This paper examines two hypotheses, using the SSM data surveyed at 5 time points. The first hypothesis maintains that intra-generational mobility equalizes inter-generational mobility from father's job to son's job at the surveyed point. The second states that equalization of inter-generational mobility by period effect is caused by changes in intra-generational mobility. Most of the results of the analysis applying logistic regression model supported the first hypothesis. Whereas some results sustained the second hypothesis, others did not. These findings as a whole revealed that intra-generational mobility equalized inter-generational mobility in Japan until 1995.

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In this paper, I first refer to “the social model of disability” which, contrary to the traditional view on disability and disabled people, claims that one's physical impairment itself does not consist with his/her disability. The social model insists that disability should be considered as social, and that disabled people are a group of the socially oppressed. The social model is now the theoretical standard of disability studies.
Although the social model has encouraged the disabled people's movement and generally promoted an unprejudiced view toward disabled people, I point out its (bio) foundationalist view on the body, and its problematic identity politics. Those principles hinder one from questioning a dichotomous categorization of human being as able/disabled or normal/abnormal, and eventually become obstructive to the emancipatory project of the movement. As a complement to the social model theory, I propose the approach acquaints with post-structuralism or radical social constructionism, which does not hesitate to de-naturalize impairment or the body, and thus will unsettle the categorization of the able/disabled body. In addition, the approach should be more attentive to the artificiality and instability of the “normal (able) body” that have been often neglected in disability studies.
In the last part of the paper, I examine M. Shildrick's analysis of “monster, ” in which she suggests that the “normal body” is as much phantasmic as the “abnormal body, ” as one capable study for disturbing the categorization. Applying Shildrick's idea, I also discuss the practice of compulsive rehabilitation of the disabled body.
The law of categorization is omnipresent and very insistent in our society. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile and indeed necessary for us concerning the field of disability to “trouble” the categorization. This paper is aimed at accomplishing such a purpose.

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This paper aims to sort out the various visual modes in the present-day.
Former analyses have delineated two ways of seeing. One is to read the meanings or ideologies in visual objects treating them as words. The other is to cross-communicate with such objects, treating them as art objects.
In addition to these two, I will define the third as the rise of “image.” This mode means to glance at visual objects and focuses on their surfaces without any attention to their depth.
The overflow of visual media at the present have assisted the formation of this visual mode and have made people to take a cool and paralyzed attitude toward the visual.

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This study examined the effects of social networks on mental health among the old-old living in metropolitan areas. Data were obtained from a survey of 618 community dwellers aged 75 and over living in the Sumida ward in Tokyo. Mental health was measured by distress (Geriatric Depression Scale Short Form; GDS-SF) and life satisfaction.
The findings are as follows :
1. Having a spouse was associated with lower levels of distress and higher levels of life satisfaction for men, but not for women.
2. Presence of children was associated with lower levels of distress and higher levels of life satisfaction for women, but not for men.
3. Greater numbers of local friends increased life satisfaction for men, and greater numbers of middle-distance or distant kin decreased distress and increased life satisfaction for women. The results suggested that embeddedness in traditional local kin networks was not necessarily associated with better mental health.
4. Greater level of participation in local community groups decreased distress and increased life satisfaction for women. The results suggested that local community groups were effective resources to adjust to stressful situations in old-old age.

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In Japan, it is believed that people have become increasingly concerned with health, and have done something with the growing enthusiasm to maintain and promote their own health since the mid-1970s. As is well known, this phenomenon is called “the health boom.” Medical sociologists regard this boom as a reflection of the rise in “healthism” in those days. However, we have little evidence to show the existence either of “the health boom” or of the rise in “healthism.” This paper analyzes best-selling books on health on the assumption that they reflect people's awareness and concern, and investigates the level and direction of their concern with health. One of the findings is that the books on health hit the best-seller list for the first time not in the mid-1970s, as is often said, but in the late 1950s, and since then, they have appeared on the list constantly with rather consistent frequency until now. Moreover, immediately before the period when the health boom is alleged to have taken place, the books which tried to enlighten the readers on medical science and emancipate them from the spell of superstitious beliefs about health and illness showed up on the list. Based on these findings, the following two points can be made. Firstly, people have been concerned with their own health to almost the same extent all the time since the late 1950s. Secondly, the feature of the periods of the health boom is not a relatively high level of concern with health on the part of the people, but their critical stance toward what was wrongly believed to be good for health.

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These days, the higher death rates by suicide of middle and elderly age men and in a few regions come into question. This paper investigates the particulars and current circumstances of the death rates by suicide structurally and historically. It takes Émile Durkheim's “Anomie” theory and the methodology of Annales' social history. The analysis used death and death rates by suicide, sex, age and region from 1899 to 2002 in vital statistics.
During the Period of High Economic Growth of 1960s, death rates by suicide, sex, age and region were undergoing changes. Japan's death rates by suicide were reduced immediately in the 1960s, and after this period it rose gradually. In the 1960s, gender differences declined, but after this period, female death rates by suicide fell down slightly, while those of males rose in the age range of 40 to 59 years. After this period, the suicide rates in the majority of regions are on a low level, while the rates in a small number of economically disadvantaged regions are rising. The regional distribution is changing in such a way that “the center is lower, and the border is higher.”

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The aim of this article is to investigate how and under what social-historical conditions the techno-political program of the regulation of lighting in urban space was formed and put into practice. The focus is the problematization of street lighting in the late 1920s Japan. Through the examination of various discourses including scientific, urban political, and industrial discourses, as well as discourses of ordinary people, the following three theses are shown. First, the social regulation of lighting was not a process which developed linearly from the introduction of gas lighting in Ginza in 1874, but was a program which was not problematized until the late 1920s. Second, the standardization of lighting was planned in order to control and restrain the diverse types of lighting technologies which were owned by individuals and private groups according to their individual preferences. Third, many kinds of agencies, different in their interests, were involved in the process of the formation and the development of the program. And the situation frequently produced unintended effects.

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Surveillance as a theme of this paper is what is attracting attention recently. Security strengthened by surveillance is not a proliferation of monitoring systems, but is a move towards prevention and exclusion of people who are not suitable for this system. The various technologies for surveillance enable watchpersons to exclude them. For example, there is not only a surveillance camera but also biometrics technology for authentication systems.
Although we normally tend to think it easy to criticize such technology, it is not true. This is because the criticism of surveillance is tacitly replaced by the criticism of values which are realized by surveillance. For example, the problem is not surveillance but an economic gap if the exclusion is based on the economic gap.
This paper aims to clarify why it is difficult to criticize surveillance. It uses “risk” and “reflexive modernity” as important concepts. Some arguments explain that accumulation of data based on surveillance is enabled to calculate a risk. Therefore, risk means a danger of the undecided future in this paper, and surveillance make us to be a decided one. But the “decided” future is always provisional. Accordingly, uneasiness always influences how danger is determined. This uneasiness is reflex.
According to Ulrich Beck, such reflexive uneasiness calls for people's solidarity among sub-politics in the worldwide risk society, although today it is characterized by inter-invisibilization among sub-politics.
This paper explains the mechanism of this invisibilization and points out the problems in the criticism of surveillance.

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[in Japanese]

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