Making use of a case study of "Goshu-Ondo," the performance of singing and dancing, this article analyzes the process by which local culture is reorganized. Recently, the local government of the Toyosato Township in Shiga Prefecture has taken the initiative to promote, through financial subsidies, the Goshu-Ondo as a tourist attraction. Defining the association that is funded to perform Goshu-Ondo as a tourist attraction as "bearers" who act as a liaison, or as a "mediator" with the local government. I will show how the bearers can help to maintain a sustainable local culture.
　I will show that an ambivalence emerges when the mediator is burdened with two different aspects of Goshu-Ondo. Furthermore, the bearers can change the meaning of Goshu-Ondo by making use of their more ambivalent role as mediators. Thus, the mediator can be seen as a nodal point for taking in the financial support of the local government and by performing local culture as a tourist attraction, without destroying the diversity of this traditional form.
　Generally research has taken two approaches when examining the transformation of local culture. In the first, the intrusion of tourism is held responsible for the destruction of local culture and the bearers, therefore, play an active role in the protection of local culture. Alternatively, in the second approach, tourism is thought to help rekindle an interest in local culture. Here, the bearers play an active role in transforming local culture. However, these approaches fail to account for the diversity of the bearers with regard to the various positions they hold. In this case study I will propose a new process of reorganization whereby we can transform and protect local culture based on a reinterpretation of bearers through their role as mediators as well.

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　While the political change that began with a referendum in Tokushima Prefecture was quite unusual, it can also be viewed as symbolic of one potential future for local politics in contemporary Japan. After the referendum had been passed, the citizens' movement (Katteren) came to exert a great influence on elections in Tokushima and new leaders, with the support of the movement, were born. But, in subsequent elections, the conservatives made a comeback and the leader of the citizens' movement was defeated.Why did this "Tokushima Revolution" fail so quickly? Why was the leader of the citizens' movement defeated?
　In this paper, the Tokushima mayoral election of 2004 will be considered and answers to the above questions will be clarified empirically, making use of a quantitative monograph utilizing newspaper articles, interviews, and survey data. The causes of the Katteren's defeat can be summarized as follows.
　(1) Antinomy within Katteren and antinomy between Katteren and other already existing non-conservatives became major barriers.
　(2) The conservatives' campaign strategy succeeded. The conservatives placed an emphasis on the issue of "administrative ability" while de-emphasizing the issue of the "citizens' movement. "
　 (3) Because a certain proportion of voters was allergic to the concept of a "citizens' movement," it was difficult for the leader's candidacy to gain widespread acceptance.
　(4) The "citizens' movement" was unable to win the support of nonpolitical voters.
　Making use of these results, local politics in contemporary Japan will then be discussed. Two primary characteristics of contemporary local politics are : 1) the end of conservative politics based on traditional authoritarianism and the emergence of achievement authoritarianism, and 2) the genesis difficulties suffered by an "alternative" participatory democracy.

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　WinMX and Winny are two well-known P2P (peer-to-peer) programs that are widely used in Japan. These two programs are often seemjust to be brothers, because they are regarded simply as software for the illegal acquisition of music files. Indeed, these are the hotbeds for the illegal copying of music files. However, the system structure adopted by Winny is markedly different from that adopted by WinMX. As a result, WinMX and Winny users receive services that are conceptually completely different.
　First and formost, we should pay attention to the characteristics of the respective list with which these types of software provides their users. In the list employed by WinMX, metadata for music files accumulated on the server show who owns the target file. It certifies the existence of file owners, but does not guarantee that the users can obtain the music they request. The list employed by Winny, however, gives users direct access to files, making use of a "List of Availability."
　Winny users are unconcerned with topos of information. Therefore, in the case of Winny, the traditional possession-based power balance, between the one who possesses something and the one who wants it, does not exist. Thus, the List of Availability utilized by Winny, not only changes our listening experience dramatically, it may also cause the complete collapse of the concept of music possession, which has been hitherto taken for granted.
　We should take seriously the fact that one million users have chosen to make use of Winny, despite the illegal implications of its use. This reflects the acceptance of the List of Availability by Japanese users.

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　This paper will use Kunio Yanagita's discourse with regard to modem transportation to consider how he formulated his folklore methodology. Because the transportation environment Yanagita addressed was in the pre-war period, this then is an historical sociological study with regard to modern transportation through Yanagita's discourse.
　Yanagita placed a great emphasis on travel, as have the Japanese folklorists who have succeeded him. However, they have tended to underestimate modern transportation and to palace greater value on pedestrian travel. Yanagita also shared this tendency, believing that travel by railway the old folk stratum as an object of analysis and that rail travel would invalidate his analysis as well.
　Yanagita distinguished between pedestrian travel (travail) in the early period and sightseeing, mainly using modern transportation, is seen as the golden age of travel for Yanagita and it can be said that modern/pedestrian traffic is not a choice between alternative s.
　Then what was modern transportation, especially railway transportation, for Yanagita?
　 He regarded transportation by rail as an opportunity to travel widely and to see scenery from the "windows of trains." In this mode of travel, landscape was not "scenery as sign" (as might be found in a guidebook), but "scenery as a trace" (offering an interpretation of people's lives and history).
　That is, Yanagita's folklore method was to collect, classify and systematize "scenery as traces" encountered during the course of his travels. Finally this paper suggests that his transportation theory and his approach to travel share a common meaning from a sociological perspective.

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　The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between birth order, occupational mobility and the opportunity to enter selective middle schools, making use of an individual data set from Hyogo Prefecture's Daiichi Kobe Middle School ("KobeIttyu"). The challenge here is to clarify the different roles a family expects of its children, in keeping with the order of their birth in this modern era when considering educational opportunities and occupational mobility.
　The following approach was used in this analysis. First, we defined the Eldest Son's Priority (ESP) of opportunity to enter a selective middle school as the ratio between expectation and observation of the rate for eldest sons, calculated using data for birth order and sibling constitution. Second, we compared two different regions by refering to recent results for Yamagata Prefecture's Tsuruoka Middle School.
　The following are the main findings of this analysis:
　(1) The occupational mobility pattern at Kobe-Ittyu is characterized by a remarkable tendency, namely that the business sector (eg. company employees, merchants and artisans) and the nonprofit sector (eg. public servants, teachers and farmers) reproduce thems elve s.
　(2) The ESP of opportunity to enter a selective middle school was higher in Kobe than it was in Tsuruoka. This tendency was true regardless of family business. In other words, the standard of ESP was more influenced by region than by occupation.
　(3) The ESP of opportunity to enter Kobe-Ittyu showed a tendency to increase in the business sector but decrease in the nonprofit sector. But the group that maintained the highest level was that of public servants who belong to the nonprofit sector.
　(4) Within the business sector, the relationships between entering a selective middle school and gaining occupation in commerce or industry were as follows. In the modern commercial sector, the two connected without conflict. For the industrial sector, however, they separated and conflicted with one another while for the traditional commercial sector, they did not conflict but connected negatively.

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　This paper looks at female homosocial relationships, that is to say, the social bonds between women, by considering the meaning of the fact that the Takarazuka Revue is performed exclusively by women for fans who are mostly women as well.
　In male-dominated society where heterosexuality is compulsory, relations between women are either persecuted as homosexual relationships that go against heterosexuality, or they are perceived to be inferior to heterosexual relationships and regarded as trivial. Therefore, it is difficult to find representations of strong female homosocial bonds in society. To enable female homosociality, the influence of heterosexuality must be controlled.
　In the case of 'Takarazuka', there are two worlds of stories. One world is the stage, where the stories of love between women and men and of male friendship without sexual desire are played by "otoko-yaku" playing male roles and "musume-yaku" playing female roles who neither have sexual bodies. The other world is the backstage sphere open to fans through the media, where friendships within the 'Takarazuka' company are emphasized within the framework of a girls school in which students are exempted from any of the obligations of heterosexuality. So, 'Takarazuka' performers known as 'Takara-siennes' have two faces. First, they are the "otoko-yaku" and "musume-yaku" on stage, and second, they are "students" in the backstage sphere, girls who are indifferent to heterosexuality. By superimposing the backstage sphere on the world on stage, through 'Takara-siennes' who have duplicity, fans of 'Takarazuka' can read the bonds of the performers backstage into heterosexual relations and the relations between the men they play on stage. Therefore, 'Takarazuka' becomes an unusual sphere in which it is possible to have a realistic sense of female homosociality. 'Takarazuka' shows us both the possibility of the representation of female homosociality, and the difficulty of representing it in elsewhere in the contemporary society.

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