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Paper short abstract

This presentation focuses on Japan’s position in the emerging landscape of children’s rights by examining the national reception of the transnational children’s rights movement, particularly with regard to the 1924 Geneva Declaration.

Paper long abstract

The first part of this presentation will cover the Meiji period and the emergence of the issue of child abuse through the beginning of awareness of the problem, through calls for action and the taking of responsibility by an individual who conducted a survey of prisoners in a prison, linking delinquency and abuse in childhood. The issue of child abuse was brought to public attention through the prism of prevention, with the aim of protecting society as a whole from delinquency and crime, rather than with the aim of taking children's rights into account, as is the case today.

The second part will focus on the Taishō period and the emergence of the problem of child abuse in the public eye and the urgency of the situation, which was highlighted at the time. In addition to a change in the categories of child abuse, which now included sexual violence, research conducted by Japanese members, comparing Japan and England in terms of the handling of child abuse, was decisive in the establishment of child protection measures that followed shortly afterwards. These years marked a change, initiated by attempts at regulation by various actors, and the preconditions for the implementation of policies that emerged a few years later.

Finally, the last part will focus on the beginning of the Shōwa period and the creation of child protection, as well as the establishment of a legal framework, which was not without difficulties. In these three parts, we will see how civil society and various actors influenced the landscape of the fight against child abuse, enabling the development of not only a legal framework, but also social services tailored to a vulnerable and needy population, namely children. We will thus see more broadly how the subject of sexual violence against children itself has been understood and how the framework for combating child abuse has been formed through the creation of child protection.

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Paper short abstract

Nishinari/Kamagasaki is re-theorized as a “service hub” enabling survival at the margins. The paper theorizes “gap institutions”: patching formal welfare, building networked supports, and formalizing them through deliberative forums - producing inclusion, but also sorting and temporal discipline.

Paper long abstract

Nishinari/Kamagasaki has recently been re-theorized locally not as a “problematic district” to be corrected, but as a “Nishinari-type service hub” – a concentration of practices and institutions that make survival administratively possible for people living at the edge of work, kinship, and documentation. This paper develops an anthropological account of that hub-making through a vernacular governance concept articulated as “gap institutions” (隙間の制度).

“Gap institutions” name a three-part craft of welfare infrastructure. First, local actors modify access to formal programs – “putting geta on” existing system/institution (制度) so that people can “step into” them despite eligibility frictions. Second, they build district-specific supports (ささえあいのしくみ) that are inseparable from dense local networks – e.g., supportive housing paired with multi-actor support coordination. Third, they refuse to leave these supports in the informal “valley”, instead pushing them toward recognition and resourcing as proper system/institution.

Methodologically, the paper reads “service hub” capacity not as an abstract policy label but as a politics of repeated agreement-making: governance forums and deliberative bodies designed to “ferment consent” over time, including a forum method operating since 1999 and other meeting architectures that coordinate residents’ associations, worker-support groups, and facility planning.

In conversation with scholarship on the institutional remaking of urban marginality in Japan, the paper argues that Nishinari’s hub is best understood as an infrastructure of inclusion-by-patching – a continuous labor of stitching together eligibility, housing, care, and everyday addressability, while also producing new forms of sorting and temporal discipline.

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Paper short abstract

AI applications have been introduced in various municipalities in Japan with the promise to give advice on child protection, elderly care, disability support or healthcare. This leads to the question to what extend does AI technology improve and secure the access to welfare services on local level.

Paper long abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an emerging technology evokes manifold hopes, expectations, and concerns across various disciplines. The practical application of AI technologies increasingly intersects with various social contexts in Japan, among them is the field of welfare services. AI applications have been introduced in various municipalities in Japan with the promise to provide orientation and advice on topics like child protection, elderly care, disability support or healthcare. Among local communities and other facilities these AI applications are presented as tools for receiving advice, raising efficiency, or improving decision-making for persons in charge. This leads to the question in which ways and to what extend does AI technology improve and secure the access to welfare services on local level. A quantitative newspaper analysis among articles of the Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun between Jul 2023 till Jun 2025 shows that the topic of AI in reference to health, care and disability support topics receive continuous attention. In contrast, the attention for AI technology in reference to childcare and child protection related topics have surged particularly since Jan 2025. This paper choses analytical approaches from the field of STS and welfare studies to shed light on critical aspects of AI and intersections of welfare service provision in modern society. It intends to deepen the quantitative insights of the newspaper analysis by furthering the study with a qualitative case study on AI welfare service applications in Shinagawa ward in Tokyo and other municipalities.