This article explores the question of how malaria “ends” in Myanmar, since malaria has been categorized both as an epidemic and as being endemic on seemingly countless occasions. The example of malaria reveals some of the limitations of understanding a disease within a single category of experience, such as an “epidemic.” In the case of malaria, epidemic is a shifting term that is best understood as being the point at which health authorities decide to intervene in the disease, rather than (...) as a clear and absolute measure of the scale or intensity of the threat. The identification of malaria as epidemic may thus be better understood as a political choice rather than as a precisely defined medical category. This article thus discusses what it means to end malaria in Myanmar, what kind of ending has been envisaged, and by whom. As this article demonstrates, policy makers have at various points aimed for the “elimination,” “eradication,” and “control” of malaria. Unlike the local population, who seem to have a rather nonchalant attitude toward malaria since malaria has long been familiar to them, international partners and the government have been shaping the narrative toward elimination with the aim of obtaining the World Health Organization's malaria-free certificate. Despite a number of political, social, and environmental obstacles, they believe that elimination can be achieved by 2030. However, unexpected political events such as the military coup in 2021, as well as the emergence of another pandemic, demonstrates that the “end” of malaria is a fragile concept. (shrink)

Since the collapse of Japan's bubble economy in the early 1990' s, the Japanese economy has only recovered slightly. This has direct implications for employment. Both the seniority wage system and the lifetime employment system, which were popular during the period of economic growth in Japan, unavoidably changed to an outcome-wage system. Now there is greater mobility in employment, increased use of nonregular employees, and diversed working patterns. The problem of karoshi – a potentially fatal syndrome resulting from long work (...) hours – has been known since the early 1980s. This problem has become more serious in recent years. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the economic and employment conditions in Japan, as well as to examine the working lifestyle of Japanese men and its connection to "karoshi." It is argued that the long work hours are not the preference of individuals, but rather the result of the adaptation to the work environment, and; solving this problem requires re-conceptualization of workers' human rights on the part of both companies and the society as a whole. (shrink)

The Japanese marker _-te-i-_ can have progressive, resultative, and existential perfect readings and has often been regarded as ambiguous. This paper shows that there is no clear evidence that _-te-i-_ is ambiguous. It proposes a monosemous analysis of _-te-i-_ that unifies its multiple readings and shows how progressives and perfects can form a natural semantic class. Within the context of a Discourse Representation Theory, I propose that _-te-i-_ consists of an imperfective operator _-te-_ and a stativizer _-i-_. The imperfective operator (...) _-te-_ takes an eventuality as its argument and outputs a subpart of the eventuality, which precedes a reference time interval. Secondly, a stativizer _-i-_ maps the subpart of the eventuality, i.e. _-te-_'s output, onto a state which overlaps with reference time and whose category is semantically underspecified and is determined via pragmatic inferences. The vague output of the imperfective operator, i.e. whether it is a proper subpart or nonproper subpart of an eventuality, leads to the contrast between progressive readings and perfect readings of _-te-i-_. (shrink)

This book offers inspiration and support to female faculty members in higher education who are at various stages of their professional development. Twenty-four educators share both their intuitive voices and practical knowledge on the topics of career development, balancing personal and professional life, cultural and individual identity, and spirituality.

1. IntroductionHaving been adapted into a movie by Martin Scorsese in 2016, Silence is Shūsaku Endō’s most famous novel outside of Japan. Initially published in 1966, the novel is about seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries who secretly make a voyage to Japan in search of their spiritual Father who has reportedly renounced his faith after being tortured by local authorities. In his foreword to Endō’s Silence, Scorsese, a devout Catholic and long-standing admirer of Endō’s work, claims that the novel is “about the (...) particular and the general. And it is finally about the first overwhelming the second.”1 Not only did Endō acknowledge an inevitable conflict between experience and belief, but he also creatively adapted his faith for a different reality. Endō described Catholicism as “Western clothing my mother gave me,” which, throughout his life, he tried to tailor into a Japanese kimono that would fit him.2 Suffering from an unhappy marriage, his mother turned to Catholicism, and Endō followed her in this pursuit at the age of eleven. (shrink)

Tracing key biblical topics recurrent in Grotian and Hobbesian discourses on the church-state relationship, The Sovereign and the Prophetsexamines Spinoza's Old Testament interpretation in the Theologico-political Treatiseand elucidates his effort to establish what Hobbes could not adequately offer to the Dutch: the liberty to philosophize. Fukuoka develops an original method for understanding seventeenth-century biblical arguments as a shared political paradigm. Her in-depth analysis reveals the discourses that converged on the question, 'Who stands immediately under God to mediate His will to (...) the people?' This subtly nuanced theme not only linked major theoreticians diachronically--from the Remonstrants such as Grotius to the anti-Hobbesian jurist Ulrik Huber (1636-1694)--but also synchronically built the axis of resonances and dissonances between Leviathanand the Theologico-political Treatise. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ateleological moment of learning through imitation. In general, we can learn something new through imitating models we are given, which embody the values of our own society, culture and institutions. This means that imitation is understood in terms of the representation or reproduction of original models. In this understanding of imitation, however, the creative aspect of imitation is missed. In relation to this I shall, first, consider learning through imitation in terms (...) of Walter Benjamin’s theory of mimesis discussed in his essay, ‘On the Mimetic Faculty.’ It begins by examining general understanding of the concepts of experience and writing. Second and third, while reconsidering the idea of imitation, I shall bring out the difference between mimesis and copying, based on Plato and Aristotle, and I shall examine the former, especially its involuntary aspect. Fourth, in order to consider the ateleological moment of learning through imitation as mimesis, I discuss the relation between mimesis and the chance event. Fifth, Benjamin’s allegorical ‘anti-autobiography’ entitled ‘A Berlin Childhood around 1900’, which ponders the idea of childhood as otherness is considered in order to explore what is happening in the very moment of writing, driven by the chance event. To conclude, I shall show how the very moment of writing involves an unceasing transformation of the self. (shrink)

On April 5 2000, the Diet elected Yoshiro Mori as Japan's 55th prime minister. His predecessor, Keizo Obuchi, had suffered a stroke and became unable to carry out his official responsibility. Mori, who was the former Secretary General of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), inherited the three party coalition between the LDP, the new Komei Party and the Conservative Party, and reappointed all of Obuchi's cabinet members. Yohei Kono was reposted as the Minister of Foreign Affairs; Hideo Usui as (...) Justice; Kiichi Miyazawa as Finance; Hirofumi Nakasone as Education, Science and Technology; Yuya Niwa as Health and Welfare; Tokuichiro Tanazawa as Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; Takeshi Fukaya as International Trade and Industry; Toshihiro Nikai as Transport; Eita Yashiro as Posts and Telecommunications; Takamori Makino as Labor; Masaaki Nakayama as Construction; Kosuke Hori as Home Affairs, Mikio Aoki as Chief Cabinet Secretary; Kunihiro Tsuzuki as Management and Coordination; Tsutomu Kawara as Defense; Taichi Sakaiya as Economic Planning; Kayoko Shimizu as environment; and Sadakazu Tanigaki as Financial Reconstruction. (shrink)

The two target articles agree that processes of cultural evolution generate richness and diversity in music, but neither address this question in a focused way. We sketch one way to proceed – and hence suggest how the target articles differ not only in empirical claims, but also in their tacit, prior assumptions about the relationship between cognition and culture.

In almost 40 per cent of households in North America, dogs are kept as companion animals. Dogs may be man's best friends, but what are humans to dogs? If these animals' loyalty and unconditional love have won our hearts, why do we so often view closely related wild canids, such as foxes, wolves, and coyotes, as pests, predatory killers, and demons? Re-examining the complexity and contradictions of human attitudes towards these animals, Dog's Best Friend? looks at how our relationships with (...) canids have shaped and also been transformed by different political and economic contexts. Journeying from ancient Greek and Roman societies to Japan's Edo period to eighteenth-century England, essays explore how dogs are welcomed as family, consumed in Asian food markets, and used in Western laboratories. Contributors provide glimpses of the lives of street dogs and humans in Bali, India, Taiwan, and Turkey and illuminate historical and current interactions in Western societies. The book delves into the fantasies and fears that play out in stereotypes of coyotes and wolves, while also acknowledging that events such as the Wolf Howl in Canada's Algonquin Park indicate the emergence of new popular perspectives on canids. Questioning where canids belong, how they should be treated, and what rights they should have, Dog's Best Friend? reconsiders the concept of justice and whether it can be extended beyond the limit of the human species. (shrink)

First book-length investigation of modern Japanese political thought and IR with a focus on non-western and indigenous Asian practices of IR.

We examined amygdala subregion volumes in patients with a first episode of major depression and in healthy subjects. Covariate-adjusted linear regression was performed to compare the MD and healthy groups, and adjustments for age, gender, and total estimated intracranial volume showed no differences in amygdala subregion volumes between the healthy and MD groups. Within the MD group, we examined the association between amygdala subregion volume and the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression score and the HAMD subscale score, and found (...) no association in the left amygdala. In the right amygdala, however, there was an inverse linear association between the HAMD total and the HAMD core and lateral nucleus and anterior-amygdaloid-regions. Furthermore, an inverse linear association was seen between the HAMD psychic and the lateral nucleus, anterior-amygdaloid-regions, transition, and whole amygdala. The findings of this study suggest that the severity of MD and some symptoms of MD are associated with right amygdala volume. There have been few reports on the relationship between MD and amygdala subregional volume, and further research is needed to accumulate more data for further validation. (shrink)

São escassas as investigações sobre problemas internalizantes em adultos brasileiros. Estudos epidemiológicos apontam que ansiedade e depressão são mais comuns em mulheres. Este estudo apresenta uma investigação com 240 adultos de diferentes municípios da Região Metropolitana da Baixada Santista, com uso do Adult Self Report. Dados foram analisados por estatística descritiva e inferencial, considerando a variável sexo. Não foram encontradas diferenças significativas entre homens e mulheres da amostra em termos de problemas internalizantes, ansiedade/depressão, retraimento e queixas somáticas. Resultados são discutidos (...) à luz de dados epidemiológicos sobre transtornos mentais em outros recortes populacionais brasileiros. Ficam sugeridos novos estudos com ampliação de amostra. (shrink)