Japanese Sociological Review
Online ISSN : 1884-2755
Print ISSN : 0021-5414
ISSN-L : 0021-5414
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Volume 64, Issue 1
Displaying 1-19 of 19 articles from this issue
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Articles
  • International Cooperation and Social Change in Postwar Japan
    From Stories of Former JICA Staffs with Experiences as Emigration Administrators
    Minkyung CHOI
    2013 Volume 64 Issue 1 Pages 2-19
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: September 10, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.64.2
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    The purpose of this paper is to present evidence to deepen the understanding of national identities in postwar Japanese society by examining modes of international cooperation. Through interviews with former JICA staff members who worked “in the emigration sector,” one of the “fragmentary nationalisms” in postwar Japan will be analyzed. Fragmentary nationalisms, an analytical tool to examine national self-perceptions from a micro standpoint, criticize a macro perspective that explores one national identity and shows the need to explore various national identities that vary by social group. Interviewees in this study have developed their own national identities based on their experiences with “others.” In the early days of rapid economic growth, they connected with others and lived abroad by engaging in emigration administration. These experiences were unique because emigration was an opportunity to interact with others, as there were few others in Japan at that time. But as Japan became an economic giant, emigration lost its appeal, and it was carried out under the logic of international cooperation. Interviewees experienced dramatic changes in the meaning of going abroad and international cooperation in postwar Japan, which facilitated their understanding of “us” in relation to “others.” Thus, their national identities have developed based on historical understandings of internationalization in postwar Japan.
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  • Memory and Discourse in Nowa Huta
    Reconsidering “Utopia” in Post-Socialist Poland
    Sho SUGAWARA
    2013 Volume 64 Issue 1 Pages 20-36
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: September 10, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.64.20
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    The present article addresses the complexity of memories in post-socialist Poland by raising two essential questions: how is it possible to reconsider individual experiences and lives in former socialist countries regarding utopia building, and what kind of new meanings and potentialities could this reconsideration offer for contemporary post-socialist times? To answer these questions, this article considers the case of a former Polish ideal “utopian city” in the communist era, namely Nowa Huta, now a district of Kraków.
    The construction of Nowa Huta (New Steelwork) as the “first socialist city in Poland” began in 1949. Although Nowa Huta was once considered an ideal utopian socialist city, since the collapse of socialism, it has often been criticized as a “dirty” and “shameful” city strongly associated with the former communist regime. On the other hand, local residents recalled numerous positive memories associated with Nowa Huta from the socialist times, including stable and secure lives as well as personal promotion. Given these positive memories, one can venture to say that Nowa Huta illustrates well the complexity of memories in post-socialist Poland.
    The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, in order to reconsider the experiences of those who lived under the utopian project of the former socialist regime, this article analyzes the discourses and memories of those in Nowa Huta in the 1950s and 1960s. Second, it analyzes representative politics of Nowa Huta in contemporary post-socialist Poland. Accordingly, this article attempts to explore the potential creativity in rethinking the socialist “past” in a post-socialist world.
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  • Why Do People Talk about “Darkness of Mind”?
    Anomie of Understanding the “Mind” in Mass Media Reports about Juvenile Crime
    Yukio AKAHANE
    2013 Volume 64 Issue 1 Pages 37-54
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: September 10, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.64.37
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    The purpose of this paper is to examine why people talk about the “darkness of mind” of juveniles who have committed a heinous crime.
    “Darkness of mind” is a phrase commonly used when discussing juvenile crime, which is said to be “the fourth wave” of juvenile delinquency in the post-war era. Juvenile crime was a major social problem from the latter half of the 1990s to the middle part of the 2000s. Although darkness of mind is said to be a subject that people should readily understand, in fact people did not understand, which indicates their unfulfilled desire to explore the minds of juveniles. This social condition is what Émile Durkheim (1897) called an anomie.
    This paper, then, considers the social context in which people discussed the darkness of mind from the sociology of knowledge perspective aided by Durkheim's theory of anomie. In addition, this paper refers to newspapers and weekly magazine reports covering juvenile crime as reference material for consideration.
    This paper is organized as follows: first, I outline Durkheim's anomie theory and present the hypothesis about the relationship between darkness of mind and anomie. Second, I analyze mass media reporting procedures concerning darkness of mind. Finally, I explain the reason why darkness of mind became the subject of people's anomic desire.
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  • Cooperativity and Public Village Matters in the Villages of China
    From a Case Study of X Village under Farming Village Urbanization
    Meifang YAN
    2013 Volume 64 Issue 1 Pages 55-72
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: September 10, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.64.55
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This report aims to clarify the process of cooperativity among villagers. Specifically, it analyzes the case of “Village X” of Shandong Province in China, as it was forced to relocate under the farming village urbanization policy. Using this case example, I examine the possibility for village autonomy in China.
    Previous studies on Chinese rural communities focused on comparisons with Japanese villages, suggesting community (i.e., cooperativity focusing mainly on cooperative labor organization) did not exist in Chinese villages. Community was often considered a congestion of “myself” and “individual” based on “the pattern of difference sequence,” even if cooperativity was evident.
    In this report, those whose villages were about to disappear increased their sense of cooperativity based on “public village matters,” even suppressing their personal interests during the confluence of interests. Such a realization was possible because each villager, as a village member, increased his or her membership awareness using an organizational approach in anticipation of the village's disappearance; additionally, villagers mutually acknowledged that such an approach was based on public village matters, which trumped personal interests.
    In the case of an emergency with a sense of impending crisis, such as the village's disappearance, it became clear that cooperativity in the farming village of China is based on a different principle under normal circumstances. In rural areas in China, there are large-scale national development programs, such as the farming village urbanization policy, that are continuously implemented, making it easy for villagers to be conscious of village crises and village autonomy.
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  • “Claims of Privileged Knowledge” in Family Care
    Analysis of the Care for the Elderly with Dementia from a Social Constructionist Perspective
    Shu KINOSHITA
    2013 Volume 64 Issue 1 Pages 73-90
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: September 10, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.64.73
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Family caretakers of the elderly with dementia often claim that they “are the only people who know the real condition of these elderlies.” In this paper, I examine such remarks as the “claims of privileged knowledge” (Gubrium & Holstein 1990), which appear to conflict with recent medical theories about dementia. In recent years, Japanese medical practitioners have argued that dementia patients sustain their ability to interact, and they demand that such ability be respected. Family caretakers, on the other hand, seem to ignore the elderlies' abilities and impose upon them their “definition of reality” (Amada 2007). However, in this article, I emphasize that their claims are based on “dementia” as a medical concept and medical practitioners' discourses that stress the dementia patient's ability to interact. Many medical practitioners have pointed out that the environment and those concerned, such as doctors, social workers, and patients' relatives, often dramatically change the dementia patients' conditions because they sustain the patients' interaction abilities. For that feature of “dementia,” those concerned tend to make inconsistent judgments about the patients' conditions (e.g., “You said that he's getting worse and worse, but he is fine because he talked to us a lot about our old times.”). In such cases, family caretakers often insist on interpreting the patients' reactions (such as “talking about old times to relatives”) as symptoms of dementia and remain steadfast in their judgment. In brief, family caretakers make “claims of privileged knowledge” about how to apply the concept of “dementia” to the elderlies' daily lives and presume the elderlies' conditions. Such conflicts between the family caretakers and others reveal problems in the order of family care in “the new century of dementia care” (Iguchi 2007) in Japan.
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  • The Phase of Selective Abortion and Feminism
    Setsuko SUGANO
    2013 Volume 64 Issue 1 Pages 91-108
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: September 10, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.64.91
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Since the start of prenatal testing to inspect a fetus independently, selective abortion, which refers to aborting a fetus for fetal abnormality, has posed a problem. So that feminists might secure justification for the abortion, in general, they asserted “self-determination.” But from a sense of crisis to eugenics, selective abortion was not accepted as self-determination; instead, it was regarded as a singular point within the abortion itself.
    From the field survey performed so far, in this paper, the author described the experience of prenatal testing and selective abortion and investigated the relationship between selective abortion and feminist theory in Japan. The results suggest that selective abortion is problematic because prenatal testing is sometimes a precursor to abortion, even for a desired pregnancy. Maternalistic discourse, such as “it's more for the sake of the child than for myself,” was often used to explain the selective abortion as well as the women's choice to undergo prenatal testing.
    The selection must be dependent on the situation because of the strong attachment to the fetus through ultrasound imaging and unexpected happenings throughout the pregnancy term. Thus, the creation of the new concept of self-determination within feminist discourse is called for. Self-determination does not justify selective abortion unconditionally for women having decided by themselves. Rather, self-determination should denote a response to changeable and various “selves,” with a critical perspective toward both sides of the maternalistic culture and eugenic ideology.
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  • An Effect of the Migration Process on Immigrant Women's Fertility in Japan
    Yu KOREKAWA
    2013 Volume 64 Issue 1 Pages 109-127
    Published: 2013
    Released on J-STAGE: September 10, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.64.109
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    The increase of immigrants in Japan after the 1990s symbolizes the Japanese society's structural changes in the postwar years. While many studies have been conducted on immigrant settlement in Japan, few studies have focused on the fertility of immigrant women. It is important to reveal how immigrant fertility changes in accordance with the settlement process because immigrant fertility will determine the future course of settlement patterns through the creation of the “second generation” in Japan, which has strong ties to Japanese society.
    The present study analyzes the effect of the migration process particularly immigrant settlement patterns—on immigrant women' fertility in Japan, an issue already addressed in various studies for Western societies. Accordingly, it is highly possible that the fertility of immigrant women differs among subgroups of immigrants of the same nationality and that adaptation/assimilation has a positive effect on fertility. One implication is that the process of immigrant settlement in Japan is entering its second phase of immigrant population expansion via reproduction.
    Through analyzing macro-level data, this study reveals important facts concerning fertility differences among various national groups and the effect of settlement patterns on fertility in Japan. It goes without saying that they should be corroborated more fully using of micro-level data.
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