Sociological Study of Sen'yu-kai.

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The subject of our research is sen'yu-kai. Sen'yu means war comrades in Japanese. Japanese ex-soldiers of the Pacific War have established the association called sen'yu-kai. Although thousands of sen'yukai have been established during postwar periods, they have had no national organization representing their economic, or political interests. In this sense sen'yu-kai is quite different from the American Legion in the United States or other ex-soldiers associations in general.The results of our research are summarized as follows.1 We sent questionnaires asking the present situation of each sen'yu-kai to 978 sen'yu-kai managers who had answered the questionnaires of our previous research (1978). 258 of 978 managers replied. The number of managers who had already died, and also the number of sen'yu-kai which had already broken up were greater than we had expected. Although the result shocked us, it may be regarded as a matter of course allowing for the 60 years that have passed since the Pacific War ended.2 In 2005 we conducted another sen'yu-kai research, where we sent to 3,625 sen'yu-kai managers the newly designed questionnaire asking how each sen'yu-kai came into being, in what course each sen'yu-kai have developed, what they thought was the essence of sen'yu-kai, and finally what opinion they had on the postwar Japan as a whole. 867 managers have replied. The answers show that they share almost no ideas on the war with the postwar Japanese society, and all the more so they come to regard their own sen'yukai and the bond between sen'yu (war comrades) as the most precious thing.