In this study, we examine “how-to” articles that offer advice on how to build a better relationship of love, focusing on national women's magazines published between 1985 and 2007. We especially focused on the following advice in our analysis data: (a)“Have you repeated fault A because of B?” and(b)“In order to build a better relationship of love, you need to create a way to think about C.”

We sought to extract self-knowledge about the “pure relationship” from these “how-to” articles by performing a qualitative content analysis.

Through analysis of our results, the following discourses were classified in category

(a):

1. “Have you lost the positivity that facilitates commitment in an intimate relation because you have the strong negative feeling of being refused?”

2. “Have you not overcommitted to your favorite male or your lover because you foster strong monopolistic desires, jealousy, and a dependent heart?”

3. “Have you suppressed your feelings and devotion to a partner's desires?”

4. “Have you disregarded a partner's feelings and concentrated on fulfilling your own desires?”

Advice classified in category(b)seemed to promote conflicting views.

The purpose of this study is to explore the process of internalization of stigma among offenders' families in Japan, focusing specifically on the feelings of shame. To understand the emotional aspects of offenders' families, interviews were conducted with seven family members and the data were analyzed based on the notion of “web of shame,” a theoretical framework constructed by Rachel Condry. Research to date has given insufficient attention to the family members of minor offenders. To fill this gap in the literature, the present study specifically focuses on the family members of minor offenders in Japan and seeks to explore how they experience and internalize stigma.

Inter alia, the study found that the intensity of shame among family members was influenced by their status within society prior to the crime, rather than the seriousness of the crime committed by their kin. As family members interacted with the police and other actors in the criminal justice system, they began to recognize the gaze of others on them as “families of offenders,” leading them to adjust to the changing circumstances in their lives. This study indicates that the degree to which family members experience shame and internalized stigma is influenced by their social status and experiences prior to the crime being committed.

The purpose of this study is to examine Shun Inoue's theory of play and his analysis of the youth in the latter half of the 1960s through the first half of the 1970s. Although Inoue's empirical analysis is undoubtedly brilliant, it has a fragile theoretical base. In order to obtain a more theoretically consistent understanding of Inoue's empirical analysis, the author suggests the lived choice motive.

Lived choice, a concept proposed by the author, is the experience of being strongly moved by an object or an event. A person who undergoes such an emotional experience forms a special connection with that object or event. In this sense, the person can be said to have made an unintentional choice regarding that object or event. This unintentional choice, as opposed to making a deliberate choice to act, is that which is lived. Hence, such a choice is called lived choice. Lived choices are divided into two subordinate types: lived choice of fascination and lived choice of suffering-transcription.

Lived choice, as distinguished from self-interest and ideology, works as the third category of the motive for social action. It is clear from examining Inoue's theory of play that the spirit of play, around which Inoue's research on the youth in the 1970s revolves, is a phenotype of the lived choice motive. Therefore, from this point of view, the lived choice motive was predominant in the social character of the youth in the 1970s. From an investigation of current documentary television programs, this study concludes that the lived choice motive has transformed itself during the past forty or fifty years and that in the meantime, the importance of lived choice as a value has increased.

This paper aims to analyze the transformation of fashion designers' social position in Japan, and to clarify the effects of this transformation. We will conduct an analysis based on the subjects of fashion designers, as understood from their narrative and practice, and the arrangement of fashion designers as understood from the industry and discourses surrounding fashion designers.

Fashion designers of the 1980s expressed independent subjects through their narratives concerning design and through their practices, such as the creation of works by individuals and the establishment of designer associations by groups. Further, concerning the arrangement of fashion designers, limited production of a wide variety of products and transformation to a short cycle were realized by the industry. Concerning discourses, the reputation of fashion designers was supported by references to them by critics and philosophers. In this manner, fashion designers created their social position in Japanese society.

However, from the 1990s, the fashion industry reorganized through “SPA” (“Specialty store retailer of Private label Apparel”) businesses and luxury brand conglomerates. Consequently, discourses shifted to references made by sociologists and marketers concerning consumers. Meanwhile, although fashion designers criticized this kind of arrangement, they practiced grouping and collaboration in their businesses. Thus, the social status of fashion designers collapsed due to the transformation of their arrangement and inconsistencies in their subjects.

This transformation in the social position of fashion designers suggests that individual designers became subsumed within organizations. Therefore, in addition to the problem of inconsistency in the subjects of fashion designers, references to designers and brands are diverging. Furthermore, while creation of fashion itself is being made increasingly difficult, it is being supplanted by marketing.

This study analyzes how the usage pattern of shakai (Japanese word meaning “society”) has evolved over the years since the Meiji era. Similar to studies conducted in western European languages, this study aims to find historical evidence in the Japanese language for analyzing the different implications of the word “society.” However, the purpose of this study is not to find conceptual particularity or immaturity in Japan but to interpret the historical process by which the usage pattern of the term society evolved worldwide. The representation of shakai as society has made it possible to imagine individual volunteer organizations, wide communication ranges, and normative paradigms for political practices. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the governmental redistribution system has been expected to subsume various aspects of a nation's living standard. The representation of shakai as an adjective (meaning “social”) has been used for the image building of these aspects. The usage pattern of society has undergone worldwide development with intermingled representations, rather than having developed separately inside a specific country. Moreover, the prepositional representation of shakai could sympathize with the criticism of capitalism, because “capitalism” as a noun had also been used since the beginning of the 20th century.

The objective of this paper is to clarify the process and characteristics of the transformation of local development based on safety and security. For over 10 years, the governmental policies of ensuring safe and secure communities have been applied across Japan. Through the program, the first security booth, managed by a neighborhood organization, was established in Sendai City. I will focus on changes of the macro (structurization of the city) and mezzo (urban policy and police administration) structure of the city as a background to the establishment and transformation of the organization.

A city planning road, ‘Kita Yobancho Iwakiri Sen’ has been developed with the growth of Sendai City. It triggered the move of a police station from Nakae District to Saiwaicho District. The change of policies within the urban district also influenced the reorganization of the police precinct. Through the growth of the city and reorganization of the precinct, Saiwaicho District was gentrified and led to an increase in the population. On the other hand, Nakae District has become an inner city.

In this situation, a crime prevention association in Nakae District established a security booth managed by Nakae and srrounding residents. It functioned as a social welfare office for Nakae District residents. The residents could speak with each other in the booth. It established confidence in themselves despite it being considered the inner city.

However, the neighborhood organization of the Nakae District criticized the management and expenditures of the security booth. As a result, the crime prevention association rationalized the structure in order for it to be applicable to the program of safe and secure community established by the central government. I will analyze the process of transformation from a community-oriented logic of security to the security-oriented logic of association.

This paper examines mechanisms of culture-led, especially art-driven, gentrification. Existing sociological and geographical theories generally focus on the economic aspects of gentrification. Such theories, to put it simply, analyze gentrification only from an economic perspective. These theories are useful for examining gentrification in relation to housing issues, but are insufficient for the analysis of current culture related gentrification. This paper will argue for a new framework to deal with the issue of culture and gentrification.

In order to achieve this purpose, I have been conducting qualitative research on a case study of SoHo in New York City from 1965 to 1971. SoHo is the most wellknown case of artist-led gentrification both in its scale and process of spatial transformation; therefore, it is worth exploring. Key factors causing gentrification in SoHo are low rent and physical advantages, such as good location and spacious buildings. However, through my research, I discovered another factor that is critically important. It is the cultural and symbolic conflict between the upscale and commercial art world of Uptown and the grass roots and avant-garde art world of Downtown in Manhattan. During the symbolic struggles of post-war Manhattan, young avant-garde artists established their territory in SoHo, and then cooperative and commercial galleries moved in to exploit such avant-garde representations.