On 6 August 1945, I was exposed to radiation in Hiroshima during the atomic bombing. At that time I was 15 years old, a third-year junior high school student, and working at a factory in Hiroshima under the wartime student mobilization plan. A total of 201 people from my school (13 teachers and 188 students) were killed outright in the bombing. I narrowly escaped death, but suffered from radiation sickness for many years afterwards. At one point, my white blood cell (...) count dropped sharply, endangering my life.When I chose painting as my vocation, I decided to put on canvas my prayer for world peace that stems from my experience in Hiroshima. In 1959, I painted Arrival of Buddhism, a picture depicting the 17-year-long journey to India of Xuanzang (600–664), a Chinese priest during the Tang Dynasty, in search of enlightenment. This work made my name known as a painter among the general public. (shrink)

没後250年になる安藤昌益。カント、ゲーテ、ヴォルテール、ルイ16世らとの対話から明らかになる農と生命に対する讃歌の思想。.

We show that any relational generic structure whose theory has finite closure and amalgamation over closed sets is stable CM-trivial with weak elimination of imaginaries.

We show that any relational generic structure whose theory has finite closure and amalgamation over closed sets is stable CM-trivial with weak elimination of imaginaries.

In this paper, we examine some of the ways in which Koizumi Junichiro took advantage of changes in television news to win the 2001 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election and become prime minister of Japan. Koizumi adopted a strategy of political populism to increase his exposure in the media and develop a public reputation. Changes in the LDP selection procedure, in combination with long-term social and economic change and political reform, meant that the media mattered more to his campaign (...) than had previously been the case. We use data from the Japan Election Study II (JES II) to show that the effects of Koizumi' media-driven popularity and style of politics reversed the LDP' electoral fortunes in the Upper House Election in 2001. (shrink)

This short note analyzes how the public in Japan evaluates the performance of the cabinet and the two major parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party of Japan (DP), and their impacts on the 2000 House of Representatives election held on 25 June.

One year ago the Japanese people pinned their hopes on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The figure shows public support ratings for the Koizumi cabinet as measured by periodic JiJi opinion surveys: He enjoyed a stellar 72.8% support rate immediately after taking office, and this climbed even higher to break the 78.4% mark the following month. Compared with the dismal 9.6% support for the cabinet of his predecessor, Mori Yoshirô (April 2000–April 2001), right before he bowed out, these sky-high numbers make (...) it clear just how much faith the people were placing in the new administration. (shrink)

On 30 June 1994 the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ, formerly the Japan Socialist Party) joined its historic enemy, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to form a coalition government in a Japanese equivalent of Italy's . Competition between the conservative LDP and the progressive socialists had defined the Japanese party system since 1955. In this paper we analyze voter reactions to this and other confusing events surrounding the end of the LDP's 38-year dominance. We find, first, that the Japanese (...) electorate was able to make sense of these events. The political space reflected in public opinion mapped the political space reflected in the mass media remarkably well. Secondly, our findings support the idea that attitudes toward political parties are endogenous to the political process: strategic moves by political actors alter the political space within which they maneuver. Coalitions of strange bedfellows force voters to revise their perceptions of political space and reevaluate their attitudes toward the actors involved. Strange bedfellows seemed less strange, friendlier after they had been seen in bed together. (shrink)

As humans, we constantly change our movement strategies to adapt to changes in physical functions and the external environment. We have to walk very slowly in situations with a high risk of falling, such as walking on slippery ice, carrying an overflowing cup of water, or muscle weakness owing to aging or motor deficit. However, previous studies have shown that a normal gait pattern at low speeds results in reduced efficiency and stability in comparison with those at a normal speed. (...) Another possible strategy is to change the gait pattern from normal to step-to gait, in which the other foot is aligned with the first swing foot. However, the efficiency and stability of the step-to gait pattern at low speeds have not been investigated yet. Therefore, in this study, we compared the efficiency and stability of the normal and step-to gait patterns at intermediate, low, and very low speeds. Eleven healthy participants were asked to walk with a normal gait and step-to gait on a treadmill at five different speeds, ranging from very low to normal walking speed. The efficiency parameters and stability parameters were analyzed from the motion capture data and then compared for the two gait patterns. The results suggested that step-to gait had a more efficient gait pattern at very low speeds of 10–30 m/min, with a larger percent recovery, and was more stable at 10–60 m/min in comparison with a normal gait. However, the efficiency of the normal gait was better than that of the step-to gait pattern at 60 m/min. Therefore, step-to gait is effective in improving gait efficiency and stability when faced with situations that force us to walk slowly or hinder quick walking because of muscle weakness owing to aging or motor deficit along with a high risk of falling. (shrink)

Continuing work of Baldwin and Shi 1), we study non-ω-saturated generic structures of the ab initio Hrushovski construction with amalgamation over closed sets. We show that they are CM-trivial with weak elimination of imaginaries. Our main tool is a new characterization of non-forking in these theories.

To further develop three-dimensional (3D) applications, it is important to elucidate the negative effects of 3D applications on the human body and mind. Thus, this study investigated differences in the effects of visual fatigue on cognition and brain activity using visual and auditory tasks induced by watching a 1-h movie in two dimensions (2D) and 3D. Eighteen young men participated in this study. Two conditions were randomly performed for each participant on different days, namely, watching the 1-h movie on television (...) in 2D (control condition) and 3D (3D condition). Before and after watching the 1-h movie on television, critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF: an index of visual fatigue), and response accuracy and reaction time for the cognitive tasks were determined. Brain activity during the cognitive tasks was evaluated using a multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy system. In contrast to the control condition, the decreased CFF, and the lengthened reaction time and the decreased activity around the right primary somatosensory cortex during Go/NoGo blocks in the visual task at post-viewing in the 3D condition were significant, with significant repeated measures correlations among them. Meanwhile, in the auditory task, the changes in cognitive performance and brain activity during the Go/NoGo blocks were not significant in the 3D condition. These results suggest that the failure or delay in the transmission of visual information to the primary somatosensory cortex due to visual fatigue induced by watching a 3D movie reduced the brain activity around the primary somatosensory cortex, resulting in poor cognitive performance for the visual task. This suggests that performing tasks that require visual information, such as running in the dark or driving a car, immediately after using a 3D application, may create unexpected risks in our lives. Thus, the findings of this study will help outlining precautions for the use of 3D applications. (shrink)

東アジア世界のなかで日本思想史はいかに構築できるか...古代から現代までを網羅した概説、待望の増補版。.

Ant colony optimization, which is one of the metaheuristics imitating real ant foraging behavior, is an effective method to find a solution for the traveling salesman problem. The rank-based ant system has been proposed as a developed version of the fundamental model AS of ACO. In the ASrank, since only ant agents that have found one of some excellent solutions are let to regulate the pheromone, the pheromone concentrates on a specific route. As a result, although the ASrank can find (...) a relatively good solution in a short time, it has the disadvantage of being prone falling into a local solution because the pheromone concentrates on a specific route. This problem seems to come from the loss of diversity in route selection according to the rapid accumulation of pheromones to the specific routes. Some ACO models, not just the ASrank, also suffer from this problem of loss of diversity in route selection. It can be considered that the diversity of solutions as well as the selection of solutions is an important factor in the solution system by swarm intelligence such as ACO. In this paper, to solve this problem, we introduce the ant system using individual memories aiming to improve the ability to solve TSP while maintaining the diversity of the behavior of each ant. We apply the existing ACO algorithms and ASIM to some TSP benchmarks and compare the ability to solve TSP. (shrink)

Social Conformity and Response Bias Revisited: The Influence of "Others" on Japanese Respondents This study was undertaken to investigate the impact of other respondents' answers on individual responses in survey studies. The study employed four different conditions and manipulated the direction and the level of social pressure. The results have confirmed that social desirability bias hugely impacts individual answers. It was found that respondents are seven times more likely to choose a socially unacceptable option if majority of the preceding respondents (...) also have chosen the same option. Additionally, the existence of an interviewer during data collection was found to be a factor pressuring respondents to give more socially acceptable responses. (shrink)

While changes in response to the different stages of the pandemic remain unknown, this study investigated the longitudinal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on depressive symptoms in Japanese university students and identified factors associated with new onset of depression and suicidal ideation. Two surveys were conducted at one university in Akita, Japan, during the first COVID-19 outbreak period and 1 year later. Moderate depressive symptoms were defined as a Patient Health Questionnaire-9 score ≥ 10 and suicide-related ideation score ≥ 1 (...) on question 9 of the questionnaire. Among 985 students who completed surveys in T1 and T2, participants with moderate depressive symptoms and suicide-related ideation increased from 11 to 17% and from 5.8 to 11.8%, respectively. Among 872 students at risk after excluding those with moderate depressive symptoms at T1, 103 students developed moderate depressive symptoms at T2. Among the 928 students at risk, after excluding those who had suicidal ideation at T1, 79 developed suicidal ideation. Multivariate logistic modeling revealed financial insecurity and academic performance as risk factors, while having someone to consult about worries was a coping factor for depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. Our findings demonstrated that socioenvironmental factors may determine depressive symptoms of university students. (shrink)