Recently, the number of dual-career households has been increasing. Due to insufficiency and inadequacy of public childcare support, many child-rearing households expect grandparent households to provide support. With the phenomenon of later-in-life marriages and delayed childbearing, grandparents who provide child raising support are increasingly aging. A child-rearing environment heavily relying on the elderly is unsustainable, so the improvement of such environment is an extremely public and urgent social issue. Through questionnaires and interview surveys of both grandparents and child-rearing households, this study examines the actual conditions and attitudes of grandparents’ child-raising support in Shimotsuma City in Ibaraki prefecture, a rural area with many three-generation households. The study finds that grandparents frequently provide a wide range of child-rearing support, while they have little time to spare. Due to the regional convention that takes grandparents’ child-rearing support for granted, however, they are generally not aware of their burden. Under such circumstances, there is a risk that they will accumulate physical and mental fatigue without being aware of it, resulting in health problems.

This paper aims to understand the rationale of local people in voluntarily making community building efforts. From the viewpoint of the locals making such efforts, this paper examines the voluntary community associations that exists in Hachi village, a rural village where depopulation and aging is advancing. As a result, the locals’ rationale is that in the present social situation in which some community building efforts can no longer be made according to “principal of full participation,” they can carry out activities considered necessary for everyone in the village while respecting negative and positive freedom of their own and of those who do not make such efforts. Activities established by the “principle of voluntary will” are also found in full-participation community associations. Today, it is difficult for Hachi village to continue to exist as a local community without the locals who are active according to “principle of voluntary will.” Because of that, the shortage of community building leaders has clearly become an urgent problem.

This paper discusses the impact on women’s lives of the increasing default on the payment of bridewealth and the decline in marriage ceremonies. In East Africa, marriage is an important life event for both men and women, and societies and ethnic groups regard bridewealth as essential to marital relationships. Bridewealth includes livestock, property, and money paid by the groom and his family to the woman’s family. This rite of passage serves two functions: establishing marriage ties between the two families and guaranteeing wives’ future lives. Since the 2000s, however, young people have demonstrated little awareness of bridewealth, and an increasing number of young couples in rural Uganda now live together in common-law marriages. One reason for this change is that the men and their relatives are suffering from financial distress and land shortage, and as a result, they cannot prepare bridewealth for the women’s relatives. In common-law marriages, it is impossible for women to access property from men, and the women’s parents may not permit them to return to their home villages. Due to the default on bridewealth, women and children are thus isolated economically and socially. This article makes it clear that bridewealth plays the role of guaranteeing a stable life for women in rural Uganda by providing a safety net, whereas non-payment of bridewealth may cause women to sink into poverty.

This paper exams the tacit knowledge involved in building a human tower in Catalonian traditional culture, concentrating on the practice of official members, whose height can get to more than 10 meters. Applying here the perspective of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) advocated by J. Lave and E. Wenger, we will concentrate on the practice of experienced members or “full participants,” who are little discussed by the authors. A reference point for newcomers, the practice of experienced members will also be important for the community.

From this point of view and based upon our own participant observation in Castellers de Sants, a group of human tower builders in Barcelona, we will find “potential members” who do not participate in daily training but do join in the practice of building human tower at a public plaza. This “no participation” can be understood as a positive attitude: suggesting another possibility as a full participant and constructing a flexible membership to remain an official member. These “potential members” say, “We can come whenever we like.”

We finally point out the importance of “potential members” in the community even though they presently do not participate; they may come to build a higher and more complicated human tower and contribute to its successful result.

Ishiguro Munemaro (1893–1968), a holder of Important Intangible Cultural Property of Tetsuyutoki (iron-glazed Ceramics), occupies a unique position among modern ceramic artists. Committed to Chinese ceramics, he created a world of his own, making varied and vivid copies of Asian ware. This paper discusses his life and creative activities based on his letters, essays, sketch-books, and his Kyogama (Kyoto-style kiln), which remains at the Ishiguro Toyo site.

The present study demonstrates three factors of Munemaro ware’s “varieties.” First, Munemaro’s reproduction techniques originated in Jagatani, the site of Kyoyaki ‘s customary practices called Kashi-gama and Kari-gama. Second, he studied and recreated old Asian ware through experimentation with self-build Kyogama in Karatsu, Jyagatani, and Yase. Third, he lived up to his principles of “no enlightenment from anybody but old ware in itself” and “no self-imitation.”

Japan is an island nation consisting of 6,852 islands, with more than 400 manned islands. While these islands have multifaceted functions such as ecosystem conservation and border security, some are places for people to live, where primary industries run and various cultures nurtured. In this study, we attempted to interpret the changes in island life and fisheries from the nation’s beginning to the present and to predict Japan’s future from its relationship with the topography and changes in the social and natural environment. Furthermore, we considered how island life will change in the future and hypothesized how it would be different. Focusing on the Uwakai Islands and the Ieshima Islands in the Seto Inland Sea, we set hypotheses about changes in life due to variations in the social and natural environment of each island, and verified that the hypotheses hold.

This paper discusses how a new toy design is born and how the creator’s ideas and social situations are or are not reflected in the design. This paper focuses on activities such as production and sales by a wire toy craftsman in Kitwe, Copperbelt Province, the second-largest city in the Republic of Zambia. Although there are many studies about toys in various fields, they mainly analyze the customer experience of toys including playing, collecting, and watching, rarely focusing on the perspectives of creators. Recently in urban Zambia, some new wire toys have appeared. Crafted from discarded snack wrappers and old cloth, they have a flashy decoration that has never been seen before. The creation of these newly designed wire toys were clearly influenced by these factors: (1) the emergence of purchasers due to an increase in the middle and upper class with Zambia’s strong economic growth, (2) incomplete management of solid waste and its reuse, (3) the material characteristics of toys, and (4) the craftsman’s production environment.

To create useful protective clothing for women, we collected and analyzed information focusing on the clothing and supplies women had and what they would have benefited from at the time of natural disasters. The information was collected through surveys on supplies and awareness of disaster prevention among women, including a field survey in Mashiki Town in Kumamoto Prefecture as a disaster-stricken area and a questionnaire survey conducted by a non-profit organization among people who experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake. The results confirmed a considerable amount of fluff and mine dust in shelters and around homes in disaster areas, although refugee were unaware of it. Inhalation of dust poses a health hazard, and an effective way to prevent it is wearing a mask. In these situations, however, the victims were found to be in danger because they did not voluntarily wear face masks. It was also found that personal issues exclusive to women such as menstruation and breastfeeding were not considered in shelters.

Purple sand teapots (zisha pottery) are small pottery teapots produced in Dingshuzhen in Yixing City, Jiangsu Province. They are made using a type of clay mined only in this area.

This study follows the evolution of the purple sand teapot industry over 80 years starting in the second half of the Republic of China, with a focus on potters and the pottery activities that constituted their occupation at various points in time. The study presents potters’ understanding of tradition, attitudes toward innovation, and their production pursuit. Researchers conducted interviews and analyzed documents to ascertain the situation of potters at various points in the industry’s evolution. Among the changes in production systems that took place over the years, the emergence of state factories and the related industry developments yielded particularly significant advances. Researchers made several discoveries regarding potters and their production pursuit, including that potters aimed for chuàng xīn (创新) in the modeling of purple sand teapots, pursuing originality and creativity. While using tradition as a standard, they maintained a flexible mindset, resulting in wares that adapted to the times. Finally, the potters’ own production pursuit was found to have a connection to the idea of the “spiritual resonance” aesthetic of Chinese art.

Considering the risks associated with relocating elderly people, it is not desirable for current residents of elderly housing to be moved again after already moving from their home. It is therefore important to identify the factors that make elderly housing residents want to continue living in the residence in order to support a better life for them. In a survey of residents of serviced elderly housing conducted in 2015, factors related to housing such as living comfort, factors related to socializing in the house, awareness of happiness, and satisfaction with life were extracted as items related to the desire to continue living in the elderly housing residence. This study focuses on how much these items contribute to the life satisfaction of elderly housing residents.

According to the results of Fisher’s exact test of independence, the following items were significantly related to life satisfaction: (1) the desire to continue living in elderly housing, (2) the reason for relocation, (3) several items in the Philadelphia Geriatric Center Morale Scale. and (4) the presence of people in the elderly housing to talk to. These findings indicate that elderly housing residents who engage in conversation with others and those who respond positively with subjective well-being are satisfied with their lives.