• Yuka Minagawa Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, Tokyo

• Sawako Shirahase Director of TCJS

Compared to a large volume of work on the physical health of the Japanese population, relatively little is known about their mental health status. This is because the physical and mental health literatures remain largely separate, leaving it unclear as to how they are related to overall population health. Guided by Veenhoven’s (1996) conceptual framework of negative and positive health, this study examines the relationship between mental and physical health status among Japanese men and women. A special focus is placed upon variations, if any, by gender and age.

Yuka Minagawa is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan. Her research program is focused on the social causation of health and mortality in Japan and the former Soviet republics, with particular attention given to gender differences in these patterns. She is also involved in research examining how support and strain occurring in family life affect women’s physical and mental health status in Japan.