Suchergebnisse

In discussing the household composition of the modern Japanese family it is a prerequisite to have a clear understanding of the family composition in the pre-modern era in Japan. This is because in modern Japanese society the structural transition from the extended to the nuclear family has been steadily progressing, and at the same time the family still clearly maintains its traditional nature. Local official documents called "Documentation on the Religious Affiliation" (Shumon Ninbetsu Aratamecho) were kept from the middle of the 17th century when the Tokugawa Shogunate initiated the censorship of the people's religious affiliation. These documents now serve as a valuable source of information on the population, the household, family composition and change during the feudal period in Japan. This article attempts to clarify empirically the changing pattern of family composition of the households in a farming village, Yamazaki, presently a part of Isawa Town, Yamanashi Prefecture, approximately 130 kilometers west of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The data were obtained from the Documentation on the Religious Affiliation in Yamazaki vii I age from 1802 to 1861, a period regarded as the terminal stage of the feudal Tokugawa Shogunate. Four major findings emerged. First, under the dominant extended family system in pre-modern Japanese society, as many as half of of the households in the village adopted forms of the nuclear family. Secondly, a basic pattern of the developmental cycle in the Japanese family was recognized. This family life cycle is as follows: "Household with collateral relatives"→"Household with lineal ancestors and descendants"→"Household with unmarried children"→"Household with married children." Thirdly, the length of one family life cycle in the parent-child-centered extended family system tended to last for approximately 23 to 24 years. Fourthly, the analysis of the living capacity index revealed that each family experienced decay and prosperity during its family life cycle. For a full understanding of the modern family system in changing Japanese society, we should be aware of the contextual differences accompanying the phenomenal similarities between the two popular orientations of the family system in Japan: the one the extended and the other the nuclear family system.

One of the most significant tasks for the sociology of marriage and the family in Japan is to clarify the relationship between the radical changes of society and family structure after World War II, and their impact on the system and the functions of the traditional Japanese family. During the years 1956 and 1957 a worthwhile project was undertaken by a group of family sociologists in the Tokyo area in an attempt to analyze the dynamics of the post-war Japanese family. This article analyzes the family composition and consciousness in four different types of communities in Tokyo: a mountain village, a suburban farming community, a suburban nonfarming community, and an apartment area. Findings from this study could be categorized into the following three. First, it was confirmed that the rural family tends to be an extended family, whereas the family in the urban area tends to be nuclear. Within each family, however, there exists a dynamic process of historical change in its structure throughout the family life cycle. Secondly, the traditional family consciousness is still rooted deeply among the rural farming families. Thirdly, it was not possible to observe any significant relationship between the form of the household composition and the family consciousness of the people. The result of this study might suggest the significant impact of the revision of the civil code after World War II on individuals' consciousness but not yet on the fundamental structure of the family in Japan. These discoveries. however, should be reevaluated in the light of growing urbanization of the younger generations in Japan.

How different organs in the body sense growth perturbations in distant tissues to coordinate their size during development is poorly understood. Here we mutate an invertebrate orphan relaxin receptor gene, the Drosophila Leucine-rich repeat-containing G protein-coupled receptor 3 (Lgr3), and find body asymmetries similar to those found in insulin-like peptide 8 (dilp8) mutants, which fail to coordinate growth with developmental timing. Indeed, mutation or RNA intereference (RNAi) against Lgr3 suppresses the delay in pupariation induced by imaginal disc growth perturbation or ectopic Dilp8 expression. By tagging endogenous Lgr3 and performing cell type-specific RNAi, we map this Lgr3 activity to a new subset of CNS neurons, four of which are a pair of bilateral pars intercerebralis Lgr3-positive (PIL) neurons that respond specifically to ectopic Dilp8 by increasing cAMP-dependent signalling. Our work sheds new light on the function and evolution of relaxin receptors and reveals a novel neuroendocrine circuit responsive to growth aberrations. ; FCT Investigator Programme: (PD/BD/52421/2013), FCT fellowship: (SFRH/BPD/94112/2013, SFRH/BD/94931/2013, SFRH/BPD/74313/2010), CONICET and UNS, CONICET fellowship, CEDOC, N.P. Rotstein and L.E. Politi.