Status Inconsistency Trends and Their Sigificance in the Japanese Society, 1955-1975

The big social change toward levelling and equalizaton in the social stratification in postwar Japan is first referred as a general background, and then the presentation of results of empirical data analysis of status inconsistency trends based upon the Japanese 1955, 1965 and 1975 national surveys on Social Stratification and Mobility follows as the main part.Status inconsistency among three status varilables of education, occupational prestige and income is analyzed using two parallel methods : (1) status inconsistency score analysis and (2) cluster analysis.The central research findings are : (1) that the degree of status inconsistency has consistently increased in these twenty years, whichever method of analysis is used; (2) that according to the result of cluster analysis, the part of status inconsistency is bigger than that of status consistency in the Japanese society and the former has been consistently growing in these twenty years; (3) that the social attitude, such as subjective strata identification and political party support, of status inconsistent part stands generally in the middle between the two extremes of the high-consistent group and the low-consistent group. Lenski's thesis that status inconsistency generates frustration and anger and stimulates identification with progressive political parties cannot be supported by Japanese data.Authors interpret that status inconsistency is not an abnormal and unhealthy state, but rather an ordinary and natural state in highly industrialized and modernized societies, and that it is one of the important factors in realizing levelling and equalization in such societies.