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■KOBAYASHi Muneyuki & TANIMURA Hitomi　(Eds.) February 20, 2013 Questioning Aging in Postwar Japan, Report Issued by Research Center for Ars Vivendi of Ritsumeikan University, Vol.19, 153p. ISSN 1882-6539※


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Please contact the following.

Administrative Office, Research Center Ars Vivendi at Ritsumeikan University
56-1 Kitamachi, Tojiin, Kita-ku, Kyoto, Japan 603-8577
E-mail: ars-vive@st.ritsumei.ac.jp
TEL:+81-75-465-8475 Extention：2393（9:00〜17:30 Japan Time） FAX:+81-75-465-8342

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■Table of Contents

◆Foreword　………………………………………………………………………　KOBAYASHI Muneyuki　5-7

◆Connection between Measures against Medical Care for the Aged in Kyoto Nishijin in 1970s and Residents' Medical Care Movements　………………………………………………　NISHIZAWA Izumi　11-34

◆A Consideration on Transformation of Home Help Systme in 1980s　………　SHIBUYA　Terumi 35-53

◆Theoretical Examination of Basic Pension for the Elderly, Special Tax Collection and Non-target Base Amount: What Burdens of Residential Tax and Social Insurance Premium Which Are Withheld from Basic Pension for the Elderly Mean………………………………………………………………　MAKI Masako 54-78

◆Research on Places of Sociality: A Case of Haru House　…………………　KOTSUJI Hisanori 79-97

◆Is It Possible for Separated Single Mothers Who Get Regular Employment to Have an Independent Planning for Golden Years?: One's Golden Years that He/She Works until He/She Can Work　………………………………………………………………………………………　TANIMURA Hitomi 98-119

◆Melancholy of Aging and Twisted Line of Force　…………………………　KITAMURA Kentaro 120-142

◆Afterword　…………………………………………………………………………　AMADA Josuke143-150

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■Excerpt:
■ Postscript
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Josuke Amada

This Center Report is one of the achievements of the Study Group on Aging, a research project that has been actively promoted for five years from AY 2007 to AY 2011 by graduate students of the Global COE (Center of Excellence) Program Ars Vivendi (program leader: Shin'ya Tateiwa). It was also aided by the Support System for Enhancing Research Quality of Young Researchers (AY 2012) of the Research Center for Ars Vivendi, Ritsumeikan University (Director: Masahiko Nishi), which from AY 2012 has been reorganizing its management and education/research systems under the Post-GCOE Program. Moreover, as there was a need in AY 2012 for one year only to restructure the education/research systems under the Post-GCOE Program at the Ritsumeikan University Graduate School, a graduate school functioning based on the project-based learning approach, additional research has been made during that year with support of the graduate school's system for projects led by graduate students (AY 2012), and the achievements made during that year are also included in this report.

From the first study meeting held on May 5, 2007, the Study Group on Aging has been holding meetings for over five consecutive years, and as of the end of December, 2012, the total number of times the Group has held its meetings is twenty five.

During this period, on March 25, 2010 (Thurs.) in rooms 401-402 of the Soshikan Hall, Kinugasa Campus, Ritsumeikan University a public seminar was held entitled 'Our Path so Far, our Footing Today, and our Ideals for the Society of Tomorrow" structured as a round-table conference with discussion by its four main participants, Eiki Ishii (President of Sekishinkai Medical Cooperation), Josuke Amada (Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University), Yoshihiko Ichida (Faculty of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University), and Shin'ya Tateiwa (Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University). By the way, I should mention that later a book by Yoshihiko Ichida and Eiki Ishii that gives very important insights into the postwar social movements and policies related to aging entitled Notes on Bund Lifetime (Sekaishoin, October 25, 2010) was published, and our project has been instrumental in creating a significant body of research in the same area but preceded this book's publication.

Subsequently, based on the achievements of the research meetings and other events held so far, Josuke Amada, Kentaro Kitamura, and Yoshitaro Hotta edited and published Governing Aging: Policies and History of Aging (Sekaishoin, March 25, 2011). I will return to this book in more detail later, but should mention that it was published on a grant from the Ritsumeikan University's Academic Publication Promotion Program AY 2010 (Representative: Josuke Amada) and was one of important achievements in the project-based learning system advanced under the Global COE Program.

After the publication of this book, in which the Study Group on Aging played the central role, we invited Yorimitsu Ooka (School of Contemporary Sociology, Chukyo University) and Yoichi Akutsu (Faculty of Integrated Arts and Social Sciences, Japan Women's University) and held a public joint review session "Review and Critique of Governing Aging: Policies and History of Aging" in rooms 401-402 of the Soshikan Hall, Kinugasa Campus, Ritsumeikan University on April 23, 2011 (Sat.).

This report, so to speak, is a summary of our progress made on the way to publication of a sequel to the Governing Aging: Policies and History of Aging.

As it can be seen from the above, the Study Group on Aging has been one of the important "mechanisms" of the education/research systems based on the GCOE Program, which was in turn established on the foundation of the project-based Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, and later, from AY 2012, of the Post-GCOE Program, which is why a lot of resources have been actively used to promote it. At the same time, as the Study Group invited participation of graduate students who entered graduate school after working for some time, those with professional careers, and those commuting from remote locations, as well as other kinds of people, the initiative faced many managerial difficulties. Although the project had to overcome a number of such difficulties and often research activities did not advance to everyone's satisfaction, we were able to still publish this Center Report because of the relentless efforts of Kentaro Kitamura, Muneyuki Kobayashi, and Hitomi Tanimura, the editors - their careful, thorough and prompt communication with the writers who contributed the papers. In this regard, this report literally is a fruit of efforts of its editors.

Normally, it would have been better to describe here the overall composition of this report and briefly give the content of each chapter, but I would like to advise our readers to actually read the report and pursue here yet another objective - to give a brief account of how the Study Group on Aging "functioned" as its role of a mechanism of the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, a project-based graduate school, which shall enable me to show the significance and the value of the achievements made by this initiative. And the reason I want to do it is that I do not want to concentrate on the individual significance and value of each paper but instead show the significance and value of doing research in this way, mainly driven by a study group of graduate students, which is exactly the kind of education/research system we strive to create and maintain. Now, let me show more precisely the significance of this publication by the Study Group on Aging that is scheduled for publication in September 2014 by following the tracks of the Group for these past several years.

Again, the book Governing Aging: Policies and History of Aging edited by Josuke Amada, Kentaro Kitamura, and Yoshitaro Hotta is a part of the research achievements of the Study Group on Aging that has been active since 2007. This book addresses from a new point of view the issue of aging that is mentioned in the sub title of the Ritsumeikan University Global COE Program: "Ars Vivendi: Forms of Human Life and Survival." As stated in the sub title, the book describes policies and history of aging, but the aim is not to cover the individual systems such as the system of welfare services for the elderly, or the public nursing care insurance, or the medical-care system for the elderly, or the pension system - as it is done in the social policy studies or in the theory of social security - but instead to describe the history of policies for the elderly as a whole. At the same time, as is stated in the main title (“Governing Aging”), it is the first attempt in Japan whose population is aging at an unprecedented rate to address this issue from the theoretical viewpoint of "governance". This viewpoint is something that has never been embraced by social welfare studies, social policy studies, or even sociology, and is a truly unconventional point of view which could be yielded only in our project. The achievements of our research are created from the theoretical standpoint of Ars Vivendi, describing governance as it has been formed from a historical point of view, grounded in the many ways people have used to survive.

I should also note that this book has been highly evaluated by sociologist Hiroaki Yoshii (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba/presently College of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University), who wrote in the Soyokaze no yoni Machi ni deyo journal (May 2011 No.81 issue) that it is "an organized body of knowledge in the extensive area covered by Ars Vivendi focusing on the theme of aging as it appears in policies and history of Japan", and that "although it gives an impression at first of being somewhat immature, this immatureness is broken apart by the energy bursting from within, and, when the authors manage to find their own words and theories to comprehend the subjects of the studies, we cannot but feel a secret hope for the sheer force and energy that the book is filled with". The book has also been reviewed by Yoshiya Nakamura in the Shukan Dokushonin (June 10, 2011 issue). Of course, the project still has numerous tasks to tackle, but, nevertheless, I am certain that this book could not have been created without the theoretical perspective of Ars Vivendi.

I should also mention that all four authors who contributed their papers to the book, that is, Terumi Shibuya, Masako Maki, Akiko Tajima, and Reiko Ariyoshi, who were graduate students at the time, have subsequently submitted excellent doctoral dissertations, received doctoral degrees, and graduated the graduate school (two are currently working for universities, one remained as a researcher at Ritsumeikan University, and one is employed as a specialist at a hospital). Moreover, the editors Kentaro Kitamura and Yoshitaro Hotta, who were post-doctoral fellows of the Kinugasa Research Organization, Ritsumeikan University at the time, have published other books since and are moving steadily on their career paths (one is an eminent associate professor at the Research Center for Ars Vivendi, and the other is a researcher at Ritsumeikan University). In this regard, Study Group on Aging is a "mechanism" that gathers all kinds of graduate students including those who enter graduate school after working for some time, those having professional careers, and those commuting from remote locations, who - through research from the theoretical perspective of Ars Vivendi - complete their doctoral dissertations, at the same time developing their research to cover a vast scope of subjects, forming their career paths on the way.

This Center Report is not merely a collection of research achievements of a small study group run by graduate students. Neither is it merely a small academic contribution to the issue of aging, as the authors, based on a careful and very serious understanding of their subjects made within an interdisciplinary framework, have created a body of research that transcends the professional discipline of each. By conducting such academic project organizationally and systematically, we manage to establish and share an academic platform that can deal with a range of subjects that cannot be taken up by an ordinary study group or academic society, and to produce a new body of knowledge. In that sense, I hope from the bottom of my heart that this Center Report will also prove helpful.

Amada, who has been involved with the Study Group on Aging as a faculty, has been publishing works related to the project every year even after Governing Aging was published in March 2011. In March 2012, Josuke Amada, Kiyoshi Murakami, and Takanori Yamamoto (Eds.) published Disputed Point of Differences: Understanding the Modern Discrimination (Harvestsha, March 10, 2012). This book was one of the research achievements of the "Life of Minority in Local Community: Sociological Study on Movement of Practice and Dynamics of Political Intervention" (called for short "Research Group on Minority"), which is a project by graduate students of the Global COE Program Ars Vivendi. For the history of this Research Group on Minority I would advise the readers to refer to its homepage (http://www.arsvi.com/o/m02-e.htm), and here would only like to mention that since its launch in June, 2009, the project has been continuously and expansively developed until the end of October, 2012. This book was also written in a two-stage process: firstly, as an interim achievement report, Dynamics of "Differences": Practical Challenges of Research and Methodology on Minority (report published by the Research Center for Ars Vivendi of Ritsumeikan University, Vol.14) edited by Takanori Yamamoto and Shinichi Takahashi (Eds.) was published in November 2010, and, subsequently, after developing the research further and polishing the papers so they can reach yet higher level of academic rigor, the book was published. By the way, I should note that this book is also a product of truly careful and thorough communication between the graduate students and the faculties fostered during study meetings held at least once a month for two years.

The book's achievement is, if we define it in the same way we defined the achievement of the Study Group on Aging, the analysis of the "differences" part of our program: "Ars Vivendi: Forms of Human Life and Survival". Most of the research in the so-called "minority studies" field so far has been attempting to illuminate the discrimination directed at people called "minorities", the possibilities for solidarity and cooperation among them, and the practices they engage in to resist the discrimination. This book, however, is the first attempt to elucidate the fact that to continue living, to survive, a "minority" - because of the hostile environment it is in - inevitably ends up creating differences, discord and confrontation between its members. Of course, these points have been mentioned in the past research also, but the fact that there has never been a book devoted to the issue is because by describing dynamics and politics within and between minorities, research can easily ignite confrontation between people of the minorities studied. That is why to create this book it took over two years of careful and very cautious communication between the researchers and the people of the minorities studied, communication structured on the firm basis of research ethics. In this regard, the book proposes a new theoretical perspective for the ways people inhabiting the so-called "minorities" need to live in order to survive, a perspective that could only be yielded in the framework established by Ars Vivendi, and, at the same time, the research successfully offers a theoretical framework no-one has ever come up with so far.

I should also note that this book has been very highly evaluated by sociologist Hiroaki Yoshii (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba/presently College of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University, Nihon University) who wrote in the June 2012 issue of the Shukan Dokushonin that it is an "outstanding and significant anthology offering a new perspective on discrimination in modern society"; the book also enjoyed a high evaluation in other media.

In March 2013, Josuke Amada, Yohei Kadosaki, and Satoshi Sakurai edits and publishes Histories of Regimes (Rakuhoku Shuppan, March 31, 2013). This book is a fruit of research of the "Study Group on Historical Sociology", a project by graduate students of the Global COE Program Ars Vivendi that has been continuously conducted from November 2008. For the history of this Study Group on Historical Sociology, I would advise the readers to refer to its homepage http://www.arsvi.com/o/shs.htm (Japanese)), and here would only like to mention that since its launch in November 2008, the project has been continuously and expansively developed until the end of October 2012. This book also is written in a two-stage process: firstly, as an interim result report, Interdisciplinary Approach from the History to the Present (report by Research Center for Ars Vivendi of Ritsumeikan University, Vol.17) edited by Yohei Kadosaki and Yukiko Matsuda was published in March 2012, and, subsequently, after developing the research further, the results are published in the form of a book. Same as Disputed Point of Differences, this project is also promoted in the same two-stage way with publication of a Research Center for Ars Vivendi report first and then publication of the book itself. By the way, I should note that this book is also a product of truly careful and thorough communication between the graduate students and faculties fostered during study meetings held at least once a month for two years. I should also mention that the book is published with the help of the Publication Subsidy Program of the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences during the second semester of AY 2012.

The high academic achievement of the book is something that could not have been possible without a united effort of the faculties, the graduate students, those who have already graduated our graduate school, and the post-doctoral fellows, made based on a shared perspective of Ars Vivendi. It is an embodiment of the "I: Accumulation and Thinking" goal stated in the motto of the Global COE Program Ars Vivendi. "Histories of regimes", the main title of the book, in most cases have been described in the realm of history framed by the boundaries of the nation states, or in terms of institutions and policies. Or, when the locus of the research was a specific person, research was limited to persons well known with a body of historical data about them. Naturally, histories of "nameless people" on the streets have been described in folklore studies, sociology, and other social sciences, but such research has a tendency to mainly focus on the behavioral patterns or customs. This book, on the other hand, is a first attempt both in Japan and abroad to elucidate how people survived in various eras, how they managed to learn ways to survive, or what kind of frameworks supporting their survival existed, or what kinds of regimes served as the background. Although the book is comprised of a wide range of subjects such as the labor system including occupational differences, life security including lending, dynamics of reconstruction and securing subsistence by people facing difficulties to survive, or self-expression by people of minorities living in complex political situations, it still ended up as a coherent foray into the histories of regimes based on the firm basis of theoretical perspective of Ars Vivendi. In a way, the most valuable achievement of the book is that it gave us insight into the "history of regimes of survival".

The research achievements of the Study Group on Aging have thus followed the same path until they were published this time as Center Report. In the future, this educational "mechanism" will surely function further leading to publication of a book based on the research achievements made so far.

Lastly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Kentaro Kitamura, Muneyuki Kobayashi, and Hitomi Tanimura, who went to great trouble to edit this Center Report. It is only thanks to unstinted contribution and relentless efforts of the three editors that it became a work worthy of reading. By the way, the editors not only organized the meetings, but also in appropriate and precise manner checked both the format and the content of each paper and conducted the necessary liaison and adjustments with the Sekaishoin publishing company.

What we also need to appreciate is the great daily efforts of the administrative staff of the Research Center for Ars Vivendi, Ritsumeikan University. I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to the members of the staff who always did so much for our research activities. Thank you very much.

Furthermore, as I have already stated in the foreword, the research by the Study Group on Aging that was launched in 2007 is one of the results made possible by grants from the Global COE Program Ars Vivendi (2007 to 2011; program leader: Shin'ya Tateiwa), "The Politics of Representation and Memory of Aging in post-War Japan" (Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B), 2008 to 2011; Representative: Josuke Amada), "Continuity of Critical Spirit in Postwar Japan: History of Yet Another Medical Care and Welfare for the Elderly" (Ritsumeikan University Research Promotion Program 2010, 2010; Representative: Josuke Amada), "Postwar History of Aging: Changes of Policies for the Elderly Made Possible by Political and Economic Regime and Critical Spirit" (Ritsumeikan University Research Promotion Program, 2010; Representative: Josuke Amada), Support System for Enhancing Research Quality of Young Researchers (2012) by the Research Center for Ars Vivendi, Ritsumeikan University, and Graduate Student Project, Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University (2012).