Swiss and Japanese villagers have learned the relative benefi ts and costs of privateproperty and communal-property institutions related to various types of land and uses of land. The villagers in both settings have chosen to retain the institution of communal property as the foundation for land use and similar important aspects of village economies.1..

The dilemma of whether and how to disclose a diagnosis of cancer or of any other terminal illness continues to be a subject of worldwide interest. We present the case of a 62-year-old Japanese woman afflicted with advanced gall bladder cancer who had previously expressed a preference not to be told a diagnosis of cancer. The treating physician revealed the diagnosis to the family first, and then told the patient: "You don't have any cancer yet, but if we (...) don't treat you, it will progress to a cancer". In our analysis, we examine the role of family consent, communication patterns (including ambiguous disclosure), and advance directives for cancer disclosure in Japan. Finally, we explore the implications for Edmund Pellegrino's proposal of "something close to autonomy" as a universal good. (shrink)

Many years the academic community has been discussing issues of a universal metalanguage as the general conceptual framework of modern social and humanitarian research, especially of philosophy. The article questions the claim that the language of Western philosophy was already accepted as a unified tool in the 20th century. The peculiarities of perception and further application of Western philosophical terminology in Japan in late 19th – first half of the 20th centuries are investigated here as a factual evidence base of (...) argumentation. Special attention is given to examples of translation and interpretation of some concepts of Western origin, such as metaphysics, ethics, logic, substance, subject, etc., as observed in the works of eminent thinkers Nishi Amane, Inoue Tetsujiro, Nishida Kitaro, and Watsuji Tetsuro. The paper provides examples of new original concepts developed by modern Japanese philosophers, such as Kimura Bin, Hiromatsu Wataru et al. The author concludes that the general conceptual framework that modern philosophy operates with is a very dynamic and open system, capable of transforming in different cultural contexts and in keeping with newly emerging issues that require analysis. The article identifies factors that provide philosophical communication between different cultures at the conceptual level, that is, the presence of a common circle of problems and presence of partial overlap between the key concepts. The author poses the problem of the emergence of new approaches and ideas in a situation of “conflicting interpretations,” or incomplete equivalence of similar notions when used by the parties in a dialogue, casting doubt on possibility, necessity and reasonability of exact reproduction of meanings and “complete domestication” in other cultures. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between diversification and energy security risks. It uses portfolio theory to conceptualise energy security as an insurance mechanism against disruptions to energy import markets. It provides quantitative measures of systematic and specific risks associated with Japanese energy imports during the period 1970—99. It suggests that Japan's policy of diversification of energy import sources has reduced specific risks, although fundamental changes in the political and economic structure of international energy and, in particular, oil markets have (...) also significantly reduced systematic risks. The article concludes that, despite their limitations, portfolio measures provide a much more theoretically and methodologically robust indicator of energy import security than traditional measures of dependence. (shrink)

Universities are increasingly part of wider geographical processes including international, national and sub-national actors. Universities now find themselves having to pay attention to many more political centres than before, as seen, for example, with research grants, assessments and teaching accreditation from transnational bodies, individual states and regional authorities. As an institution, the university constitutes a place which needs to be situated within a wider space and the geography of power-relations. This article traces these spatial developments in relation to recent policy (...) changes in the Japanese context. The current university reforms, set against the development of the globalising knowledge-based economy and regionalization of innovation policies, are examined in relation to the changing role of universities in multi-spacial innovation systems. (shrink)

Although scholars have long been interested in the relationships among civil society, the state and the market in advanced industrial democracies, the implications of state disengagement from the affairs of private firms for civil society have yet to be explored in the contemporary literature. My purpose in this essay has been to address this issue by examining the effects of deregulation on Japanese consumer society, paying particular attention to how legislative and bureaucratic changes in the wake of regulatory reform (...) have affected consumer relations with business and, more significantly, state actors. (shrink)

Japan has been facing with paradigm shift necessity in terms of the demographic structure, globalizing business and technology revolution, and as its consequence, also with deficiency of human resources with global literacy. The Japanese government has established a new strategy aiming to develop and foster “Global Human Resources” with high language and communication skills capable for international operations. Analyses of the literature on Japanese sociocultural behavioral characteristics and empirical case studies carried out in Poland with pragmatics approach (...) in this paper reveal that honorifics regarded as a technical layer of interaction management and Japanese habitus consisting of uchi/soto behavioral scheme, unique uchi-codex are causes of interaction failure. These features make Japanese uchi-group ethnocentric and almost impossible for a non-Japanese to assimilate themselves to the uchi-codex. Neither a foreign speaker’s high level of proficiency of the Japanese language nor their good knowledge on Japanese culture itself guarantee successful communication and interaction in the Japanese business sector without their practical ability and endeavors to apply this Japanese behavioral scheme even partially. The whole sociocultural and behavioral discrepancy or this incompatibility of Japanese behavioral scheme to other cultures seems to keep the Japanese away from achieving Human Resources with global literacy. (shrink)

This study considers food commercials featuring the term otona, meaning ‘adult, mature person’. Although the term is not explicitly gendered, this study demonstrates that food advertising using otona becomes a conduit for the construction of gendered lifestyle formulations via consumption practices offering consumers entrance into a range of gendered adult life stage practices. Unlike the socially aspirational consumption practices described by Agha, the consumption of inexpensive otona-marked products, which cost the same as their non-otona-marked counterparts but are intended by commercial (...) producers to be viewed by prospective consumers as more mature, is linked to the process of entering adulthood. However, whereas male performance of otona masculinity is shown in the commercials to be based on psychological maturity and economic and social independence, female performance of otona femininity is determined by the commercial producers and the product manufacturers to be based on successful performance of external beauty, sexuality and support of male social sphere members. This article shows how otona becomes a catch-all for aspirational gendered performance, arguing that terms like otona are particularly suited for normative gendered performance presentations. (shrink)

With the development of assisted reproductive technologies, medical, ethical, legal, and social issues have arisen that did not exist when natural conception was the only means of childbirth. In Japan, men tend to believe that assisted reproductive technologies are not directly related to them, with the literature showing that men are often reluctant to be involved in fertility treatment processes. To better understand this situation, this study analyzes the role of male consent during assisted reproductive technology procedures in Japan. First, (...) we examined Japanese court cases that dealt with issues related to male consent during assisted reproductive technology procedures and identified three situations in which problems related to male consent during such procedures may arise. Next, we analyzed the background of such issues and the implications of the lack of consent regarding men’s reproductive rights. Finally, we explored the need for legislation on assisted reproductive technologies. The study concludes that discussions on the scope of male partner rights in assisted reproductive technology procedures are key for minimizing unnecessary conflict between partners, thus ensuring both the rights of women who wish to have children and the welfare of their children. (shrink)

In _The Curious Case of the Camel in Modern Japan_, Ayelet Zohar addresses issues of Orientalism, colonialism, and exoticism in modern Japan, through images of camels – the epitome of Otherness, and a metonymy for Asia in the Japanese imagination.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 423-450.

How is a terminally ill patient treated by the surrounding people in the U.S. and Japan? How does a terminally ill patient decide on his or her own treatment? These questions will be examined in a study of intensive medical care, received by a terminally ill Japanese cancer patient in the U.S. and Japan. This casereflects the participant observation by a Japanese anthropologist for about 8 years in the United States and Japan on one patient who was hospitalized (...) in both countries on and off for about eight years. The objective of this study is to illuminate the different concept of personhood between the U.S. and Japan that appeared in different cultural practices of both countries and in the subject’s own decision making process. The significant differences appeared between theU.S. and Japan in the concepts of (1) science, (2) suffering, (3) Power of Attorney and Doisho (Consent Form), and (4) organized care. The interpretation of such differences indicates that seemingly universal practices across countries suggest cultural specific concepts and their management. Therefore, ethical norms appeared differently accordingly to each country. (shrink)

Almost no literature exists, both in Japanese and English, when it comes to the CSR activities of Japanese MNEs operating outside Japan, especially in developing countries. This exploratory research will try to fill this gap of literature by examining CSR activities of Japanese MNEs in one of the developing Asian countries, the Philippines.

This article examines the case of institutional inertia in Japanese financial regulation, focusing on the reasons why institutions centered on informal modes of organization and interaction proved particularly The Japanese case serves as a particularly tough test for theories of institutional adaptation and change because even crisis failed to produce timely institutional change. The paper argues that informal, exclusionary and opaque relational ties served as a functional substitute for formal regulation and promoted cooperative government-bank relationships in (...) an earlier period. Yet, when the informal attributes of the system began to impede the sound functioning of the financial system, the very opacity of these ties and the informational dynamics underlying them meant that the Diet and the general public were less than fully aware of the extent of dysfunction present as time went on. (shrink)

This paper does not attempt to breathe a new life into the sociology of literature. The real concern here is limited to making a possible contribution to the work conducted in Japanese language and literature departments by using the sociology of literature as a method. The discussion begins with a summary of the sociology of literature, merely to make clear the basic characteristics of the method developed by well-known intellectuals. Then the novel Botchan is taken as an example for (...) the suggested approach. (shrink)

The Japanese martial arts are suggested to the West, and to the Japanese themselves as `old'. They are less old than the suggestion and are, indeed, part of an attempt to make the Japanese suitably `samurai', in the first instance, so that an export of an image can take place in the second instance. Under outer shells and forms, however, something spiritual is indeed old, but people - Japanese and non-Japanese alike - have tended within (...) modernity to reify the shells and forms. (shrink)

BackgroundFew comparative studies of clinical ethics consultation practices have been reported. The objective of this study was to explore how American and Japanese experts analyze an Alzheimer's case regarding ethics consultation.MethodsWe presented the case to physicians and ethicists from the US and Japan (one expert from each field from both countries; total = 4) and obtained their responses through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews.ResultsEstablishing a consensus was a common goal among American and Japanese participants. In attempting (...) to achieve consensus, the most significant similarity between Japanese and American ethics consultants was that they both appeared to adopt an "ethics facilitation" approach. Differences were found in recommendation and assessment between the American and Japanese participants. In selecting a surrogate, the American participants chose to contact the grandson before designating the daughter-in-law as the surrogate decision-maker. Conversely the Japanese experts assumed that the daughter-in-law was the surrogate.ConclusionOur findings suggest that consensus building through an "ethics facilitation" approach may be a commonality to the practice of ethics consultation in the US and Japan, while differences emerged in terms of recommendations, surrogate assessment, and assessing treatments. Further research is needed to appreciate differences not only among different nations including, but not limited to, countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas, but also within each country. (shrink)

: Subpart D of 45 CFR 46 focuses on research involving children. Section 46.407 addresses research that is not otherwise approvable. The research is not otherwise approvable because either (1) it seeks to enroll healthy children, but offers no prospect of direct benefit and entails more than minimal risk; or (2) it seeks to enroll children with a disorder or condition, but offers no prospect of direct benefit and entails more than a minor increase over minimal risk. According to 46.407, (...) such research can be permissible if it is approved by a panel of experts. Prior to 2000, only two 407 panels had been convened, but in 2001, the Office for Human Research Protections received more than 20 protocols for 407 review. The first, entitled "Precursors to Diabetes in Japanese American Youth," serves here as a case study in human subject protections. (shrink)

This study examines the three major Japanese multinational corporate governance cases of the past decade: Sumitomo Copper, Daiwa Bank, and Mitsubishi Motors. The analysis focuses on three particular matters: Does senior management and the board exhibit a form of “disaster myopia”? Were there clear signs of the impending problems that were ignored? Is there anything distinctive that makes these cases Japanese in character? The first two questions are answered in the affirmative for all three firms, but only the (...) Mitsubishi case exhibits a peculiarly Japanese characteristic. (shrink)

Based on an empirical illustration of Onta pottery and more broadly a discussion of the Japanese Mingei movement, we study the intimacy between craft work, ethics and time. We conceptualize craft work through the temporal structure of tradition, to which we find three aspects: generational rhythms of making; cycles of use and re-use amongst consumers and a commitment to historically and naturally attuned communities. We argue these temporal structures of tradition in craftwork are animated by two contrasting but co-existing (...) ideas of the good: the moral and the ethical. By developing the work of Elizabeth Grosz, we conceptualize this distinction between moral and ethical as a temporal phenomenon, specifically in differing relations to ideas of the future. Moral aspects of craft work understand the future as a progression from past, whether in preserving practices and norms, or improving upon them in relation to ideals. Ethical aspects understand the future as inherently open to chance and divergence, valuing difference, accident and the possibilities for creativity these entail. Empirically, we show evidence of both aspects in the case of Mingei—a organized movement dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional Japanese craft work. We contribute to studies of craft work by revealing and classifying its temporal aspects. We contribute to studies in business ethics by conceptualising a generative distinction between morals and ethics configured through differing understandings of time. (shrink)

This study introduced a phenomenological approach to the study of the companies that committed corporate crimes. The author first developed the epistemology of normative control which is based on the philosophical ground of phenomenology, sociology of knowledge, ethnomethodology, Habermas's normative theories, and Foucault's normalizing discourse in the context of organizations. He, then, showed the procedures for conducting a qualitative and phenomenological empirical case study of an aggressive Japanese company whose name appeared in the media for its scandal in (...) Tokyo. The inquiry revealed the generative mechanism of normative control and the patterns of constructing social reality of workplaces in a Japanese company. (shrink)

The ethical tension in childhood vaccination policies is often framed as one of balancing the value of choice with the duty to protect. Because infectious diseases spread from person to person, unvaccinated children are usually described as putting others around them at risk, violating a perceived right to be protected from harm. Editors of Lancet Infectious Diseases recently argued against mandatory vaccination, reminding us that the resort to mandatory vaccination as a means of achieving high vaccination rates is still very (...) much a topic of Western vaccine debates. The nation of Japan offers an interesting case study in childhood vaccination policy, as it has an entirely voluntary system that achieves high vaccination rates. In this paper, we offer an overview of Japanese childhood vaccine policy, suggest some ways to contextualize and understand how a voluntary system achieves high vaccination rates, and speculate on what the future of Japanese vaccination policymaking and government–public relations may hold. (shrink)

The award-winning novel Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, first published in 2016 as コンビニ人間 (Konbini ningen), has received a lot of media attention from readers of both the original Japanese version and the English translation. For some, the novel depicts the wonder and vulnerability of a culture of convenience and conformity, while others have suggested that it highlights the gender discrimination faced by women in contemporary Japan. Yet the novel is ripe for analyses from other perspectives. This paper (...) presents one such new approach to analysing Murata’s Convenience Store Woman: its social-cum-auditory aesthetic. The theory of social aesthetics, developed by Arnold Berleant, essentially holds that there are perceptive values to be found not only in objects but also in social situations. The paper will argue that the convenience store’s environment – the social interactions, and soundscape presented in the novel – invokes and evokes a variety of aesthetic qualities, among them ‘acceptance’, ‘sensuousness’, and ‘reciprocity’. Combining a re-reading methodology and an application of Berleant’s social aesthetics theory, I will show how these sensibilities can be observed through the experiences of Keiko Furukawa, a life-long convenience store worker and the novel’s protagonist. Specifically, the focus will be on Keiko’s auditory sensibilities. (shrink)

The Japanese “new religions” active in Kinshasa nearly all perform healing through the channeling of invisible divine light. In the case of Sekai Kyūseikyō, the light of Johrei cannot be visually apprehended, but is worn as an invisible aura on the practitioner’s body. This article discusses the trans-cultural resonances between Japan and Central Africa regarding the ontology of spiritual force, regimes of subjectivity, and the gradual embodiment of Johrei divine light as a protection against witchcraft. Meanwhile, I argue (...) that religious multiplicity in urban Africa encourages cultural reflexivity about concepts of health and healing, self-responsibility, and Pentecostal suspicion-mongering of occult sciences. Thus, Johrei divine light not only feeds into a longstanding local tradition of spiritual healing; within the religiously multiple city, it is also a discursive space for, and an experience and performance of, emic critique. (shrink)

This study investigates the choice of genitive forms (the woman’s book vs. the book of the woman) in the English of Japanese-English bilingual returnees (i.e. children who returned from a second language dominant environment to their first language environment). The specific aim was to examine whether change in language dominance/exposure influences choice of genitive form in the bilingual children; the more general question was the extent to which observed behaviour can be explained by cross linguistic influence (CLI). First, we (...) compared the choice of genitive form between monolingual Japanese speakers and bilinguals who had recently returned to Japan from an English monolingual environment. Second, we tracked changes in genitive preference within bilingual children, comparing their performances upon return to Japan to those of one year later. Results show that CLI alone is insufficient to explain the difference in genitive evaluation between bilinguals and monolinguals, as well as the intra-group bilingual variation over time. We suggest that both CLI and general processing considerations couple together to influence the changes in genitive preference. (shrink)

Dominic McIver Lopes and Yuriko Saito claim that the Japanese tea ceremony, or chadō, is a non‐Western art form. Stephen Davies also defends that claim. In this article, I utilize the tea ceremony as a test case for pancultural definitions of art that claim to be inclusive of non‐Western cultures without relying on Western ethnocentrism to justify their status as artworks. I argue that Davies's (2015) hybrid definition is not justified in assuming a homogenous art tradition and/or a (...) unified conception of artistic practices in a non‐Western culture. Moreover, the cladistic structure of his definition fails to accommodate the spontaneous instantiation of new art traditions. Additionally, Jerrold Levinson's Intentional‐Historical definition cannot satisfactorily accommodate chadō. First, the nonart origins that were formative for the regard that is required for appreciation of the tea ceremony mean that the relational interpretation of the definition fails. Second, Rikyū’s tea ceremony does not count as art incidentally, as it is not a form of mimesis nor does the Japanese wabi aesthetic that is central to chadō have a precursor in known Western art. Third, if chadō does satisfy Levinson's extended theory, it comes at the cost of embracing Western ethnocentrism. (shrink)

This article examines the problem of agency in resident–staff interaction in a Japanese eldercare facility. Data were collected during the morning care routines and analysed within the framework of Conversation Analysis. Focusing on the openings and closings, I show that the interactions in the setting under observation are marked by a clear dominance of the care workers. This becomes most obvious at the level of the turn-taking system, where the first pair part of a new sequence is commonly delivered (...) by a care worker, thus assigning a mainly reactive role to the residents. However, the data also contain instances where this pattern is broken up by a reversal of the turn structure. I show how this sequential re-organisation enables a resident to take a more proactive role in determining the relevant next action, arguing that there is much potential for higher resident agency even in routine interactions such as the morning care activities. I also discuss the practical implications of these findings for care communication in general. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is not to argue for the “influence” of Cassirer, but rather to make known the reception of Cassirer in Japanese philosophy, illustrate the interconnection between Cassirer’s critique of culture and that of Japanese philosophy, and hopefully spark interest in what might be a fruitful dialog between Cassirer scholars and those working in Japanese philosophy. Historically, the paper defines Japanese philosophy and makes known its engagement with Western philosophy and the Marburg (...) school of neo-Kantianism and its project of a critique of culture during its own self-development. Systematically, the paper points to the possible interconnection between Cassirer’s critique of culture and that of Japanese philosophy and makes the case for a mutually productive dialog between Cassirer scholars and those working in Japanese philosophy. Implicitly, the paper attempted to show that an engagement with Japanese philosophy from the perspective of a critique of culture forces us to question the Western dichotomy between philosophy and religion and the importance of this for the further development of a non-Eurocentric critique of culture. And by extension, that a critique of culture must be cognitive of the historicity of the culture from which it speaks. (shrink)

Until recently, many of Japan's medical and bioethical communities had ignored the issue of conflicts of interest . This is no longer the case. Discussion on the economic and ethical problems defined by CIs is now apparent in academic, political, and even industrial spheres. In June 2004, this debate was sparked by a scandal involving AnGes MG, Inc., a bioventure company set up by a faculty member at Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine. AnGes MG developed a gene therapy (...) using the Hepatic Growth Factor for obstructive blood vessel disease. Japanese newspapers reported that “several physicians involved with clinical trials for AnGes obtained unlisted shares of stock. One physician allegedly received 32 million yen after AnGes MG went public on the ‘Mothers’ stock exchange”. (shrink)

There is a certain irony in Japan's foremost secular philosopher grounding his ontology and ethics in a term so infamously unclear as fūdo 風土, given that the Japanese word for philosophy itself denotes "clear thinking." One might make the case that Watsuji's concept of fūdo cannot but be unclear, since he is responding to Heidegger's Being and Time, which is hardly the model of lucid philosophy. That said, it is the philosopher's responsibility to clarify the unclear, and that (...) is the task David W. Johnson has appointed himself in Watsuji on Nature: Japanese Philosophy in the Wake of Heidegger. It is a daunting charge, and Johnson does an admirable job of what those outside academic philosophy might... (shrink)

This paper focuses on how “Japanese technology” was formed in the Japanese machine tool industry, and presents how Japanese machine tool builders competed in R&D and the innovation process in the domestic and international markets. During the competition for the innovation of computerised numerically-controlled (CNC) tools, drastic changes occurred in the ranking of individual firms. Prior to the transformation, the traditional “Big 5” companies occupied the largest market share. After the innovation, however, the “Big 3” firms which (...) had not been big in size at their origins increased their market share. This paper explains how this change stemmed from different attitudes towards R&D and innovation. (shrink)