In Japan, since the Second Sino-Japanese War, the substitutes for metal commodities have been produced by using non-metallic materials for saving metal for civilian demand. The metal substitutes give us a typical example to investigate how our lives change in an era of shortage. The aim of this paper is to explore the diversity and transition of the metal substitutes throughout the Second Sino-Japanese and Asia-Pacific Wars, focusing on thumbtacks as a representative of the metal commodities. To achieve this aim, I collected the real objects, and compiled the information on them along with the literature information from books, newspaper articles, patents, etc.

The following conclusions are obtained: (1) the thumbtacks in pre-war time had been manufactured mainly from copper or iron alloys, and the substitutes for the metal thumbtacks were produced from the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War; (2) the substitute thumbtacks were manufactured from a very wide variety of materials such as celluloid, phenol resin, casein resin, vulcanized fiber, bamboo, wood, cardboard, and gramophone disks; (3) in a rough division, the celluloid, phenol-resin, and casein-resin thumbtacks were produced during the Second Sino-Japanese War, while the vulcanized-fiber, wooden, and gramophone-disk thumbtacks were produced during the Asia-Pacific War; (4) it is suggested that the diffusion of these substitutes was increased during the Asia-Pacific War, due to the shortage of existing metal thumbtacks.

This paper investigates why residents confront with others in the festivals of local communities. Previous studies have shown their interest in the constructing process of festivals and they emphasized that the function of social integration by conducting the festivals in local communities. However, the constructing process includes not only innocent practices but also dramas carefully played by participants. The author analyses the function of some practices citizens conducted by focusing the mechanism of conflicts. The author conducted the research the process of choosing actors and negotiating with elderly participants by organizers of festivals in Hikiyama Festival in Naga­hama, Shiga. Drawing on my observations, we could find that the more conflicts escalated, the more participants appeared to be excited. Moreover, participants regard the confrontations as the real pleasure of festivals on local communities. As a result of it, we can conclude that the conflicts have some functions depending on the scene: it sometimes caused tragedy, but it has functions of integration for residents and gives real pleasures for audience. Therefore we should understand the ambiguity of conflicts of festivals on local areas.

This paper aims to give a detailed description of how people maintain a relationship of ‘family’ in everyday life. It has been said for a long time that ‘family’ became diverse. Previous research has shown that ‘family’ is strongly interrelated with media. Among others, we focused on social media that have more and more users in recent years. We conducted in-depth interviews with young women who are active users of social media. Based on ideas of life history method, we used usage history of social media as a kind of life documents in interviews. This enabled us to give a detailed description of a few but diverse cases. A series of social media practices is described, using a “case example-code matrix” based on interview data. The interviewees handle various social media function skillfully and do interaction rituals towards their ‘family’ based on keitai literacy acquired while they were teenagers. Having these skills, they hold the strategic high ground in relationship with parent generation in social media. Their everyday lives are intricately-linked with a set of smartphone and social media. It is difficult to ignore social media, if we are to know how they maintain a relationship of ‘family’.