Shun Inoue, a leading cultural sociologist, calls his own work an “essay.” In addition, Inoue’s texts have a style that appears transparent and neutral at first glance. In these two respects, Inoue’s work serves as a model for considering “style” in cultural sociology. In this paper, we consider the significance of the essay style for the field of cultural sociology through the identification of the（hidden） stylistic features of Inoue’s texts.

The following three stylistic features of Inoue’s texts are extracted.

（1） “Dynamic equilibrium and playful distance” : Inoue’s texts show a movement of sensing a dynamic equilibrium in the subject. This gesture embedded in the style pushes the viewer’s perspective to an overlooking position and enables a playful distance from the subject.（2） “Shift of perspective” : in Inoue’s texts, the technique of shifting the perspective, which transforms the subject’s meaning, is employed here and there, and the frequent use of the expression “X as Y” is a sign of this technique.（3） “The rhetoric of concession” : in Inoue’s texts, the concessionary sentence structure “indeed... but...” appears repeatedly; this is a rhetoric that functions to bridge the two features（1）and（2）and to produce a propositional assertion.

Although the “essay” has somewhat of a bad reputation in the recent swing back to positivism in cultural sociology, Inoue’s “essay” is useful precisely as an antidote to the fixed view of it.

In the 1980s, various restrictions applied to studying culture in sociology. As students had few opportunities to study in the university’s formal curriculum, they had no choice but to attend a study session beyond the faculty or an off-campus organization. This paper refers to the Society of Anthropology in Kyoto University （i.e., Konoe Rondo）and the private study group Gendai Hûzoku Kenkyûkai and shows that their activities supported studying culture at that time. Since the 1990s, “cultural studies” have spread in Japan. As the number of applicants to the Department of Sociology was decreasing, the university considered “cultural studies” an attractive option, and Japanese studies boomed overseas. Learning and researching culture became institutionalized within universities.

On the other hand, there was a tendency to standardize the contents of “cultural studies” or “sociology of culture” by incorporating them into the university’s formal curriculum. There was also the problem of the increasing number of people who could not get a full-time job while engaging in cultural studies as they wished. Today, those engaged in “cultural studies” can set research themes more freely than in the past and have more opportunities to publish papers and reports, benefiting from the changes that universities and sociology have welcomed and accepted.

This paper attempts to present the process of such academic changes in a form that overlaps with personal history.

Based on the usefulness of personal history research, this paper analyzes the life history of one actor（the author）from childhood to graduate school and describes how the actor’s upbringing and relationships were connected to a particular taste of popular music. In doing so, we examine the applicability of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and cultural capital and explore why habitus is called a “structuring structure.” The tastes in popular music, which were originally accidental to the individual, become a marker confirming one’s own social distribution by being associated with class habitus, creating a subjective sense of boundaries. Moreover, musical works are represented as class-identified, thus strengthening the certainty of an objective class structure.

I discuss these mechanisms and address the question of whether musical works can be considered cultural capital in today’s information society. Cultural works, which have increased dramatically due to the diffusion and production power of the Internet, no longer represent a hierarchical distinction or systematic order. While arguments still support the cultural omnibores theory, which discusses the relationship between culture and hierarchy, the theory of shima-uchu-ka has also emerged, holding that society consists of a number of closed circles that share interests, and the flat culture theory, which describes cultural works that have become easily accessible and less expensive to collect. This research examines the validity of these frameworks and considers current issues in the sociology of culture.

This paper reviews the new research trends in Japanese cultural sociologies and suggests future changes in the point of both gender and sexuality and class of culture, especially high culture and arts.

The main themes of cultural sociological research using the perspectives of gender and sexuality have shifted over time. Although the objectified image of women has been discussed with regard to its representation in media, the research of female receivers of popular culture today has shed light on women’s subjectivity; recently, post-feminism theory and the third wave of feminism have been applied to such research. In addition, this paper suggests that a wider range of cultural phenomena must be analyzed from the perspective of gender and sexuality as well as from that of men’s studies and queer studies.

On the other hand, considering class in culture, researchers have focused on popular and mass culture, though the edges between high and low culture are changing. To examine such limits as collective activities, empirical studies have flourished in this quarter-century. Not only cultural sociologies but also other fields of sociology use culture and art to explain new contemporary phenomena.

This article aims to reveal characteristics and major currents of sociology of culture in Japan. In recent years, sociology of culture has received a great deal of scholarly attention, reaching out to growing numbers of students and researchers. With the backdrop of this burgeoning field, it is no exaggeration to say that we are now entering an “age of sociology of culture.”

One prominent characteristic of sociology of culture lies in the breadth of its research subjects and perspectives. In comparison to other fields of sociologies, sociology of culture does not merely focus on a specific area in society, but rather, it attempts to delve into society as a whole through culture.

The term “culture” can be understood in a narrow and broad sense. The former sees culture observed in everyday life, such as popular culture and mass culture, while the latter embraces a broader perspective on society, ranging from lifestyle in general to social structures, to such civilizations as the Japanese or Western culture. In this sense, sociology of culture is an approach that serves to understand the dynamism articulated between cultures in both senses.

From this perspective, sociology of culture in Japan has undergone four major stages of change. The first stage was the period of emergence in the prewar era. It was followed by the period of development until the period of rapid economic growth in postwar Japan. It was a time when several sociologists, conducted important research on mass culture while refining their own theoretical perspectives, which remains influential today. The third stage was the stabilized period wherein sociology of culture became more prevalent. Now, sociology of culture is in its fourth stage.

China has alleviated its one-child policy since 2013, officially discarding it when the government allowed couples to have two children in 2016. To elucidate how the state regulates people’s reproduction and life through biopolitics and what has changed nowadays, this article analyzes the discourse about the number of siblings in the state-controlled newspaper People’s Daily.

During the one-child policy period, those who spontaneously obeyed the policy and had only one child were seen as “models” that people should follow. Their only child was regarded as particularly excellent and given preferential treatments; however, their spontaneity merely meant that the subject should obey the government’s policies without any resistance.

When the one-child policy began to be alleviated in 2013, People’s Daily introduced the necessity of the policy change by emphasizing new population problems, such as the decrease of labor force, aging populations, and its damage to society and economy. It also accentuated that it was desirable for the policy’s target citizens to have two children. After the two-child policy, however, the discourse in People’s Daily focused on individuals’ real opinions and demands. For example, some argued that many practical issues in daily life led to a decline in the fertility rate, even if people had high fertility intentions, and that the state should take specific measures to address these issues.

The change from the emphasis on public interests, such as new population problems, to the respect for the substantive demands of individuals and their reproductive autonomy occurred when People’s Daily justified the two-child policy as less direct coercive intervention in people’s bodies and a reduction of its attempts to construct submissive subjects; instead, it viewed the policy as a mature form of biopolitics that takes care of people’s minds, constructing subjects willing to govern themselves.

The “herbivore men” discourse, which suggests the retreat of young men from dating with regard to their attitudes and behaviors, has not been treated with empirical methods. This study estimates transition probabilities and confidence intervals within the heterosexual relationship status by birth cohort using the restricted ordinary least squares and bootstrap method and examines the “herbivore men” discourse. We used data from The National Fertility Survey report, which indicates the proportions of heterosexual relationship status.

The analysis found that（1）the transition probabilities to a status in which one is not in a relationship（henceforth referred to as “single” ）have been increasing; （2）the transition probabilities to a married status have been decreasing; and（3）the transition probabilities from single to a status in which one has a romantic partner have generally remained flat or changed slightly to an inversed u-shape.