Estimate of the Number of International Children in Japan, Based on Trends in Intermarriage

Abstract  This paper focuses on international children (that is, children whose parents have different nationalities) in Japanese society. Using statistics on intermarriage in Japan between 1965 and 1990, we project the numbers of such children from 1991 to 2000. The important findings are summarized below:
1. There were estimated 165,000 international children under the age of 21 in Japan as of 1991. The number will increase to 528,000 by the end of the century if the intermarriage rate continues to increase as it has recently, but this will still represent less than 2% of the Japanese population under 21.
2. By the year 2000 roughly 75% of these will be children of foreign mothers, due to the rapid increase in marriages between Japanese grooms and foreign brides.
3. The number of children with dual nationality continues to remain much lower in Japan than advanced countries in Europe, despite concern expressed when the Nationality Law was revised in 1985. The number of children born to international couples in Japan is surprisingly small with respect to the number of international marriages, so a dramatic increase is not likely.     

Critical review and comparison of continuity correction methods: The normal approximation to the binomial distribution

We provide a comprehensive and critical review of Yates’ continuity correction for the normal approximation to the binomial distribution, in particular emphasizing its poor ability to approximate extreme tail probabilities. As an alternative method, we also review Cressie's finely tuned continuity correction. In addition, we demonstrate how Yates’ continuity correction is used to improve the coverage probability of binomial confidence limits, and propose new confidence limits by applying Cressie's continuity correction. These continuity correction methods are numerically compared and illustrated by data examples arising from industry and medicine.     

Profile likelihood approaches for semiparametric copula and frailty models for clustered survival data

ABSTRACT

In clustered survival data, the dependence among individual survival times within a cluster has usually been described using copula models and frailty models. In this paper we propose a profile likelihood approach for semiparametric copula models with different cluster sizes. We also propose a likelihood ratio method based on profile likelihood for testing the absence of association parameter (i.e. test of independence) under the copula models, leading to the boundary problem of the parameter space. For this purpose, we show via simulation study that the proposed likelihood ratio method using an asymptotic chi-square mixture distribution performs well as sample size increases. We compare the behaviors of the two models using the profile likelihood approach under a semiparametric setting. The proposed method is demonstrated using two well-known data sets.     

Olympic Films and Public Memory

How is our memory of mega‐events structured? This article investigates the relationship between cinema and the Olympic Games. To this end, it first unravels the historical origins of the strong link between the two, as both are symbolic products of the 20th century. The Olympics reaffirm the image of the modern nation‐state; the cinematic medium visually represents the Games as spectacle. Leni Riefenstahl's film, Olympia (1938), recorded at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, supplies the most enduring imagery of this type. In addition to Riefenstahl's thoughts and methods, this study delves into Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad (1965), which was influenced by Olympia. Ichikawa's film, which reflects his artistry and showcases his various skills, won critical acclaim and, intriguingly, precipitated the “document or art” controversy that involved the Japanese state and the mass media. Whether document or work of art, this film has supplied the public with imagery for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games—various images that most of us recognize—and thereby played a key role in constituting our memory of them. Therefore, our experience of the Games is a mediated experience through the construction of our public memory. Our memory culture is composed of “prosthetic memories” that are technologically assembled through cinema and act as Freudian “screen memories.”     

Career Education in Japan: Its Current Status and Condition

The Japanese vocational, or career, guidance movement dates back to 1915 and derives largely from advances and developments in the United States system of vocational guidance. Extracurricular or social welfare activities in the U.S. initially spawned vocational guidance efforts and programming in Japan. Subsequently, the Japanese Ministry of Education included vocational guidance in its primary curriculum as early as 1920. At that time, graduates of Japanese educational programs received placement guidance services. By the decade spanning 1930 to 1940, however, policies resulting from the war between Japan and China, as well as from World War II interrupted vocational guidance programming established in educational settings. In 1947, on the heels of the recently ended war, the Japanese Constitution, the Fundamental Law of Education, and the School Education Law were established to regularize the 6-3-3-4 school system. Specifically, the Japanese Constitution prescribed “freedom of vocational choice,” the Fundamental Law of Education advanced the “idea of personal accomplishment,” and the School of Education Law (Article 36, 42) decreed that a primary purpose of the secondary school concerned cultivating students' abilities to make career decisions. In support of this decree, the Ministry of Education published a Course of Study in 1949, which directly addressed vocational guidance in the schools. Moreover, by 1953 vocational guidance educators appeared in secondary schools and in 1958 the term career guidance replaced vocational guidance consequent to the School of Education Law.     

How to Build an Intentional Android: Infants' Imitation of a Robot's Goal‐Directed Actions

This study examined whether young children are able to imitate a robot's goal‐directed actions. Children (24–35 months old) viewed videos showing a robot attempting to manipulate an object (e.g., putting beads inside a cup) but failing to achieve its goal (e.g., beads fell outside the cup). In 1 video, the robot made eye contact with a human before and after it failed the action. In another video, the robot did not make eye contact with the human adult. Only in the former condition did children “imitate” the robot's “intended” but unconsummated actions (e.g., putting beads inside a cup). When the robot did not make eye contact, children performed poorly, at the baseline level. These results suggest that human‐like gaze behaviors, not human‐like morphology, may play an important role in young children's imitation of a nonhuman agent's goal‐directed behaviors.     

Multivariate normal distribution approaches for dependently truncated data

Many statistical methods for truncated data rely on the independence assumption regarding the truncation variable. In many application studies, however, the dependence between a variable X of interest and its truncation variable L plays a fundamental role in modeling data structure. For truncated data, typical interest is in estimating the marginal distributions of (L, X) and often in examining the degree of the dependence between X and L. To relax the independence assumption, we present a method of fitting a parametric model on (L, X), which can easily incorporate the dependence structure on the truncation mechanisms. Focusing on a specific example for the bivariate normal distribution, the score equations and Fisher information matrix are provided. A robust procedure based on the bivariate t-distribution is also considered. Simulations are performed to examine finite-sample performances of the proposed method. Extension of the proposed method to doubly truncated data is briefly discussed.     

R routines for performing estimation and statistical process control under copula-based time series models

Modeling serial dependence in time series is an important step in statistical process control. We provide a set of automatic routines useful for simulating and analyzing time series under a copula-based serial dependence. First, we introduce routines that generate time series data under a given copula. Second, we provide fully automated routines for obtaining maximum likelihood estimates for given time series data and then drawing a Shewhart-type control chart. Finally, real data are analyzed for illustration. We make the routines available as “Copula.Markov” package in R.     

Comparative Political Economy of Long‐Term Care for Elderly People: Political Logic of Universalistic Social Care Policy Development

Despite there being common socio‐demographic pressures across advanced industrialized countries, the public elder care programmes therein tend to vary. While the current literature on social care devotes itself to describing the care arrangements of each country and pigeonholing welfare/gender regime types, it does not sufficiently address this empirical puzzle. This study looks to specify the causal relationship between political institutions and public long‐term care programmes. It argues that countries with personal‐vote‐oriented electoral systems and/or fragmented party systems have difficulties in developing universalistic public elder care programmes, whereas countries with party‐vote‐oriented electoral systems and cohesive party systems are likely to develop generous elder care programmes. For whilst the former types of political institutions prioritize patronage‐based, particularistic benefits, the latter types encourage political actors to appeal to broader constituencies through universalistic welfare programmes. This study tests this claim by examining pooled time‐series and cross‐section data of advanced democracies, from 1980 until 2001. The empirical results suggest that politicians' reliance on personal votes and the fragmentation of ruling coalitions impede the expansion of public spending for elder care.     

Relation between exploitation and production in experimental populations ofPoecilia reticulata

Summary In order to make researches on the effect of exploitation upon fish populations, six populations of guppy were maintained during a period of 331 weeks under conditions of space, light, temperature, pH, and food controlled as much as possible. The six populations were divided into three groups two by two: a control group without exploitation, a 10% rate of exploitation group and a 20 and 33% rate of exploitation group. All the populations repeated an increase and a decrease in number and in biomass about once a year. The exploitation affected the age composition in the populations: in the non-exploited population adults occupied the largest part, and the more intensive the exploitation the larger the part fry occupied. The exploitation decreased the biomass of exploited populations, but productivity increased with increasing of of rate of exploitation. The relationship between adult and fry could be represented byRicker's reproduction curve. The form of the curve was changed by an intensity of exploitation. It was thought that exploitation acts as a preventer of aging of populations by removing old fish and results increasing number of fry and productivity.