Contemporary Cultural Change in Japan

Westernization and Cultural Resistance of Tattooing Practices in Contemporary Japan

and sheds light on attempts by traditional tattooists to retain a vital presence in the modern-to-postmodern transitional periods. Explaining the values, beliefs and practices associated with tattooing during the pre-modern period, it discusses how these are shaped and modified by modern cultural practices, and how they are being impacted by globalization. While drawing on historical and cross-...

History of Contemporary Cultural Psychiatry in Iran:

Cultural psychiatry is one of the relatively new trends in psychiatry that has received much attention today. During the last century, many Iranian psychiatrists have taken steps to introduce various aspects of cultural psychiatry from the field of epidemiology to the cultural conceptualization of psychiatric disorders. This article tries to refer to the history of contemporary cultural psychia...

Divorce in contemporary Japan.

Data from the 1985-86 Japanese census are analysed to explore the determinants of the divorce rates in Japan's forty-seven prefectures, using two theoretical models: (a) the social integration model, which is shown to have a greater utility in predicting Japanese divorce levels than (b), the human capital model. Female emigration patterns play a significant role in affecting the divorce rate. P...

Legal Reform in Contemporary Japan

Documentation Center on Contemporary Japan (

W ith repeated political corruption and scandals as well as opaque alliances and split political parties and factions, the political world of Japan has appeared particularly dismal in the past ten years. Some now perceive it as a “lost decade” in politics. Political cynicism has gradually deepened, but citizen participation in politics has grown active over the Internet despite simultaneously d...