Children of Migrants: The Cumulative Impact of Parental Migration on Children’s Education and Health Outcomes in China

Since the end of 1990s, approximately 160 million Chinese rural workers migrated to cities for work. Because of restrictions on migrant access to local health and education systems, many rural children are left behind in home villages to grow up without parental care. This article examines how exposure to cumulative parental migration affects children’s health and education outcomes. Using the Rural-Urban Migration Survey in China (RUMiC) data, we measure the share of children’s lifetime during which parents were away from home. We instrument this measure of parental absence with weather changes in their home villages when parents were aged 16–25, when they were most likely to initiate migration. Results show a sizable adverse effect of exposure to parental migration on the health and education outcomes of children: in particular, boys. We also find that the use of the contemporaneous measure for parental migration in previous studies is likely to underestimate the effect of exposure to parental migration on children’s outcomes.     

The COVID‐19 Pandemic and Families in Japan

This paper, which is authored by members of the Japanese Association of Family Therapy (JAFT), describes the COVID‐19 pandemic in Japan from a family systems perspective. The authors are active members of JAFT and include current and past presidents and officers. We describe the course of the pandemic and the ways in which government policies to mitigate the pandemic have affected Japanese families. Challenges that affect Japanese families include the inability to participate in family and social rituals, prescribed gender roles that specifically affect women, high suicide rates, and prejudice against those who are at risk of spreading the infection. The need to shelter in place has also forced family homes to function as a workplace for parents, classrooms for children, and day care services for frail elders, which has resulted in psychological distress among individuals and conflicts among families. We discuss ways that therapists have worked with Japanese families using online therapy.     

Rebuilding Relationships in a Transgender Family: The Stories of Parents of Japanese Transgender Children

This study considers the process by which parents accept their transgender children through an analysis of the stories of parents in Japan. The study also considers how the gender identity of parents is affected by their child and the discourses related to queer identities. The mothers were strongly motivated to understand their child and reconstructed the image and life stories of the child. Through these processes, the mothers came to reconsider their own gender identities in queer ways. In contrast, the fathers had a lack of motivation to understand their child, and their masculinity was not significantly influenced by deessentialism.     

Optimal Augmentation of a 2-Vertex-Connected Multigraph to a k-Edge-Connected and 3-Vertex-Connected Multigraph

Given an undirected multigraph G = (V, E) and two positive integers and k, we consider the problem of augmenting G by the smallest number of new edges to obtain an -edge-connected and k-vertex-connected multigraph. In this paper, we show that the problem can be solved in Õ(mn²) time for any fixed and k = 3 if an input multigraph G is 2-vertex-connected, where n = |V| and m is the number of pairs of adjacent vertices in G.     

Inheritance of sex ratio in the Kanzawa spider mite,Tetranychus kanzawai Kishida

Summary The frequency distributions in sex ratios of offspring from 4 fieldTetranychus kanzawai populations were examined. No significant difference was observed between average sex ratios of the 4 populations, although there was a great variability within each population, especially in the population fromPueraia lobata. Using the population fromP. lobata, inbred lines with high (H) and low (L) sex ratios were selected. Crossing experiments between H and L showed that sex ratio is determined by the genotype of mothers. It seemed that sex ratio is cointrolled by several genes, with no cytoplasmic factor involved.     

Measuring Information Behavior: A Time Budget Survey in Japan

This paper discusses the results of a time budget survey which was conducted nationwide in Japan in 1995 on ‘information behavior’, that is, the amount of time people spent communicating and using information media ranging from conversations to computers. We propose a three-dimensional time budget survey as a method for measuring information behavior in actual life. The method classifies information behavior into 24 categories and measures them with respect to three factors, i.e. time, location and purpose of behavior. Our survey revealed that the total time spent on information behavior was about seven hours per day, of which about 45% was spent watching TV. The displacement effect of PC use on TV watching was estimated by a “time-shift matching” design. The results demonstrated that use of a PC does not significantly affect TV viewing, despite a large difference in TV viewing time between PC users and non-users.     

Transnational regimes of labor and statelessness: Intersections of citizenship regimes and local norms in East and Southeast Asia

This article offers a review of the literature on transnational labor regimes and statelessness to pursue further theorization from East and Southeast Asian contexts. The main focus is on how local norms (local sense of belonging, local moral code, and local hierarchies) are entangled with national‐level citizenship regimes to legitimate the discrimination of certain people to be statelessness and secure low‐wage migrant workers for the new global labor regime. First, traditional literature on citizenship and statelessness was reviewed; binary theoretical frameworks (including citizens/excluding non‐citizens) based on political recognition were indicated as the main limitations. Second, recent theories arguing for an intersection between national citizenship regimes and a new global labor regime were reviewed. Third, recent theories that illuminate the importance of local contexts in determining citizens' rights were reviewed based on formal exclusion and informal inclusion as well as formal inclusion and informal exclusion. Finally, it was concluded that further theorization is needed on how citizenship regimes and local norms intersect to produce statelessness, securing low‐wage migrant workers for the global labor regime through the global assemblages approach. Through the paper, East and Southeast Asia were illuminated as potentially fruitful research sites for further theorization on the topic.     

The economic policy mix, policy cooperation, and protectionism: Some aspects of macroeconomic interdependence among the United States, Japan, and other OECD countries

In this paper we examine the macroeconomic interdependence of Japan and the United States using the McKibbin-Sachs global (MSG) simulation model of the world economy. Our goal is to determine how shifts in macroeconomic policies in the United States or Japan affect the other country as well as the rest of the world. In particular, we examine the following three issues: (1) the likely macroeconomic ramifications for the United States, Europe, and Japan of significant budget cuts in the United States; (2) the macroeconomic implications of a protectionist tariff imposed by the United States; and (3) the scope for policy coordination among the United States, Japan, and Europe.     

Development of the Movements Impressions Emotions Model: Evaluation of Movements and Impressions Related to the Perception of Emotions in Dance

The purpose of this study is to specify the characteristics that contribute to the perception of emotions expressed through dance movements and to develop an emotional model to show the relationships between impressions and the characteristics of expressive body movements. Six dancers expressed three different emotions through dance: joy, sadness, and anger. Observers (N = 192) rated both their impressions (33 dimensions) and the dance movements (26 characteristics) of 18 dance performances. The results showed that the observers could accurately perceive the emotional meanings expressed in the dances. The impressions of Dynamics, Expansion, and Stability—and the evaluated movements of Frequency and Velocity of Upward Extension, Frequency and Velocity of Downward Movements, Turning or Jumping, and Body Closing—were extracted via factor analysis as determinants of observers’ impressions of emotional expressions in dance. Additionally, covariance structure analysis and discriminant function analysis indicated that the emotional expressions of the dances expressing joy, sadness, and anger are each associated with particular factors. Through these analyses, we developed the Movements Impressions Emotions Model for dance.     

Ecological restoration of a fragmented urban shrine forest in southeastern Hyogo Prefecture,Japan: Initial effects of the removal of invasive <Emphasis Type="Italic">Trachycarpus fortunei</Emphasis>

We investigated the species composition of a fragmented forest in Nishinomiya Shrine, southeastern Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Two escaped ornamental species, Trachycarpus fortunei and Ligustrum lucidum, and bird-dispersed deciduous trees were invading the evergreen broadleaf forest. Invasive and bird-dispersed deciduous species were most abundant along the outer edge of the forest. In 2005, restoration measures were taken to remove all individuals of T. fortunei from the forest. We estimated that, biomass density and leaf area index (LAI, leaf area per unit ground area) of T. fortunei were 0.23 kg m⁻² and 0.77, respectively, which accounted for 8.9% and 27.9% of the biomass density and LAI, respectively, of the entire forest. After removal, canopy openness increased in the understory. However, the understory lacked seedlings and saplings of native species, indicating that active re-vegetation may be needed to accelerate reestablishment of native species in areas that were heavily invaded by T. fortunei. This study represents one of the first examples of active vegetation management in shrine/temple forests in Japan.