The purpose of this paper is to investigate the difficulties when suffering from an incompletely medicalized disease and the effects of its diagnosis using the narratives of spasmodic dysphonia sufferers. Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a chronic voice disorder. It leads to a characteristic strained and strangled voice (Gündel et al. 2007). Its etiology is unknown and there is no fundamental treatment. In Japan, SD is a rare disease and most physicians have little experience treating it. Few physicians can diagnose SD. In addition, as SD is virtually unknown among the public, its characteristic voice is not perceived as a symptom of a disease, neither by others nor by sufferers themselves. Considering this situation, we can say that SD is an incompletely medicalized disease. While medicalization has been criticized for its aspect of social control and its tendency to individualize social problems, incomplete medicalization has been relatively less discussed and few empirical studies of those diseases have been conducted. In this paper, I focus on SD as an example of incomplete medicalization and examine the problems of incomplete medicalization from sufferer’s point of view.Based on interviews with fifteen people suffering from SD, the three main difficulties identified are: an inability to explain their condition and loneliness, inappropriate definition of a SD’s unique voice by others, and a visible negative reaction. One common underlying cause for these difficulties is the lack of a definitive diagnosis. Receiving a diagnosis could be an opportunity to reduce those difficulties. Obtaining a diagnosis opens possibilities of refusing incorrect interpretations, providing plausible explanations and disclosing their suffering to others. In the case of SD, I suggest that simply suffering does not constitute a “disease” in our society. Adequate medical diagnosis is a requisite condition for the social existence of the “disease.”

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This paper discussed the process of creating “otaku originality” within the context of their consumption. Otaku considered their culture original and distinct from that of normal anime consumers in the 1980s. In prior studies, people called otaku were those committed to worthless culture. Though people regarded otaku culture as worthless, we should observe its formation process. Otaku made it a culture of worth for their community, turning it into a high context culture. Becoming a high context culture meant it achieved interactions with people other than anime fans, but how was this happen?This paper focuses on anime fan culture, and discusses the video environment and active television viewing. The VCR diffusion rate increased from 2.2% to 66.8% during the 1980s. Otaku started to watch videos with their friends. They wanted to show their videos to their friends. However, this was considered an unnatural behavior. This paper mainly analyzes community with video consumption among anime fans and discusses their motivations. They wanted to show off the VCRs “Slowmotioning” meant “unique watching”. Originally, anime meant “animation”, but their activity enabled anime fans to enjoy “pictures”. Consumers could attain “creators literacy”. However, this literacy was marketed by the creators. Anime magazines evaluated this marketing. The culture of editing by anime fans formed a frame. They consumed the unique experience of watching anime together as consumers who had a specific literacy. Otakus’ high contextual culture, including their knowledge and literacy, was created by interactions between creators and consumers of anime magazines.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether what university students “want to do” correlates with their success during the job hunting process. Recently, career education emphasizes that university students have personal goals, in other words, what they want to do, in order to find a job. Some studies on the transition from university to work, which has influenced career education, point out that university students should have long-held personal goals for work. Meanwhile, the research on unemployment among youth shows that personal goals are not necessary, and studies on the recruitment of new graduates argue that having personal goals is only important during the job hunting process. However, it has yet to be revealed whether university students’ personal goals are connected to the results of job hunting. Therefore, this study analyzed the connection between personal goals before and after job hunting and their result, with the data collected from a two-wave panel survey conducted in 2011 and 2012.The results showed that there was no correlation between having personal goals for work before job hunting and the result, while clarifying personal goals during the job hunting process correlated with finding a job. These results suggest that personal goals university students had before job hunting was not as important as career education had emphasized, and this also implies that career education might have not provided proper support for them to get a job. Thus, this paper suggests understanding job hunting as an activity that required of university students to adapt to society.

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In this paper, I statistically research the effects of diversity and intimacy in social relationships on tolerance toward foreigners. To verify these effects, data from the Japanese General Social Survey conducted in 2008 (JGSS-2008) was used for analysis. I hypothesized that having diverse relationships with other people would increase tolerance toward foreigners, based on studies on generalized intergroup contact effects and other studies related to tolerance. Furthermore, I hypothesized that having intimate relationships with other people would increase tolerance toward foreigners, based on studies on the need to belong and Fromm’s study about the psychological origins of fascism. The results revealed that diversity in occupations and diversity of group affiliations, which were used to determine diversity on social relationships, have positive effects on tolerance toward foreigners. It was also found that closeness of relationships with friends, and the degree of satisfaction in relationships with family members, which are used to determine intimacy, have positive relations with tolerance toward foreigners even if they are controlled by diverse factors in relationships.

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