Introduction: differentiation and uncertainty / Satsuki Kawano, Glenda S. Roberts, and Susan Orpett Long -- Work and life in challenging times: a Kansai family across the generations / Glenda S. Roberts -- Masculinity and aging in a straitened Japan: the view from twenty years later / Gordon...

Japan and the United States are both post-industrial societies, characterised by distinct trajectories of dying. Both contain multiple "cultural scripts" of the good death. Seale (Constructing Death: the Sociology of Dying and Bereavement, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998) has...

This paper explores the relationship between gender and work roles in Japan by comparing women physicians and nurses. After reviewing women's roles and definitions of femininity in Japan, contrasts are described in socioeconomic background, educational levels, career patterns and patient...