The purpose of this paper is to clarify factors perceived by residents of Kawauchi Village, which has seen the return of two thirds of its population after the forcible evacuation, as threatening community survival through a longitudinal analysis of community cooperation.

The analysis revealed that the disaster has substantially weakened community cooperation in disaster-affected areas. Specifically, organizations having to do with funerals disbanded after the disaster, and the majority of ritual organizations associated with Shinto shrines found themselves pushed to the brink of survival. Such erosion of community cooperation is tangible evidence of the precarious position of Kawauchiʼs community felt directly by its residents.

Although mutual aid is the underlying principle of community cooperation, the disaster has seen the emergence of households struggling to fulfill their communal responsibilities. The existence of households unable to carry out their end of the bargain suggests that there will be no choice but to abandon or cease communal activities, even if this means weakening community sustainability. In other words, while these changes are the result of individual choices, the transformation of community cooperation is damage caused by the disaster, and the individuals involved are not to blame.

In the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami disaster in March 2011, those most impacted continue to struggle with the fragmentation and multiple disconnects from family, community, and quotidian life ways. Even after 11 years have passed since the disaster, the side-effects of reconstruction projects conducted by national and local government continue to reveal themselves as capitalistic and ecological ruins. In addition, the dominant “self-responsibility theory” that permeates Japanese society has only deepened individualization and privatization of risks and their aftermaths. This internalization of self-responsibility norms among those most impacted by the tsunami and its aftermath continues to exacerbate their risks and to cause damages recognized as personal pains and anxiety, as something to be overcome and to be resolved in private rather than as a matter of public concern, with support from relevant public-trust resources. In this paper, I explore the discourses of those most impacted as they have sought to re-start their lives in the aftermath, and to illustrate and detect what causes their difficulties as they seek to resettle in their new lives. Ultimately, I will explore their practice of responsibility to reconcile the self-responsibility norm with local-scale community-based resources as they search for spaces to collaborate and the power to turn their days around peacefully and ecologically.

In this paper, by focusing on the damage caused by the nuclear accident caused by the the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, we will confirm the process in which the damage is attributed to "self-responsibility" and is made invisible (and therefore individualized) and from the perspective of sociological risk theory, especially by N. Luhmann's framework, we will explore the directions for struggling with the structural production of such "ignorance." First, we will confirm the setting and cancellation of the distinction (set by the organization responsible for accident response) that causes a conversion of "danger" (Gefahr) to "risk" (Risiko). For example, the setting and cancellation of the spatial "area" of the disaster area, which has been complicatedly reorganized from the time immediately after the disaster to the present. In addition, the numerical values themselves (such as 20mSv or 50mSv), which are the premise of setting such spatial boundaries, are also one of the mechanisms that bring about the conversion of "danger" into "risk". After all, the basic problem is the definition of the concept of risk, which can also lead to the problem of invisible individualization. Therefore, it can be said that the risk concept that also takes into account the "societal" elements and the risk governance framework that is compatible with it are noteworthy. Finally, this paper points out the need for an inquiry from the perspective of sociology of "ignorance".

In Japan, as population aging accelerates, community halls in all regions are being used as places to practice long-term preventive care. Previous studies have examined the voluntary management of community halls by residents from a community development perspective. The researchers in this study conducted a questionnaire survey of all the community hall management organizations in City X, Miyagi as a case study to examine their reactions at the time of COVID-19 epidemic. At the time, there was a request from the Japanese government to shut down all community halls. About 40% of the districts closed their community halls, but the timing of the closures also differed across each district. The results showed that there was not enough community hall coordination between local governments and the management organizations during the emergency. These issues require open discussions in other municipalities as well.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the relationship between users and staffs formed through the staff's definitions of the situation and practices in the community cafe activities of X city in a suburb of Sendai city. In community cafe, it is ideal that both users and staffs can participate in the activities independently, but depending on the staff's practices, the exercise of independence on one side is in conflict with on the other side. In this paper, staff's definitions of the situation are regarded as settings, and the staff's practices are regarded as role performances from the perspective of dramaturgy, I analyzed how they form the relationship of independent participation of both users and staffs. In result, independent participations of both users and staffs are kept their balances by making opportunities of staff's independent participations in backstage activities and taking considerations to enable users to participate activities independently.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the experience of higher education dropout and the likelihood of leaving the first job. Using the SSM survey data to confirm the high turnover risk of higher education dropouts compared to other educational backgrounds， and show that such high turnover risk is due to the job conditions that dropouts are likely to obtain. As a result of the estimation using the discrete-time logistic model， the tendency mentioned above was observed only among males who entered the labor market after the 1990s. The image that dropouts are more likely to leave the workforce is just an image， at the time they enter the labor market. However， it indicates that a situation that can be called the "self-fulfilling prophecy" may be established in which this image restricts the occupational choice， which in turn leads to actual job turnover.

In this paper, we clarify what the "Community Nurse Project" accomplished by "We Are One Kitakami," a community development organization in Kitakami-cho, Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, a tsunami-affected area. Then, connecting reconstruction research and community welfare research, we will examine the difficulty of governance over "reconstruction of social relations. This project realized the collaboration between social welfare councils and community development organizations, bridging the gap between the systems, and providing support to maintain the social nature of the project. However, after the completion of the project, the "stove-piped logic" of the local government administration made it difficult for community development organizations and social welfare councils to cooperate. The reconstruction of community welfare and social relations addresses a similar problem of "building connections. In this case study, the difficulties of governance over the "reconstruction of social relations" were revealed.