In the early 21^<st> century, Japan must deal with several burning social security reform issues, including medical care, public pensions and long-term care. It is very important to understand current trends in order to work towards a new social security system for the 21^<st> century. One recommendation is that we should pay attention to arguments on social security reform planning made by political parties. Analysis of these arguments would help describe views on social security in the 21^<st> Japanese welfare state. On the other hand, it is also necessary to take into account basic conditions regarding social security reform. For example, the historical characteristics of the Japanese social security system, the population problem and its future course, and the development of social policy in East Asia will all influence the social security system's future development. Thus, it is necessary to debate these issues while seeking to establish a vision of Japan's 21^<st> social security system.

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This paper briefly describes and analyzes Japan's health care reforms under the Koizumi and Abe administrations during 2001-2007, with special reference to the rise and fall of neo-liberal reform. The Koizumi administration officially introduced neo-liberal measures to his health care reform plan in 2001 for the first time in Japan. Subsequently, harsh debate over the neo-liberal health care reform continued for the next five years. However, the Koizumi administration could not fully implement neo-liberal reform, though it successfully introduced strict health care cost containment measures, including increases in patients' co-payments and decreases in official medical fees. The Abe administration succeeded in implementing Koizumi's reforms in outline form, but partially revised some of its strictest measures. In the last part of this paper, I propose my personal reform plan for improving health care in Japan.

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Recently, reform of Japan's social security system has accelerated. Social security benefits have been reduced and the burden of premiums increased. As a result, many people in Japan are very anxious about their future. The Long-Term Care Insurance Law, which took effect in 2000, is the main pillar in the reform of social security system. In 2006, The Long-Term Care Insurance Law was altered, and the Independence Support Law for people with disabilities was established. In this paper, written from the perspective of rights of elderly people and people with disabilities, we examine some problems with these laws. In conclusion, we examine Social Policy studies in Japan.

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The 2004 Pension Reform was a fundamental and indispensable reform, so now it is important to implement its provisions. Nevertheless, there are many obstacles ahead. In particular, we should remember that the opposition made a political issue of the pension problem without presenting a concrete or feasible counterproposal. This paper describes the political process regarding Japan's pension reform.

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The welfare state is conceived of as an intersection between capitalism and democracy. To measure the degree and extent of welfare state development, de-commodification and social stratification are presented as the most appropriate indices, by which four types of the welfare state are classified: liberal, conservative, social democratic, and familial types. Japan is classified as a familial type, together with Southern European welfare states. This paper specifies major characteristics of the Japanese familial welfare regime, clarifies its recent moves towards the liberal regime, and discusses possibilities of constructing a welfare regime beyond the conventional welfare state types.

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This paper researches employment structure and its determinants by investigating firms and labor unions in the modern shipbuilding industry. In this research, determinants of employment structure are examined from seven different angles; path dependency, manufacturing system, quality of job, labor market, industrial relations, product market, and change of administrative direction. This enquiry shows that the ratio of subcontract workers has risen since the 1980s and that the ratio of subcontract workers is at an extremely high level at present. By examining determinants of employment structure in the shipbuilding industry, the research reconfirms that this high ratio is caused by characteristics of the manufacturing system and the quality of jobs. It also confirms, from other angles - product market, labor market, industrial relations and change of administrative direction - that determinants of the high ratio of subcontract workers are restructuring during economic recession, transfers of regular workers to subcontract firms and lack of labor union regulation.

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In many European countries, cash benefits play an important role in the provision of long-term care. In contrast, when long-term care insurance was established in Japan, this did not include the introduction of cash benefits. Since then, however, the situation regarding long-term care in Japan has changed greatly. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role of cash benefits in long-term care focusing on the example of Austria, which introduced a tax-funded system that provides long-term care benefit payments without prescribing how these are to be spent. The analysis suggests that the role that cash benefits play in long-term care is greatly influenced not only by the cash benefit system itself (such as with regard to the amount of cash benefits paid, the existence of restrictions, etc.), but also by the expansion of the supply of long-term care services and policies providing support for family caregivers.

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This paper demonstrates that trade unions take passive stances against spin-offs when new divisions are created and pay systems in new companies are revised. These two phenomena are separate but substantially constitute a single process of labor-management interaction. This paper describes the background of the company's policies and the current state of labor-management relations by comparing two new companies spun off from Company A, an electrical equipment manufacturer, and examining the stance of Company A's enterprise union. It can be seen that the union lacked the influence to participate substantively in the spin-off procedure. However, the labor union accepted the devaluation of working conditions, neglecting the lifetime employment principle that should have been a premise of trade unionism. As for Company A, it was of course forced to seek growth, leaving to employees the one-sided sacrifice in order to maintain business results.

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The Japanese general merchandising stores (GMS) have, in the 2000s, introduced new personnel management systems based on the principle of determining employee status and treatment according to 'working conditions rather than employment arrangements'. This paper analyzes the effects of the new systems in terms of differences in employee treatment among different employment classifications. In the new systems, working conditions are determined on the basis of "the possibility of a transfer." According to the analysis of this paper, the revision of the system caused many female regular employees to switch to part-time status, and the gap in treatment according to one's employment classifications remains wide. Furthermore, the same duties are now being performed by workers whose conditions have declined. In the society like Japan where the "male breadwinner model" gender relation dominates, not every worker can change his/her residence in accordance with the demands of their employers. As a result, new personnel systems may have strengthened the gendered working conditions and gendered status which once underlay employment arrangements, and will have great difficulties in bringing about equal treatment between different employment classifications.

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The British Labour government has developed a policy for regeneration. This policy is characterized by active utilisation of partnership organisations in which the public sector, private sector, and voluntary and community sector participate. In fact, these organisations have been playing a key role in the decision-making process for public service provision in local areas. This paper examines how institutional governance by partnership organisations, in particular, Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), works. Further, it insists that the governance structure of the LSP is very effective in tackling social exclusion. However, a group of researchers has called this type of governance 'New corporatism'. Underlying this interpretation is that the decision-making process is similar to corporatism, which binds the representatives of different interest groups into a process of collective decision-making bypassing legislative bodies and their members, that is, local councils and councilors. Many scholars have pointed out that such governance structure is at risk of undermining the legitimacy of representative democracy, because representatives from various sectors are not elected by voters. This paper demonstrates how governments deal with this issue, and how the process differs from existing corporatism.

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