This study demonstrates that an “unreasonable preference” for voluntary evacuation following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident has caused “wide-ranging damage” and undermined the everyday lives of the evacuees. It focuses on the “vacillation” of the people who voluntarily evacuated the area outside the mandatory evacuation zone in Fukushima prefecture and the Kanto region and relocated to Tosu city, Saga prefecture, due to concerns over radioactive contamination.

“Vacillation” is an emotional state encompassing many feelings, including confusion, uneasiness, embarrassment, hesitation, and despair. Extensive research identifying the factors related to the harmful effects of “vacillation” associated with voluntary evacuations has established that this individual life experience has consequences that negatively affect the public perceptions of the legal system and national policy. It follows that the actual harm caused by this emotional state is broader and more significant than that considered under the government's Compensation for Nuclear Damage provisions, and this latent damage is ineradicable and often multilayered.

The research period of this study was from 2012 to 2014, and the research method employs a combination of interviews, participant observations, and a review of the research literature and photogr aphs documenting the personal experiences of evacuees in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident. All the interviewees were mothers, and any details that may identify the individuals have been redacted.

While the government's relaxation of evacuation instructions is ongoing, those who were previously categorized as forced evacuees will increasingly be recategorized as voluntary evacuees. Furthermore, the actions taken by the evacuees under various social pressures will be interpreted as being their own personal choices, and they will subsequently be disqualified from social compensation schemes. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a better understanding of the concept of “wide-ranging damage” in order to lift a greater burden of responsibility from voluntary evacuees.

In Japanese public schools after the war, what kind of “problems” were conceived concerning second and third generation Korean children, who were then turned into “foreigners”? The movement and discourse of Zainichi Korean Education saw nation-wide development starting from the 1970s. There teachers' interests were largely focused on problems in the students' state of mind; in the eyes of teachers, these students were deprived of humane development as “minzoku” (a nation, or a racial/ethnic group). If we trace back to the root of such educational discourse, its original form evolved from the 1960s movement of the Japanese Teachers Union (Nikkyoso Kyoken).

In Nikkyoso Kyoken's annual conferences from the late 1950s through the 1960s, we can see a considerable change in the perspective taken on Zainichi Korean Education. Behind this change was the politics of a series of Japan-North Korea solidarity movements such as the North Korea Repatriation Movement, and the politics of the Japanese Nationals Education (Kokumin Kyoiku) movement. Within the discourse of Nikkyoso Kyoken at this time, we can find two different educational perspectives: one focuses on discrimination, alienation, and rampant poverty in the school and local community and problematizes this social environment, and the other focuses on the agendas that evolve from political movements and problematizes the lack of education to make nationals or minzoku. The relation of the two perspectives changes from the original state of co-existence to the overwhelming dominance of the latter after the early 1960s. As a result, the most important problem that “Japanese teachers” should now tackle is the problem of “assimilation,” which will result in an educational discourse that will address “restoration” of nature as an essentially different member of minzoku from “Japanese” as its core value.

The purpose of this article is to re-examine Clifford Shaw's life history studies in light of the history of American immigration. The significance of the present study lies in providing a view of the sociological horizon opened up by life history studies, and in redefining the historical and social meaning of Shaw's life history studies.

After summarizing the preceding studies on Shaw's monographs, the novel viewpoint of this study is presented in contradistinction to them. In the subsequent overview of the American immigrant's history, how prejudice against immigrant minorities was officially shared in American society is discussed; this clarifies the social background behind the studies of Shaw. Given the view regarding minority immigrants as a cause of criminals that pervaded society when Shaw's three monographs—The Jack-Roller (1930[1966]), The Natural History of a Delinquent Career (1931), Brothers in Crime (1938)—were published, the situation of immigrant children in the slums is sketched out based on these monographs. This analysis shows clearly that Shaw's monographs illustrated the great difference between prejudice and reality. Finally, the historical and social significance of Shaw's studies is summarized, and it becomes clear that Shaw's life history studies aimed at realizing the coexistence of minority immigrants and majority citizens.

Recently, some researchers have argued that families are “done” and “displayed” (Finch 2007), thereby contributing to the growing attention on family practices in everyday life. Conversation analysis provides a way to investigate family practices from the perspective of the participants' orientation. Using conversation analysis, this study explores how a mother can display in interaction that she is a mother. Conversation analysts (e.g., Stivers 2007) have shown that various forms of reference can do special interactional work in addition to referring. Based on their work, I examine the special interactional work(s) achieved when a mother uses kono hito (“this person”) to refer to her child. Through my examination, I also show how a mother displays her child and herself by using kono hito. For this purpose, three excerpts from videotaped conversations among friends and two from among mothers in two kosodate hiroba are examined. The results show that kono hito is used by a mother—in responding to a turn that treats her child as a typical child—to emphasize the atypicality or exceptionality of the child in some respect. This “helps accomplish” (Stivers 2007: 92) or underscores the mother's action that is implemented by the turn including kono hito. In one instance, a woman apologizes to a child after the latter bumps into her. In order to reassure the woman that no harm has been done, the mother uses kono hito to refer to her child: In emphasizing her exceptionality as a young child, the mother enhances the relieving effect of her response. At the same time, by treating her child as an exception, a mother displays herself as a person who knows her child best, that is, a mother.