With the widespread use of the Internet and digital content, opportunities to publish daily information are dramatically increasing. In particular, women, who have been said to have difficulty being given positions of expressing them-selves in journalism and media communication, now find it easier to express themselves in this new communication environment, even though they do not work in the existing media. On the other hand, journalistic and media communication activities through conventional media outlets are still very active. But some problems concerning these activities seem to remain unresolved. For this reason, Issue #83 features how new media technology has changed the way women communicate. I requested interviews with researchers and other experts in this field and asked them to submit articles to this journal to shed new light on media and gender issues we encounter in this day and age.

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According to my previous survey, people who feel ageing of appearance intending to undergo cosmethic surgery or cosmetic medical care, and women in their 40s to 50s want to look younger. This article aims to show how women's bodies are described in fashion magazines aimed at women in their 40s to 50s through a quantitative analysis of the beauty sections in such magazines. This analysis shows that aging is described as a phenomenon with some causes rather than as a natural process and that freckles and wrinkles - typical signs of aging - are described as something that requires medical treatment. Lying beneath these descriptions is a illusion that aging is a kind of disease and a healthy body is slow to age. This view about women's bodies - that they should use medical approaches to stay young in appearance based on the assumption that a healthy body is slow to age - can be considered a 'modern' way of thinking.

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Today, it is easy for ordinary people to widely disseminate their message and works over the Internet. Nevertheless, many people still disseminate information by paper media. For example, people known as otaku - fans of Japanese anime, manga, video games, etc. - often create fanzines binding manga and novels they produced themselves. They then sell these fanzines at events in Japan in which fanzines are sold. With the growth of the Internet, otaku also exhibit their works on the web. But many otaku, especially female otaku, still use paper media to publish their works. This paper considers the influences of electric media on paper media and the merits of using paper media as a tool for personal publications, by analyzing ways to use media in creative activities, and it also examines the female otaku's media awareness based on my research and interviews. Originally, fanzines created by otaku have four functions: publishing fan works, informing others about their creative activity, talking about one's favorite works and characters, and interacting with others who share the same interests. Events where trading fanzines takes place also have these four functions. As otaku use online tools for their creative activities, electric media have replaced paper media for informing others about their creative activity and discussing their favorite things. But paper media have advantages in publishing works and interacting with others. Paper media is more suitable for placing manga and treated better than electric media. By selling fanzines at events, otaku can enjoy face-to-face communication with others. They can also directly gauge the reader's response to their works. Works created by fans are provided free of charge on the Internet. On the other hand, fanzines are traded with money. The people I interviewed who create fanzines regard receiving payment for their works as a sign of appreciation for them. But readers enjoy their works without any cost on the web. So, creators of fanzines feel strongly that their readers should accept their works when they publish them by paper media rather than electric media. For these reasons, the creative female otaku I interviewed prefer paper media in this age of the rising Internet.

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In this interview, we asked Ms. Naomi Okamoto, who has been Chairperson of the Federation of All-NHK Labour Unions since 2005 and Deputy President of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation since 2009, about women working in mass media from the 1970s to the present day. She made it clear that there have been significant changes to the working conditions for such women and their attitudes toward work and life, and that there have been several trends regarding the presence of women in media workers since before World War II. She also mentioned that although movements to demand women's rights are gradually decreasing, labor and gender issues still exist and that it is now important for both male and female workers to achieve a proper balance in their work and private lives.

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Profound advances in the digitalization of video equipment and Internet technology have enabled public participation in various forms of media production during the 1990s to the mid-2000s. Production opportunities for women, that used to be disconnected from those technologies, have been increasing and the number of women using cam-eras has grown since the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident. This report will focus on how women have been engaging with OurPlanet-TV - a non-profit community media organization - and how video and other media technologies have become a part of their daily lives, as well as an important tool for self-expression.

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This article discusses what type of analysis can be carried out to examine gender and media issues in the online age. Behind this discussion are two facts: the number of Japanese women working in mass media that have a position where they can express their opinions has not grown dramatically over the past 30 years while the number of Japanese women who publicly express themselves in the online space has increased over the past 10 years. Given these facts, this article: 1) clarifies the purposes and viewpoints of the analysis - mainly by researchers in countries where English is spoken - of women who express themselves in the online space, and 2) clarifies the framework for researching and examining online cultural activities of Japanese women, who have often not been given opportunities to express themselves in the traditional media.

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This paper aims to establish a theoretical foundation for sociological analysis of dynamic and diversified nature of journalism, using such sociological concepts as interaction, structuration and field. A major school of sociology, like that of Max Weber, regards the interaction of agencies as a minimum analytic unit. Based on this understanding, we start our analysis of journalism with the interactions of journalists with their stake holders. Then, we identify two types of basic conditions for the work of journalists, that is, the interaction between a journalist and other journalists (colleagues, editors and competitors) and the interaction between a journalist and news sources. The latter is less discussed and more important than the former, as journalistic activities can be done only if journalists are fed information by news sources. The conditions created by the interaction of a journalist with other journalists and news sources can be understood with the concept of "structuration," as presented by Anthony Giddens. Such conditions not only restrict activities of journalists in certain ways, but also enable them to perform the roles expected by the public. The interactions are acted in the "field" of journalism as well as the fields of news sources. The concept "field", originally presented by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, implies that the circles created by interactions are the circles of power relations. A journalist must be conceptualized as belonging to both the field of journalism and the fields of news sources. Journalists have many different working ethics and different working styles according to the news sources they cover. This is because different journalists covering different news sources belong to different fields. Understanding journalists as belonging to the field of news sources also helps understand the way journalists influence society through the power of news sources, not through the sway of public opinions.

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This article attempts to examine how photographic works were legally protected in the Meiji era (1868-1912) in Japan, and to show the unique features of these protections compared to other countries. In Japan, the first regulations of photography (shashin jorei) were enacted in 1876. It was partly because many photographers had demanded protection for those who incur considerable expenses to take pictures, and because the Home Ministry (Naimusho) had intended to regulate the photographic reproduction of protected works - especially books - without any prior consent by means of shashin jorei. By contrast, in other countries, such as France, Great Britain, and Germany, scholars, courts and authorities routinely discussed the artistic nature of photography for copyright protection because they viewed some photos as "mere mechanical process and unsuitable for the protection." This article points out two characteristics of protection concerning photos in Japan. First, shashin jorei was intended to regulate photographic reproduction unlike any other country. Under similar legislation - i.e., copyright laws - in other countries, reproduction of photos was obviously considered to be in violation of the law. Also, there was no argument about the nature of works that should be protected in Japan, such as "artistic nature" in Germany. In Japan, consideration concerning the nature of copyrighted works was still pushed aside in 1880, and finally - and unconsciously - introduced in the old copyright law of 1899.

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In order to re-examine the value and significance of documentary films, this study adopted an approach that utilizes the concept of aleatoric elements. Until now, producers and critics have regarded the documentary as a self-explanatory genre that differs from news and drama. However, issues surrounding the discourses on the subjectivity and objectivity of documentaries have always surfaced in response to the question "what is a documentary-" In other words, it is this dualistic framing that has prevented visibilities in the main issue regarding the potential of the documentary format itself. In order to break free from this framing, it was necessary to first examine the types of discourses on subjectivity and objectivity that have been discussed, in addition to examining where exactly they have positioned documentaries. This study then examined factors that have been overlooked in these discourses and considered the introduction of the concept of aleatoric elements as a supplemental approach. This study referred to story studies of literature, semiology studies of cinema and image studies of cinema for building this concept. Furthermore, to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, this study attempted to analyze A, a 1998 film by Tatsuya Mori, using the concept of aleatoric elements. Based on the findings of this study, the following was concluded. What has become clear through the analysis of the film is that documentary films are capable of not only containing both fictitious and non-fictitious elements but also creating friction between depicted reality and implied reality to highlight new, elusive realities that cannot be firmly defined on account of their ambiguity.

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