One of the characteristics of East Asian welfare provision is to make use of family as a major service provider of care. However, as seen in other developed nations, fonnation of nuclear family, women' s entry into labor market, residual service provision from government made it difficult for family to supply care accordingly to the increasing care needs. Another common aspect of those regions is that government promotes family to maintain responsible for the care service provider through tax reduction, legalization of maintenance of elderly parents, moral education and issuance of employment permit of foreign domestic worker. This can be called familialization policy, which made use of traditional nonns and values. Even with difference of welfare policy in those regions, one feature in common is the high dependency ratio of migrants working as domestic helper. Familializaton policy is typically practiced in Singapore whose government declared not to follow welfare states to keep international economic competitiveness. When compared to other nations, East Asian region is of quite conspicuous in that they accept foreign workers as domestic workers in order to keep family function as care provider. This means that domestic workers help maintain traditional function as care provider that contradicts nowadays due to structural change of family and high ratio of women in the labor market. However, familialization policy has some drawbacks. First, not all can secure care from domestic worker due to hislher economic employability. This is the drawback of market transaction. Secondly, family as a unit of care provider can work when a person fonns a family. In other words, single persons theoretically cannot dependent on family care because he/she does not fonn a family.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine the problems and future chalIenges in the process of care provision under the Long-Term Care Insurance system. As a means to improve quality of services, the Certified Social Workers and Certified Care Workers Act were revised for the first time in 20 years as a strategy to upgrade the quality of certified care workers. However, the foIIowing revision of Long-Term Care Insurance Act had overrode the impact of the revised Certified Social Workers and Certified Care Workers Act and the working enviromnent caused the of care-workers is deteriorating. The tum-over rate among care-workers is increasing and care-providing institutions are suffering from the chronic shortage of staff. Accepting foreign care-workers through the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) is expected to increase the nmnber of care-workers. However, the EPA also introduces another semi-professionals, assistant care-workers, and this might create a rift between existing care-workers and assistant careworkers as well as lowering their wages overall. There being a wide range of problems in relation to the working condition of care-workers, However, maintaining the quality of care services as well as the number of care-workers appear to be the most urgent policy issues. In the meantime, we also need to be aware that accepting foreign careworkers is an irrefutable option under this era globalization. We are in order to support care-workers at this difficult time need to reconsider the existing employment model of care-workers, to improve their working environment, to encourage their professional identity and to establish a concrete strategy to protect domestic care-workers.

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It has been 10 years since Long-tenn Care Insurance began, calling for "Kaigo no Shakai-ka" , that is shifting elderly care responsibilities from private to public sectors. In this report, I reviewed the changes in the elderly care policy as well as in the actual cases of elderly care during this period in Japan, and how these changes contributed to realize "Kaigo no Shakai-ka." First of all, I reviewed issues relating to how home help services should be from the viewpoint of responsibility sharing between families and social services for elderly care using various policy guidelines. As a result, it was confinned that since the beginning of this system various restrictions were imposed on home help services especially on utilization of housework services, and this tendency has been further strengthened by revision of the law in 2005. Secondly, the above tendency was reconfinned by tracking the trend after 200 I in statistical data. In particular, residential care for the elderly in recent years has been remarkably demonstrating the tendency that can be expressed as "re-shifting of responsibilities of elderly care to families." It is a classical issue in the case of housework services that responsibility sharing between families and social services for elderly care is questioned in the situation itself where a home helper provides services for daily living such as cooking and cleaning at a user's residence. It is implied that some excessive restriction toward housework services represents a strong sense of crisis by policymakers about regression of family responsibility in elderly care which could result in a "moral hazard."

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The argument over the volunteer has the increase of the activity participant and a thing of a surge of the interest and difficulty of the security of the person of activity. When I read and deciphered optimism and pessimism over the volunteer by this report, I paid my attention to what the volunteer of the new type that was different from the traditional volunteer was appearing and I used a concept called "the episodic volunteer" and arranged it. And I carried out hearing investigation in the volunteer center and examined an ideal method of the support to the new type volunteer. It is said to be different from the traditional volunteer by ① Culture, ② Choice of organization, field action, activity, ③ Length and intensity of commitment,④ Relationship with the beneficiary. And they are aimed for self-realization and like short-term participation to the organization. However, it becomes the activity with the continuity among the person himself. As a result of investigation, as for the support of the volunteer center, it was confirmed that it was not established enough even if the directionality was shown. The support that was conscious of not only continuous activity support but also continuity is demanded from the initiative of the volunteer and difficulty of the continuation. I understood that support by a viewpoint of "creating a Common Framework" which not only an independent organization but also many organizations and volunteers rolled up was necessary to bring about this continuity. And a role as the core organization of the action of "creating a Common Framework" is expected of the volunteer center.

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The purpose of this paper is to understand care as communication and clarifY the reality. Especially, the asymmetric relationship between the care-giver and the recipient is paid to attention, and discusses care communications other aspects from a past caring theory. Up to now, the asymmetric relationship in care has been thought to be erased. Because it has had misgivings about that the asymmetric relationship causes paternalism, and the situation suppress the recipient. In care, while consideration is necessary for care, the excessive consideration brings blockage to both the care-giver and the recipient. Therefore, the construction of equal relationship has been groped to solve the asymmetric relationship as a theory and practice. Such recognition and the insistence are appropriate. However, when the fact by the participant observation that conducted by the author was referred, a different facts are observed in an actual care site. Various aspects of consideration were existed, and the asymmetric relationship makes the communication more affluent. For instance, there are the play communications and the selftransformation caused by face to asymmetric relationship. From the above-mentioned discussion, this paper point out that a sociological research on care needs to understand delicately that care communication is not only the equal model but also the some aspects of communication such as generation, reversing, and the catastrophe appearance in care.

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There is a distinct period when a standard of maternal and child health was drastically improved in Japan before World War II. This period is called "Birth Revolution" which began in 1899, when the qualification of midwifery was established, and lasted for 40 years. Throughout this period, midwives were trained in Western medicine, and they gradually changed the ways of child birth in Japanese traditional communities. Ochiai(1980) and Nishikawa(2004) depicted the process of "Birth Revolution" based on interviews with midwives who lived through this period. This study vividly explains the dynamic process of "Birth Revolution" based on the statistical health data and the activities of both public and community organizations. The study shows that the infant mortality rate was improved only after 1920, that is the second half of the 40 years of "Birth Revolution". The fact suggests that it took 20 years for new midwives who were trained in Western medicine were accepted by Japan a traditional society. Furthennore, the improvement in the infant mortality rate was varied according to society's acceptation accept new midwives, while there were those in while the midwives used freely this skills.

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[in Japanese]

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