Medical anthropological research in the last twenty years has shown clearly that medicine is a cultural system which can be studied in the same manner as kinship, religion, politics, and so forth. In this paper, basic medical anthropological notions about illness experience are presented, and the theoretical development of analytical frameworks for discourse of patients, their family members, and health practitioners is outlined, with additional commentaries by the author, in order to make it clear the relevance of these notions and frameworks for the modern biomedically-oriented medical practice. Fmphasized throughout the paper are the significance of the meaning of illness experience for the patients, and that helping them cope with their suffering is a primary function of medicine.

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The purpose of this studies is on the roles of father and mother by analysing problem-precipitating facteors of 451 adolescent clinical cases. They include 45 one-parent family's cases, 155 working-mother family's cases, and 31 cases whose adolescent problems outbreak in two brothers or sisters in the same families. One-parent family's cases are characterized aggressiveness and somatic symptoms, associating with delinquency and drug dependence, Their therapeutic processes are not generally better than those of two-parent family's cases, because the mothers of one-parent families are unstable ecconomically and psychologically, and difficult to get supports from others. Among the working-mother group, cases of self-supporter's families are different from those of part-timer's and full-timer's families; for example, delinquencies are more, children's personalities are more ego-centric, and parent's methods of bringing up their children are more overprotective and indulgent. In the cases whse adolescent problems outbreak in two brothers or sisters in the same families, delinquency and drug dependence are significantly more and both of their fathers and mothers are noninterferent and flightfull to their children.

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The form of families has changed in the stages of civilization, and the view on the families has also varied a lot. Therefore, various cases of family pathology occur. So it can be said that modern families are now on the edge of crisis. The present study was intended to clarify the psychological problems within modern families, asking 208 male university students, 82 female university students, their 193 fathers, and 202 mothers to complete the questionnaire. From the answers to the question about "When do you feel peace on mind?" and "What is the condition in order to become happy?", Samples were divided into four types on the point of collectivism (to family and/or friends) and individualism (to himself). And the relations were examined among those types, feeling of loneliness, having a purpose in life, and death perspectives. As a result, the following were found. Both male and female university students strongly intend to be individualistic, as compared with their parents. Fathers, who have supported high growth of Japanese economy, have notably strong feeling of loneliness. Individualism is closely related to feeling of loneliness, lack of purose in life, and negative view of life-and-death. And also this study showed that the desolation of heart can be eased only where religious rites are practiced in a family. With this result, it became evident that in order to release a family from the burden of individualism, family members need to hold the common point of view which goes beyond the daily living.

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Several problems related to "life and death of human beings" including Japanese life expectancy, way of living, Quality of Life (QOL) , brain death, organ transplants, attitudes toward high technology in medicine, hospice, thanatology, and cultures and races, were reported and discussed by Eiichi KAJITA (Osaka University), Yonezou NAKAGAWA (Emeritus, Osaka University) , Yasuko SHIRAI (National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health) , and Hisahiro SHIMA (Momoyama Gakuin University) as the panelists under the lead of Hiroshi AKUTO (Tokyo University).

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In Japan, not a few Japanese people may believe that blood group polymorphisms of the ABO system are related to personality differences. Blood-typing is regarded here as a lay people's personality theory. The aim of this study is to understand that how people use this theory and that what functions the theory Serves. Subjects are students of a university and those of a nursing-school. 7 hypotheses derived are bellow. 1) this theory is popular among these subjects, 2) most of subjects cannot tell whether this theory is valid or not, 3) when someone begins to talk about the topics, conversations would be maintained for a while, 4) this theory can tell about both individuals and personal relationships. and this theory is useful for both beginning conversations and self-presentation at interpersonal situations, 5) contents of this theory are made of generalizations, 6) guesses of others' blood types are influenced by both theory's criteria and impressions of others, 7) evaluations to minor blood groups (B and AB) are relatively negative. After discussing the validity of blood-typing as a personality theory, the implications of this study are discussed.

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The purpose of the present study is to explore the opinions of the local residents in European countries where Japanese-owned corporations are operating. More specifically, this study is directed toward examining determinants of favorable as well as unfavorable opinions toward Japanese-owned corporations operate, namely, Belgium, Britain, and Spain. For the present study, telephone interviews were conducted with residents living in the area within a 10-mile radius centering around the Japanese manufacturing corporation in each country. Responses were obtained from 1,052 residents. The results may be summarized as follows: (1) The more contact residents had with Japanese-owned corporations, the more favorable were their ratings of these corporations. (2) The more the residents evaluated the Japanese people as fair in general, the more favorable were their ratings of Japanese-owned corporations. (3) The more residents perceived Japanese-owned corporations as providing support for local industry in their region, the more favorable were their opinions of Japanese-owned corporations.

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The purpose of this study is to analyse the types of individual response patterns to conflict situations, and their individual characteristics. 360 Japanese housewives were asked how they felt about, and how they dealt with conflict situations between themselves and their neighbours, friends and spouses, in the five successive conflict processes. In this study, the following results were found: (1) Four types of individual response patterns were found; Consistently hardline (4.6%), Consistently flexible (53.5%), Consistently ignoring (7.9%), Situationally correspondent (31.5%). (2) The consistently flexible and the situationally correspondent types amounted 85% in all, while the consistently hardline and the consistently ignoring ones were very few. This indicates that Japanese housewives tend to cope moderately with the conflict situations. (3) Using the analysis of Hayashi's Theory of Quantification, the consistently flexible and the situationally correspondent types were different in terms of their individual characteristics. In other words, the former type consists of those who have traditional values and lifestyles, while the latter type have modern values and lifestyles.

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The purpose of the present study was to construct a social support scale for Chinese students in Japan. It was presumed that the structure of social support was composed of two basic factors - area and type of support. Areas of support included Academic, Human relationship, Emotional, and Environmental-cultural areas. Types of support included Tangible, Mental, Directive, and Informational types. Twenty-three Chinese students were interviewed, about what kind of support they needed and/or what kind of support they had received regarding each of the 16 conditions from these 4 areas × 4 types. The common responses obtained by 3 or more subjects yielded 36 items. Next 11 Japanese graduate students were asked to classify the 36 items into one of the 16 conditions. Twenty-nine items showed agreement of 80% or more. No item was classified into the condition of Emotional area × Informational type. Internal consistency between sub-items was shown when a condition consisted of two or three sub-items. In this manner, a social support scale for Chinese students in Japan was constructed consisting of 15 conditions with 29 items.

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