which argues a wide range of relationships must share individual risks through separating family functions from family structures. In this sense, this ideal combines ‘individual autonomy’ and ‘social solidarity’. The democratization of family promotes the decentralization of family, or vice versa. This is why we must defend and value the democratization of the family. Now we need to reevaluate the democratization of the family, and therefore its decentralization, as an uncompleted project.

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This study suggests that the inadequate compensation system for victims of the Kanemi rice bran oil poisoning (Kanemi Yusho) incident should be reformed. Damage was caused by dioxin pollution, which comprised chemical contamination and consequent hereditary body disorder. As the incident is an example of food pollution, the reform program can be widely applied to other cases of chemical contamination and food pollution. The peculiarities and defects in the compensation system for Kanemi Yusho victims were that the compensation systems devised through legislation or agreement bore no connection with victims' designation as patients.
While the damage in the Kanemi case was as serious as it was in similar cases such as the outbreak of Minamata disease and the Morinaga Milk poisoning incident, the compensation paid in the former case was far lower than it was in the latter cases. Kanemi Yusho victims did not receive adequate compensation because neither a public compensation system existed nor could any agreement between the victims and Kanemi Warehouse Co. (the company responsible for the incident) be reached.
This paper focuses on two different forms of recognition of victims: “medical” and “legal.” In the former, victims are diagnosed as patients on the basis of medical criteria. In the latter, it is acknowledged that victims have just demands for their rights, and these demands are accepted.
Kanemi Yusho victims did not receive adequate compensation for three reasons: lack of negotiation between the victims and Kanemi Warehouse because of the formers' passive acceptance of the inadequate compensation proposed by the latter; lack of legislation for food pollution victims; and failure to establish suitable new legislation after the occurrence of the Kanemi oil incident. Overall, this can be explained in terms of the lack of “legal recognition”—through designation and compensation systems—of victims.

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There are advantages to facility care, that cannot be had with home care. Not only are care staff permanently stationed at facilities, but a “group power” also exists among the residents, because they live together and all require long term care.
The aim of this paper is to explore the connection between group power and provision of individual care services by comparing traditional and new-type special nursing homes for the aged. New-type one with private rooms and common spaces in Japan, originally established for unit care, can provide individual care services taking advantage of group power. However this does not always go well. The reason is that group power is not always present, and therefore there is a need to create multilayered connections among individuals and groups. The task of this paper is to reveal the dilemmas involved in creating this power.
Reviewing the idea of the “Regenerative Community” as a way of explaining group power we see the predictor notions of “role” and “communality” emerge. In addition, by interviewing care staff working in both traditional and new-type special nursing homes using the Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA) , the predictor notions of “safety” and “freedom” can be found.
These results show that they are different types of group power, with both good and bad points. To connect group power to individual care, it is necessary to settle the dilemmas that arise from the four predictor notions: “role,” “communality,” “safety,” and “freedom.”

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The objective of this paper is to link the structural factor (employment structure) and subjective factor (notion of labor) concerned with the generation process of permanent part-time youth (Freeters) by considering their life histories in terms of “hope.”
Based on the ongoing research conducted over a period of five years on three male Freeters, the following facts have come to light:
(1) Freeters are located at the lower strata of full and part-time jobs.
(2) Freeters cannot envision their future career paths in either employment style.
(3) Due to current modern labor ethics, they cannot form a subgroup that acknowledges their employment style and present-time orientation.
(4) Freeters are under pressure from labor ethics, which insist that they do “decent” work.
(5) To escape from such a double-bind state, they cannot help but look for “hope.”
To put it briefly, present Japanese society needs flexible laborers on the one hand but cannot permit them to be flexible laborers on the other. This kind of structural tension drives the young workers to “hope.” But even “hope” does not dissolve the structural tension. On the contrary, it works to prolong the structural tension itself.

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This paper examines the features of young transgender people's self-identities, which include their life stories and body images, from interviews with those who have a sense of discomfort in their assigned gender identities. These interviewees define their identities not as ready-made social identities and essential attribute but as unique and selective ones. In this paper, we call these identities the interviewees' “actual identities”. Also, we see that interviewees' body images do not fall into dominant existing categories. Contact with other sexual minorities facilitates recognition of their identities and body images as different from those available as part of a readymade social identity. Their actual identities and body images are altered reflectively, which invites uncertainties in their future.

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This paper tries to reread the History of the Educational System since the Meiji Era (Meiji-iko Kyoiku Seido Hattatsu-shi) (The Ministry of Education 1938) and think about the construction of the concept of “Children” in modern Japan.
Historical argument can show the creation and establishment of the educational discourse (i.e., one that argues that pupils or children have immature bodies but will become “nations” or “laborers” in the future, and that therefore the educational system should care for them) , accompanied with the rising education rate and body measurement data, which give the “material” reason for the discourse. This means that the “materiality of children” which is instinctively insisted on as a criticism against the constructive approach to “children,” is only one factor in the discourse.
But, at the same time, the discourse shows the traces of young people outside the educational discourse. Sociology of children and education should keep in mind the constructed aspect of the concept of “children” and the educational discourse on one hand, and should never forget the existence of a world outside our own particular constructed discourse, on the other.

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