This paper aims to summarise the discussions and arguments made in four conference papers, which were originally contributed for the 130th annual JSPS meeting in 2015. Recent social security reforms aim to provide new social care and personal support system for those in complex social difficulties such as self-withdrawal and dementia. Local authorities are expected to provide these social services in the community, in corporation with various community sectors organisations. Although year 2015 is the very first year for implementation of these reforms, it has been supposed that many local authorities would struggle to conduct new system, as the various social and human resources are needed while the cutting back of social expenditures are conducted at the same time. It is an important challenge for social policy to provide social services to fulfil personalised human needs. Case study would provide many important lessons on this issues, but we should be cautious about handlings of limited numbers of so called best practice cases.

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This paper examines the local administrative and financial conditions of municipal governments under the social security reforms in Japan. Through the reforms, local governments will attempt to manage new systems to promote self-reliance for low-income persons, to integrate community care systems, and to develop care systems for children and their families while dealing with difficult financial conditions and staff cutbacks. Two cases, Masaki Town and Omuta City, are used to explain that municipal governments need to cooperate with private operators or members of local communities to enable community care systems to operate effectively. The cases also show that budgetary systems must be changed, and that local government need to provide opportunities for discussion within communities in order to promote joint activities.

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This article attempts first to show that the current livelihood security system gives rise to mismatches between essential livelihood tasks and support for elder care actually provided, and then discusses how local communities can solve these problems. With Japan's population rapidly aging, the long-term care insurance system was established in April 2000 to promote in-home nursing care. However, it continues to be difficult for senior couple households and single elder person households to rely solely on this system. This is because "distribution of care" has not been regarded as an issue to be solved by society as a whole even though older adults invariably require some care outside of the household. I argue, therefore, that it is imperative that the community-based integrated care system undertake the long-neglected task of the distribution of care.

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The Law to Support the Independence of People in Need went into effect in Japan in April 2015. The object of this measure is to provide comprehensive and personal support for people in need. The new system, which centers on benefits in kind, will be administered by local authorities throughout the country and will add to their responsibilities. Therefore, the ability of local authorities to plan and administer this system is coming under scrutiny. This paper describes the actual conditions of people in need, the nature and value of support systems, and the issues and problems facing local authorities. The argument is backed by evidence from local authorities' efforts, and by analyses of cases in Usuki City in Oita Prefecture. Hence, the paper provides an overview of the entire process of social policy, combining macro, mezzo and micro perspectives.

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Hurusatono-kai is a non-profit organization, which has provided support for people in Tokyo with various social and housing needs. The majority of the service users are single older people, including those suffering problems such as dementia and disability. The sister organization, Hurusato co. ltd, has conducted the business by concluding contract arrangements to secure rented housing, so that vulnerable people can have places to live. The business has expanded to involve owners of rental houses in social care systems from March 2015. Our mission is to provide support for all people, whatever functional disabilities they may have, so that they may live out their lives in their own communities. Promoting special housing arrangements in the housing market requires general trust from the all sectors of the community as well as public authorization. These social arrangements are vital to implementing a comprehensive community-based social care system, and to tackling various problems such as low incomes, poor health, and child care needs.

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Researchers have often used newspapers to check facts in order to study the history of social and labor issues. However, TV has more than sixty years of history, so its news and documentary programs have covered many issues and can serve as an important record of events. It is now possible to preserve and watch large numbers of TV programs through digital technology and large-capacity storage devices. There is also more opportunity to watch old programs over the Internet. Analysis and research of TV coverage, which had been limited to a small number of researchers, is now possible for the general public.

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For over half a century following World War II, the rigidity of Cold War politics provided a barrier that insulated the Japanese from collective memory of the war's many victims throughout Asia. Japan's aggression was readily forgotten during the long "post-war" period lasting up to the 1990s. But in 1989, Emperor Hirohito died, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War ended. With the breakdown of the Cold War geopolitical system, Asian authoritarian regimes began to democratize, and investigations began into cases of individual victims of Japan's long-ago war. In this new mass media age, TV programs questioning Japan's belligerence and aggression have become increasingly prevalent and begun to reshape Japan's collective memory. This research project will use TV and film footage to demonstrate that the 1990s was a decade that saw vigorous debate over the South Korean movement seeking compensation from Japan with a particular focus on B-class and C-class war criminals. It will archive and catalogue TV and film footage from this decade to reassess the movement's history in South Korea and Japan as activists sought compensation for atrocities committed in World War II.

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Innumerable videos of unknown authorship, source, or even nationality are available online, but the vast majority simply disappear from our memories. Video taken of the Occupy movement launched in September 2011 near Wall Street, however, were uploaded to video sites, drew attention from countries around the world and inspired a larger movement. The agents of that movement (i. e., the leaders, participants and supporters) used a wide range of mass media to achieve a great deal with the movement, by taking strong positions after disseminating their own information to other parties. This research paper will focus on the Wall Street Occupy movement and consider the significance of a wide range of online materials, especially video, that were produced by the research subjects themselves. It will explore what role video materials played in the success of the movement.

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This paper introduces our labor oral history archive project, undertaken in collaboration with the Osaka Labor Archive. Our project gave particularly high priority to turning oral history into video images. Preserving oral history in Japan has been limited to transcription until recently. Techniques to turn oral testimony into video images have attracted a great deal of interest from researchers. Here we first discuss some arguments about oral history archives. We then explain the online website of oral labor history archives that we set up, and finally consider the achievements and remaining challenges of our project.

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It has been a long time since we frequently-heard economic pundits preaching about the sources of Japan's competitive strength. Especially from around 1980, we experienced a decade of the 'Japanese management' craze. As the academic fever has subsided, the time has come to ask ourselves a set of soul-searching questions: "Where Do We Come From ? What Are We ? Where Are We Going ?" From the 1920s to the 1970s, generations of Japanese scholars asked these questions, focusing mainly on landowner-peasant relations. As Japan has transformed itself into a corporate-oriented society, one of our major fields should be a history of personnel management. This article reviews research on the history of personnel management in the U. S. and Japan, focusing on its genesis. There are five sources in the development of personnel management: industrial management, welfare work, vocational guidance, corporate schools, and employee representation. In the 1910s, these currents in the U. S. steadily converged into the great river of personnel management. It is of great interest that Japanese corporations did not lag behind in introducing these sources, with the ardent support of the zaibatsu and the Ministry of Home Affairs. I review books and articles to show the present state of research and present further topics in this fascinating field of research.

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Since the 1990s, there has been a growing tendency in the U. S for interests to be coordinated among stakeholders without collective bargaining procedures. This concerns issues going beyond the customary remit of labor unions to include others like vocational training and mediation, job creation, education and private life. The conception of the industrial relations system in the U. S. has been formulated by Dunlop (1958) and Kochan, Katz and McKersie (1986), with the coordination of interests between actors - organizations representing companies, workers, and the government, respectively, as well as the individuals belonging to them - founded on collective bargaining. Here, not only have new actors joined the process, but also platforms for coordinating interests have appeared in the form of roundtable talks involving multiple actors. Intermediary organizations that support these have started to reorganize bargaining power among actors. The purpose of this paper is to attempt a redefinition of frameworks, viewing this situation as a change in the industrial relations system in the U. S. But this paper also has another purpose, which is to present implications as to how industrial relations system in the U. S. should be perceived from a Japanese perspective, and where the focus of Japan's research on industrial relations should lie in the future.

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The purpose of this paper is to explain the process leading up to the submission of the workers' pension insurance bill to the 76^<th> Imperial Diet, with a particular focus on the actions of the parliament and government. This study refers to evidence from historical documents such as newspaper articles, the proceedings of the Imperial Diet, and administrative documents that are held in the National Archives. The following three points should become clear: first, ministers postponed the submission of the bill to the Imperial Diet in a special cabinet meeting because the 76^<th> Imperial Diet had been significantly shortened. In other words, the government did not immediately require the bill to strengthen its war footing. Second, the Ministry of Finance, entrepreneurs, the military and a number of ministers were opposed to the submission of the bill. However, except for the entrepreneurs, whose reluctance stemmed from the introduction of a burdensome insurance premium, the military and ministers opposed the bill on the grounds that the Imperial Diet needed to be shortened; they did not oppose the content of the bill itself. Third, the Ministry of Health and Welfare submitted the bill despite this opposition from the ministers in the cabinet meeting.

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