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This paper outlines the life and academic accomplishments of the largely internationally unknown but foremost innovative and leading sociologist of Japan considered as the 'unknown master' of Japanese sociology, Tamito Yoshida. (i) Emphasizing originality and creativity, Yoshida's success was free from the existing sociological frameworks and he liberated theoretical study from the yoke of historical perspectives that had long governed Japanese theoretical sociology. (ii) Yoshida's uniform scientific approach that used the keywords of information, selection, and variation based on evolutionist ideas was consistent throughout his life from proposing the 'design of information science' in his mid-thirties to proposing the concept of 'program sciences' in his later years. (iii) One of Yoshida's major sociological contributions was in identifying the close relationship between subjectivity and the structure of possession. (iv) Yoshida's 'A Historical Perspective on the Forces and Relations of Production' is an original and critical re-creation of the Marxist possession theory located within his own theoretical framework, and is an excellent critique of the central arguments of Marxism. It successfully illustrates Yoshida's superlative critical and creative skills of theoretical dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists in Japan recognize that the circumstances under which social survey research is conducted have been deteriorating and have become critical since 2000. Social survey research is understood as a large-scale survey that mainly draws samples by a random sampling method, using a questionnaire as a measurement tool. The crises of social survey research are summarized as following: (1) the increasing difficulty of conducting accurate sampling and (2) the decline in response rates to drawn samples (planned samples). This paper focuses on the decline in response rates to social survyes by examining recent trends in relation to social surveys conducted by the Japanese government and local government (prefectures). In summary, there has been a landslidedecline of the response rate between 2005 and 2006 in surveys conducted by Japanese government. This decline was thought to mainly come from the declining of response rates among the elderly and women, groups that had previously had high response rates. This seems to be the result of the growing level of the crime involving the abuse of the personal information. However, there did not appear to be a serious decline in the response rate for surveys conducted by local governments. Given that it is not easy to restore response rates, it is important to develop research methods and techniques to cope with the decline. Further, informing respondents of the purpose of the research and its benefit to may help raise response rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]