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This paper examines the practices of natural science researchers and the recognition authors receive in multi-authored papers at Japanese universities. The ' Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication' by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which sets global standards for authorship ethics in many natural science fields, notes problems in two areas in particular: with 'gift authors' (people who are indicated as authors, but who do not actually contribute to the work) and with 'ghost authors' (people, often students or researchers in lower positions, who are not properly represented in the paper even though they make essential contributions to it). We also note the recent complaints by junior researchers about these violations, which are claimed to be harassment or bullying using power differences. Our survey of researchers in natural sciences at 15 top Japanese universities shows that, despite the different specialized fields, few researchers actually meet the gold standard of authorship criteria of proper authorship and about half think that their violation might be condoned. The data are analyzed taking into consideration a particular local context. Through the exploratory research above, we speculate that most natural science researchers in Japan may be either confused about or struggle with the situation where the strict global criteria conflict with specific local cultures that often condone gift and ghost authorships. Those who are already socialized in such local cultures take unethical authorships for granted, while others view it as an intersection of harassment and misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the Japanese youth labor market has become more unstable, particularly since the 1990s. To address this problem, I suggest that we consider the transition rate of job exit to be the benchmark of instability in the labor market and focus on workers’ career histories until they reach the age of 34 years. This paper presents six hypotheses that explain the instability of the youth labor market as follows: the total increase in the job-exit transition rate, the higher risk of job exit for provisional workers, the increase in the number of provisional workers, the increasing transition rate for provisional workers and stable regular workers, the impact of firm size, and the impact of the collapse of the bubble economy. I present the summary statistics of job exit rates and the results of the Cox partial likelihood estimation models. A conspicuous phenomenon of the 1990s entailed an increasing number of provisional workers who ran a higher risk of job exits compared to regular workers. However, the job exit transition rates are generally stable. Moreover, the transition rates for regular female workers have decreased since the 1980s due to the increasing realization of gender equality in society. Although partial likelihood estimation states that firm size and the type of officer concerned (public/private) had significant effects on the transition rates, their effect did not intensify after the collapse of the bubble economy. In sum, the evidence that the Japanese youth labor market changed in the 1990s is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we look at the history of social survey development in Japanese sociology. First, the history of social research in Japan before World War II is explored. Second, the introduction of survey research to Japan during the American occupation after World War II is examined, and third, the present state and roles of social survey research in Japanese sociology is discussed. Social research was introduced as an administrative tool for the government. Sociology and social research were developed under British empiricism and American pragmatism, but Japanese academia has been based on a metaphysical approach. Social research introduced as a practical tool long had difficulty in being accepted by Japanese academia. For this reason, most sociologists in universities did not use social survey research for practical purposes, but pursued qualitative methodologies for analyzing data to gain academic prestige even after Social Stratification and Mobility (SSM) and Sabro Yasuda's research projects spread social survey methods in the field of Japanese sociology. Such academics did not think that findings acquired through qualitative case studies had to be confirmed through quantitative data to serve a practical purpose, nor did they believe that quantitative data could be better understood when examined along side qualitative data. Social survey methods have been opposed by those who have favored case-study analysis methods in Japanese sociology. Needless to say, this opposition is fruitless. I propose that professional sociologists in Japanese universities should use social survey research for practical problems more frequently. This is the best way to establish sociology and social research as a science in Japanese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes gendered social identity in Japan and the United States, countries with comparable postindustrial economic systems but distinct cultural traditions. Using national surveys (1995), we find gender differences in value orientations to be neither systematic nor consistent. They often disappeared after controlling for demographic and human-capital variables, though not so often for Japan. Other variables proved more important predictors of values than gender, although in different ways in Japan and the United States. We conclude by reassessing the use of the term gender in social research and the cultural meaning of gender relations by addressing the feminist concerns with issues of gender location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the ways in which the department store has become a key site for the constitution of Japanese modernity through the introduction of images and goods taken from the West, along with the emphasis on “Western design” and “Western taste”. These new consumer spaces have become aestheticized in various ways so that we can speak of an “aestheticization” of everyday life. Yet this was also a modernizing learning process for Japanese consumers, hence a key problem was how these new experiences were to be classified and ordered into a relatively stable habitus. The rise of the department store has had an important mediating function here. Department stores not only provided new goods along with interpretations of how to use them, but also acted as theatres, as rehearsal spaces, with front and back stage areas where one can watch the performance, try out for oneself new roles. This is especially the case for women in the city, who were able to explore a new identity space with a new set of competence experiences and pleasures. In this process, the department store also provided a form of women's public sphere where they could enjoy shopping, entertainment and learning opportunities. Department stores encouraged not only a sense of luxury and theatrical settings, but also help to teach women how to assemble new tastes and styles into their lifestyle. In addition, it should be emphasized that in the Japanese case, department stores also played an important role not just as a new cultural initiative on the part of the businessmen and cultural intermediaries who invented consumer culture, but also as a political initiative on the part of the government who sought to link them to the reform of everyday life and the production of good Japanese citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending the study of picture postcards beyond an analysis of their content demonstrates that changes in the material circumstances of the production of postcards, and the conceptual shifts that they catalyzed, fundamentally altered the visual field of late nineteenth–century Japan. Once the postal system began in Japan in 1870, government–issued prepaid postcards, and picture postcards collected and sent from other countries, did introduce the medium to a small degree. However, private production of picture postcards only started in 1900, when postcards to which stamps could be affixed were first allowed. Stores and periodicals first produced them as promotional gifts, opening an arena for print technology experiments. During this period, government–issued commemorative postcards officially encouraged soldier–civilian correspondence, sparking wartime collecting booms. Early postcards of “beauties”, bound by taboos against depicting ordinary women, featured only geisha; later ones depicted ordinary women, subsequently creating a constellation of national stars, setting the stage for later postcard–format bromide paper prints of movie stars’ photographic portraits. “Current–events postcards”, rather than prioritizing accuracy, served as commemorative memorials. However, it was the rise of photojournalism that rendered the genre obsolete. Railway travel, besides reconfiguring and expanding the landscape of tourist destinations, also shaped practices of communication, aided by the innovation of the fountain pen. Increased speed and mobility changed travellers’ ways of seeing in a manner that, like postcards, altered visuality and transformed notions of time and space. Ultimately, picture postcards simultaneously offered intimacy with and distance from the object of the scopophilic gaze of an expanding audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to clarify how Japanese rural families have continued and changed from a viewpoint of generational succession. The survey from which data was collected was conducted principally in Yamanashi prefecture, Japan. Three main points will be focussed on: members, property, and ideology. Almost 40% of family members surveyed continued to live together with their parents after marriage. However, they did not necessarily succeed the family farm. The ways in which they live together and farm their land have become more diverse. It is still very common for the entire family property to be inherited and succeeded by only one child in accordance with the Ie system. Despite the fact that family structure is changing greatly in present times, many farming families continue to adopt this system of inheritance. Ideologies concerning ceremonial matters and human relationships remain strong, but have weakened with regard to land inheritance. Our results suggest that the family's desire for succession was stronger in cases where multiple generations cohabited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship with data from a nation with a substantially different social context, Japan. American research on suicide has been based largely on American samples. Little is known about whether the results of this work, such as the link between divorce and suicide, will be replicated for nations with substantially different institutional and cultural structures. The present paper tests the marital integration theory of suicide with data from Japan. Briefly, the marital integration theory holds that as bonds to marriage weaken, suicide risk increases. Further, the kinship system in Japan is apparently more integrated than it is in the United States. For example, in Japan 37.3% of the elderly lived in three-generation households compared to only 0.5% of the elderly in the United States. Durkheim's theory of social integration and suicide emphasizes the subordination of the individual to group life as a prophylactic against suicide. Individualism in family life was emerging as the pattern for the future at the time of Durkheim's study. It is anticipated that a rising divorce rate should affect suicide risk for several groups: divorced persons; separated persons who are contemplating divorce; married persons with severe marital problems; and the children in such families.