In 1891, Uchimura Kanzo was accused of lese majesty when he did not bow to the Imperial Rescript on Education in a school ceremony. This event has been taken to epitomize religious opposition to the authoritarian Japanese state and has occupied a special place in discussions of the issue of ‘religion and state’ in Japan. What has been overlooked is the fact that Uchimura persisted in describing his behavior in the ceremony as a ‘hesitation’ rather than a ‘determined refusal’. The present thesis demonstrates that this failure to note the ‘hesitant’ body in the ritual space—the sociological dimension of the event—was inherent in the traditional framework of ‘religion and state’, and proposes a new, sociological interpretation of the event.

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This paper analyzes the relation between a city and its transportation in modern Japan through Tokyo station as an example of an ambiguous space. Tokyo station had been constructed in 1914 as a “terminal station” and center for a nationwide train transportation system. But in terms of Tokyo it became just one of many “through stations” in 1920s. This ambiguous character was manifest in the fact that while the capital city was made the center of the transportation system, that center was difficult for the masses to understand. It brought together too many people, things and signs and as a result compelled people to act mechanically.

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This paper explores the development of common sense knowledge about stuttering correction. IZAWA Shuji (1851-1917) established the Rakuseki-Sha, one of the original organizations for stuttering correction in Japan. He was an advocator of “Japanese” education in the colonial government. His work on speech correction in Japan was a continuation of his research on “Japanese” education for language integration. His stuttering correction was not, however, a continuation of his “Japanese” education but was instead practice based on the scientific method (“Shiwa-Hou”). This paper shows that his speech correction was the application of practical ‘Knowledge’ about normal speech.

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This report suggests that reexamining draft evasion in the past carries some meaning for the present. For example, there is a pitfall in characterizing conscience-driven draft evasions based on religion or ideology as superior to draft evasion based on a fear of death. Draft evasion was one of the concealed problems in the postwar period. During the 15-year war, draft evaders were viewed as unpatriotic cowards who treasured their lives when the number of war causalities increased. In fact, it was the individual “egoism” of these evaders that the totalitarian state wished to eliminate. The issue of draft evasion still exists today as a clue to the investigation of the “Conflict between the individual and the nation” in the context of human lives.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of ‘the nationalization of women’ in prewar Japan. Based on poststructuralist gender theory, this process is identified with the gendering of ‘nation’ by the nation state and it entailed the creation of an understanding of the relationship between men and women as ‘nation’. Home economics in higher education had a certain role in this process. The conclusion here is that the process of the nationalization of women was not a simple matter but rather involved mediation by political considerations.

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This paper aims to consider the effect of gender and birth order on the educational strategy adopted by their family. Although the family is the first agent of socialization for children, the family does not socialize all children equally.
My colleague and I surveyed 1, 853 parents in Niigata, Tokyo, Fukuoka and Nagasaki in 2002. In this paper I use the data from parents of 4-year-old children, parents of 2nd grade students and parents of 5th grade students. I analyze the effects of gender and birth order on the educational strategy of parents. It is my finding that eldest children received more investment by their parents than younger ones. Eldest sons receive particularly high investment and are also most expected to undertake gendered roles in modern society.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine the narratives of a woman participating in a self-help group for those with a facial disfigurement. I examine the process of how she temporally constructs and reconstructs a narrative identity based on appearance by make comparison with stories about facial surgery and love affairs. In so doing, I particularly emphasize that narrative identity is not something static but rather a changeable construct in which “the present is the conclusion.”

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Infrastructures supporting life in cities enable the elderly and their children to stay intimate without propinquity. However, when old parents need nursing care, formerly compressed space becomes significant as they become dependent on proximity. Children who are expected to support their parents become partly bound by spatiality. They try to deal with the situation by seeking to be spatially unbound even as they are spatially bound. This contradiction involving spatiality suggests that the independence from proximity does not originate in some aspect of the city itself but is realized through the ability of the individual to overcome space and to search for better solution within the available choices.

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In this article we will trace the mechanism in which the locality has been generated as a result of personal mobility. Our material is the motivation structure of participants in the community welfare movement in Setagaya-City since the end of the 1990's. Geographical mobility has cut people off from the family-kinship relationships that have provided for welfare in the past and promoted the formation of the alternative welfare provision including public services, market, and friendship. Among those who have established stable residency meaning the ownership of a house and land, we find the locality as a concrete and practical alternative relationship to that of family and kinship. We term this pattern re-settlement. It represents the reality of urban life in an era when the dichotomy between village or traditional society and urban society has lost meaning.

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This paper explores a new trend in urban subcultures, that of skateboarders seeking public space for their activities. Generally when youth subcultural groups use public spaces, station parks and urban squares, they are under the gaze of local residents or controlled by policemen and security guards. But, the case taken up in this paper progresses to a different situation. In particular, it is about the three-year long movement to acquire “Tsuchiura Station West Park” conducted by ten young skateboarders and a manager of a skateboard shop who conducted a campaign to collect signatures, presented a petition and engaged in various other activities in order to secure space for their activities. They were successful in that they were allowed to use “Tsuchiura Station West Park” for free, on the condition that this permission was granted only until the start of the urban redevelopment of the Tsuchiura station area.

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Organic agriculture is farming without reliance on pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Therefore, it inherently requires the handwork of farmers and has therefore been considered as time-consuming and labor intensive. We must, however, remember that farmers are not unwilling to engage in organic farming. Organic agriculture occasionally fascinates them. This paper focuses on an organic farm in the Narita-Sanrizuka area, Jyunkan-Nohjyo (The Recycle-Based Farm) established by Hidemasa Koizumi and his wife, local farmers. By analyzing his documents and his narrative about the farm it becomes clear that organic agriculture is a movement by the farmer to restore his power to observe nature and to regain the pleasure that comes from making direct, positive contact with nature.

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This paper examines representations of “Futoko” [school refusers] and “Tokokyohi” [refusal to attend school] have changed since 1970. “Futoko” and “Tokokyohi” phenomenon presupposes schooling as one of the major devices of modernization. That is, representations of “Futoko” and “Tokokyohi” in public discourse have been part of a hegemonic link in modern and late-modern Japanese society. This paper analyzes articles about “Futoko” and “Tokokyohi” reported in the home and family section in Asahi Shimbun over 30 years. These discourse about “Tokokyohi” present it as a deviation from modern-family life, but treat “Futoko” as part of a tendency toward privatization. The privatized discourse about “Futoko” conceals structural factors that regulate the construction of it.

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In 1977, Malcom Spector and John I. Kitsuse proposed for the study of the social problems focus on the activities of participants, which is well-known as “claims-making activities”. They also contended that social problems are to be conceived of as a topic for the sociological study in themselves. Although the focus on the activities is a significant proposal, with respect of the latter point, however, their proposal taken literally tends to deflecting attention from social problems as such. My contention is that what is lacking and what is needed is some clear notion of the relation between studying the activities of participants and the study of social problems as such. In addition, I tentatively sketch one possible notion of such relations.

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The “social categorization” and normative judgments imposed by analysts or third parties sometimes conceal the reality surrounding each person who is actually “discriminated against”. It is also apparent in the unilateral movement to change the nomenclature for Gypsies to “Roma” without listening to the parties concerned. In order to reveal the “actual reality” surrounding us, therefore, it is necessary to elucidate what interactions exist between the persons at each position in the asymmetric “category placement”. The objective of this article is to clarify the problem Gypsies are faced with in their real life and the “actual reality” in the field by grasping the “asymmetric power” and “category placement” in our society and by listening to the parties concerned.

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In this paper I address education in Northern Ireland a country marked conflict between segregated Protestant and Catholic communities. Although the educational system has been separate for the two communities, some new movements for reconciliation have appeared. What I focus on mainly is the Education for Mutual Understanding (EMU) and ‘integrated schools’. The main purpose of this paper is to consider these new efforts in the context of ‘multicultural education’. First, I provide an historical outline of education and schools in Northern Ireland. Second, I describe and analyse the tow movements. By examining these experiments, we gain a fresh perspective on new movements for multicultural education.

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This study seeks to clarify how the forms of mobilization of young people have changed in urban deteriorated areas that are the locus of social problems such as youth unemployment or social exclusion, the consequences of post-industrialization and globalization of economy. Analysis of cultural associations composed by young actors in Aubervilliers, a former bastion of the labour movement, indicates that they find in cultural activities not only an economic and professional interest but also a social and collective dimension that cannot be ignored. Cultural activities provide original mechanisms for political expression, reveal new standards of social integration (especially for young people of immigrant origin) and show the way to emerging models of public participation in a political space where abstention has became, as in many industrialized countries, a major problem.

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This paper aims to clarify the causal relationship between Chinese migrants' education and their income in Japan. I focus on the comparison between educational attainment in China and that in Japan. The result of my research shows that educational credentials obtained in Japan have a significant effect on the income of Chinese migrants and that there is a significant mutual relation between their Chinese and Japanese educational credentials in terms of income determination.

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The purpose of this paper is to suggest a new approach to explicate the relation between interaction and its setting, especially for classroom studies. First, we introduce H. Mehan's studies about classroom organization as a typical argument and a comprehensive policy about approach for ‘institutional settings’. Second, we outline how J. Heap sees the perspective of Mehan's studies as a defective one, and show that the arguments have a point in common with S. Hester & D. Francis' criticism of the comprehensive policy. Third, we show how Heap develops the perspective of Mehan, and suggest the development as a ‘new approach’ that overcomes these defects. Then, we can recognize the significance of the ‘new approach’ for explicating classroom.

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This paper considers the relation between M. Horkheimer's critical theory and Marxism with respect to the concept of contradiction. With respect to historical materialism, Horkheimer is regarded as having changed from an initially tentative positive attitude to one of denial. First, this paper begins with an overview of this change dividing Horkheimer's studies into two periods depending on whether he was positive or negative in his view of historical materialism. Second, two kinds of objections to Horkheimer's change are explored and criticized. Third, it is shown from the viewpoint of surplus value theory Horkheimer thought that the contradictions inherent in capitalism would not lead to emancipation from capitalism but to domination by capitalism and that human subjectivity would fall into crisis. Finally, it is demonstrated that these issues are part of continuity from Marx to Horkheimer.

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