Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS), which had been designed by Zung in 1965,was first translated into Japanese and fully studied by Fukuda in 1973. After statistical examination of the results, Fukuda concluded that SDS would be also useful for Japanese people.The author, translated SDS into Japanese by himself and has applied it, since 1970 at Toyosato Hospital to 54 out- and in-patients who were in neurotic and/or depressive state. As the result, it was found that the mean values of raw depressive score were almost identical to Fukuda's results in normal control subjects as well as in the patients mentioned above. Statistically no significant difference was found in the results between the author and Fukuda as far as the raw scores were concerned.The raw scores in the normal control group were significantly lower in both the author's and Fukuda's results as compared with those of Zung. A possible explanation of hte difference found in these normal subjects between U.S.A. and Japan, was made by the author exclusively from the transcultural viewpoint. He pointed out that the questions # 17 and # 20 in this scale were not adequate to the Japanese in detecting depressino and that these seemed to be a great difference between Japanese and Ameriacn with regard to their response to the wording such as "enjoy sex" and "suicide" due to their different backgrounds. Furth-ermore, after having madeseveral examinations of his results, the author considered that it was necessary to have a kind of reliability score in SDS such as was generally included in personality inventory.Thus the author concluded that, on the contrary to Fukuda's opinion, the current SDS seemed to be of little use for the Japanese and that a new Self-Rating Depressino Scale should be originated which was more fitting for the Japanese.