The Editors: György Széll, Prof. em. Dr. sc. pol., is the Director of the Japan Research Centre at the University of Osnabrück (Germany). He was Vicepresident of the German-Japanese Society for Social Sciences, and is fellow of the EU Institute in Japan, Tokyo Consortium. Ute Széll, doctorate in literature and history, is a fellow at the Institute for the Cultural History of Early Modern Times at the University of Osnabrück.

• Contents: György Széll/Ute Széll: Preface – György Széll: Quality of Life and Working Life in Comparison – Peter Hennicke: Increasing Resource Productivity: A Win-Win Strategy to Protect Resources, Climate and Jobs? – Carmen Schmidt: The Changing Institutional Framework for Local Democracy in Japan – Takashi Namba: Problems with the Municipal Mergers in the Kiso (Nagano) Area – Eiichi Kido: Militarization in Japan and Germany – Yasuko Ishikawa: The Global Conference on Article 9 to Abolish War in Japan – Tetsuji Senoo: Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) – Carola Hommerich: What is Important in a Job? Work Values amongst Entrants to the Labour Market in Germany and Japan since the 1980s – Carolina Paulsen: Institutional and Cultural Influences on Employment Behaviour of Elderly People in Germany and Japan – Yoshinori Nishijima: Concepts of Labour-Related Words in German and Japanese: Comparing Lexical Semantics – Detlev Ehrig/Uwe Staroske: Are Services a Remedy for Labour Market Problems? Empirical Trends of the Service Sectors in Germany and Japan – Raimund Bleischwitz/Bettina Bahn-Walkowiak: Japan and Europe at the Resource-Efficiency Frontier – Takanori Hayashi: The Role of Carbon-contained Materials in a Sustainable Society – Shuji Yamada: Challenges for a Sustainable Society on the Municipal Level – Thomas Hackenfort: Beyond Ethnocentric Beliefs: Distinctions and Similarities between Japanese and German Concepts of Architectural Quality – Mototaka Mori: Imagining and Imagineering Tokyo: Asking with and to the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2016 – Yuichiro Minami: Comparison of the Agents in the City Formation in East and West: A Supplement to Max Weber’s Typology of Cities – Helmut Gross: Revisited: Toynbee on China and Japan versus the West (1600-1995) – Helmut Loiskandl: ‘Quality of Life’ and Christianity in Japan: Notes on some Aspects of Cultural Globalization – Paul G. Schmitz: Concepts of Love and Life Satisfaction: Comparing Students from Japan and Germany – David Georgi: Quality of Life and Family Planning – Stefan Hochstadt: ‘Peripheralisation’, ‘Dualisation’ and ‘Demographisation’ as Evidence of a Paradigm Shift – Dennis Köhler: Artificially Enlightened Urban Spaces at Night: A Matter of Special Importance for Liveable Cities – Naoko Eizawa: Creative Challenges against Depopulation: Basic Requirements for Sustainability in a Community where its Existence is Threatened – David Chiavacci: Immigration and ‘Gap Society’ in Japan: Are Foreign Workers a New Underclass? – Gisela Trommsdorff: Indicators for Quality of Life and Working Life in Germany and Japan: A Culture-psychological Perspective – Hans-Joachim Kornadt: Quality of Life and Happiness: Transculturally Comparable?