西が中心に据える〈虚〉という概念に注目し、「平和・和解」理論としての可能性を問うた。.

近世の儒者・熊沢蕃山(一六一九~九一)の一つ一つの著作の思想構造の解明をめざし、さらにそれぞれの著作を比較することで、蕃山の思想の変化に注目し、その変化の意味を問う。また中江藤樹『翁問答』や池田光政の 藩政改革をとりあげて、岡山藩における蕃山の政治体験の意味を解明し、それらの考察から多様な蕃山の思想を立体的に浮かび上がらせる。.

Discovery of representative Web pages regarding specific topics is important for assisting users' information retrieval from the Web. Researches on Web structure mining, whose goals are to discover or to rank important Web pages based on the graph structure of hyperlinks, have been very active recently. A complete bipartite of Web graph, which is composed of centers (containing useful information regarding specific topic) and fans (containing hyperlinks to centers), can be regarded as a Web community sharing a common interest. Although (...) Murata's method for discovering Web communities is a simple method for finding related Web pages, it has the following weaknesses: (1) since the number of centers increases monotonously, pages irrelevant to the members of Web communities may be added in the process of discovery, and (2) since the number of fans decreases monotonously according as the number of centers increases, the method may suffer topic drift. This paper describes an improved method for refining Web communities in order to acquire representative Web pages of the topics of input Web communities. The method is based on the assumption that most of the fans contain hyperlinks pointing to representative pages regarding their topic, and that hyperlinks to the pages of the same quality often co-occur. In our new method, both fans and centers are renewed iteratively by the result of the majority vote of the members of previous Web community. Results of our experiments show that the new method has abilities of finding desirable pages for several topics. (shrink)

This paper proposes a method for discovering Web communities. A complete bipartite graph K i, j of Web pages can be regarded as a community sharing a common interest. Discovery of such community is expected to assist users’ information retrieval from the Web. The method proposed in this paper is based on the assumption that hyperlinks to related Web pages often co-occur. Relations of Web pages are detected by the co-occurrence of hyperlinks on the pages which are acquired from a (...) search engine by backlink search. In order to find a new member of a Web community, all the hyperlinks contained in the acquired pages are extracted. A page which is pointed by the most frequent hyperlinks is regarded as a new member of the community. We have build a system which discovers complete bipartite graphs based on the method. Only from a few URLs of initial community members, the system succeeds in discovering several genres of Web communities without analyzing the contents of Web pages. (shrink)

When we examine the quality of life for each individual, several specific dimensions need to be considered. Health conditions and quality of family relationships are critical. When the individual in question is married, his/her marital quality is important. When he/she has a job, subjective assessment of that job is important. Social relationships regarding friends, neighbors, colleagues, relatives, etc. may be critical also. Although the quality of life is more than the sum of qualities of these specific areas of one's life, (...) it is still determined to a great extent by the qualities of these sub-areas, including marital and family relationships. (shrink)

This article is an attempt by Japanese physicians to introduce the practice patterns and moral justification of Japanese critical care to the world. Japanese health care is characterized by the fact that the fee schedule does not reward high technology medicine, such as surgery and critical care. In spite of the low reimbursement, our critical care practice pattern is characterized by continuing futile treatment for terminal patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). This apparently wasteful practice can be explained by (...) fundamental Japanese cultural values, social factors in Japan, the availability of extensive insurance coverage, physicians' psychological factors, lack of cost-benefit considerations and the pragmatic approach the Japanese take to situations. We attempt to make some brief suggestions regarding the improvement of our critical care practices. Although we can not fully present quantitative data to support our argument, this article represents our real-world approaches to the ethical issues in the ICU in Japan. (shrink)

Japanese sociologistsCulture and social consciousnessclass, stratification, and mobilityindustry, labor, and organization’. Overall characteristics of sociological studies of Japanese society in Japan are summarized. The discrepancy between contemporary social phenomena and sociological research is also noted, using an example of freeters and neets, among others.

Technical reasoning refers to making inferences about how to use tools. The degree of technical reasoning is indicated by the bias of the gaze on the functional part of the tool when in use. Few studies have examined whether technical reasoning differs between familiar and unfamiliar novel tools. In addition, what effect the intention to use the tool has on technical reasoning has not been determined. This study examined gaze shifts in relation to familiar or unfamiliar tools, under three conditions, (...) among 14 healthy adults. The cumulative fixation time on the functional part of the tool served as a quantitative indicator of the degree of technical reasoning. The two-way analysis of variance for tools and conditions revealed that the cumulative fixation time significantly increased under free viewing and use conditions, compared to lift conditions. Relative to the free viewing condition, cumulative fixation time for unfamiliar tools significantly decreased in the lift condition and significantly increased in the use condition. Importantly, the results showed that technical reasoning was performed in both the use and the free viewing conditions. However, technical reasoning in the free viewing condition was not as strong as in the use condition. The difference between technical reasoning in free viewing and use conditions may indicate the difference between automatic and intentional technical reasoning. (shrink)

A milestone in Japan's post-war philosophical thought and a dramatic turning point in Tanabe's own philosophy, _Philosophy as Metanoetics_ calls for nothing less than a complete and radical rethinking of the philosophical task itself. It is a powerful, original work, showing vast erudition in all areas of both Eastern and Western thought.

In this essay I will put forward an account of the emotion of shame that draws from Bernard Williams’ groundbreaking work on Shame and Necessity. The main novelty will be a distinction between two senses of shame, “basic shame” and “complex shame”. Basic shame is related to what Williams refers to as a “loss of power” in relation to others that can be real or imaginary spectators and is a sense of diminishment towards those others. Complex shame, in turn, appears (...) when this diminishment is felt in relation to an “internalised other” that embodies the values she recognises as her own as well as other values she respects. Borrowing a page from Cheshire Calhoun, I argue that many accounts of shame face what I call the “challenge of unrespected judgments”: people are vulnerable to shame even when they do not endorse or respect the judgments of those shaming them. I claim that the proposed Williamsian account of the emotion can dissolve the challenge, because for one to feel basic shame there is no need for any further attitude of the ashamed person towards the shamer besides a sense of diminishment caused by the perception of loss of power. In addition to that, oppression can influence the internalised other of marginalised people in a way that makes them vulnerable to complex shame. I will conclude with some brief remarks about how moral education in the Aristotelian sense can help us to deal with the morally problematic instances of shame. (shrink)

The concept of 'sustainable welfare society' is highlighted in the social quality analysis, an approach that was extended from a European into an Asian developmental context. is article will expose the basic meaning and conceptual framework used for an analysis of the sustainable welfare society. On this basis, it will examine the postwar Japanese experience of public policymaking and, furthermore, explore the implications of this approach by the analysis of Asian cases and of developing economies. Accordingly, the idea of realizing (...) sustainable welfare societies is discussed in the background of Japanese social policies in reference to the European context of development. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the evolution of Japanese studies of international relations since the end of World War II. In so doing, in particular, this paper first looks at the dominant trends and characteristics of Japanese scholarship in this field, and, second, the correlations between the scholarship and Japan's experiences in real international relations. In discussing the evolution of Japanese studies of international relations, I shall divide the years since 1945 into three separate periods: (1) 194589, and (3) 1990 (...) and after. Then, taking the current US–Japan relationship as a case study, I will examine the contemporary characteristics of Japanese scholarship in this field. (shrink)

There are few things in our lives we dislike or hate so strongly as pain. On the other hand, the symptoms of the patients suffered from so-called congenital analgesia teach us that if we are deprived of the ability to feel pain, our lives would be unbelievably miserable and disastrous. In this way, if we try to understand the meaning and the value of pain, it seems we immediately find a paradox. The paradoxical character of pain is reflected in philosophical (...) discussions between subjectivist’s and objectivist’s view of pain. In this paper, I try to show that the seemingly paradoxical character emerges because we are obsessed by groundless prejudice that the concept of pain must have one definite single meaning and that if phenomena of pain can be understood as multidimensional, the various characteristics of pain can be interpreted as various aspects of multi-dimensional pain experiences.Hay pocas cosas en nuestras vidas que nos desagraden u odiemos tan fuertemente como el dolor. Por otro lado, los síntomas de los pacientes que padecen la llamada analgesia congénita nos enseñan que, si nos privamos de la capacidad de sentir dolor, nuestras vidas serían increíblemente miserables y desastrosas. De esta manera, si tratamos de comprender el significado y el valor del dolor parece que encontramos inmediatamente una paradoja. El carácter paradójico del dolor se refleja en discusiones filosóficas entre la visión del dolor subjetivista y objetivista. En este trabajo, trato de mostrar que el carácter aparentemente paradójico surge porque estamos obsesionados por el prejuicio infundado de que el concepto de dolor debe tener un único significado definido; y que, si los fenómenos de dolor pueden entenderse como multidimensionales, las diversas características del dolor pueden ser interpretadas como varios aspectos de expe-riencias de dolor multidimensionales.Palabr. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper aims to deal with the attitudes towards and social impact of Edward Snowden’s revelations in Japan, taking the Japanese socio-cultural and political environment surrounding privacy and state surveillance into account.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey of 1,820 university students and semi-structured follow-up interviews with 56 respondents were conducted, in addition to reviews of the literature on privacy and state surveillance in Japan. The outcomes of the survey were statistically analysed, and qualitative analyses of the interview results were also performed.FindingsSnowden’s revelations have (...) had little influence over Japanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance, mainly due to their low level of awareness of the revelations and high level of confidence in government agencies.Practical implicationsThe study results imply a need for reviewing educational programmes for civic education in lower and upper secondary education.Social implicationsThe results of this study based on a large-scale questionnaire survey indicate an urgent necessity for providing Japanese youngsters with opportunities to learn more about privacy, liberty, individual autonomy and national security.Originality/valueThis study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on Japanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries. (shrink)

Semi-structured interviews with university students in the UK and Japan, undertaken in 2009 and 2010, are analysed with respect to the revealed attitudes to privacy, self-revelation and revelation by/of others on SNS.

A sense of agency (SoA) is the experience of subjective awareness regarding the control of one’s actions. Humans have a natural tendency to generate prediction models of the environment and adapt their models according to changes in the environment. The SoA is associated with the degree of the adaptation of the prediction models, e.g., insufficient adaptation causes low predictability and lowers the SoA over the environment. Thus, identifying the mechanisms behind the adaptation process of a prediction model related to the (...) SoA is essential for understanding the generative process of the SoA. In the first half of the current study, we constructed a mathematical model in which the SoA represents a likelihood value for a given observation (sensory feedback) in a prediction model of the environment and in which the prediction model is updated according to the likelihood value. From our mathematical model, we theoretically derived a testable hypothesis that the prediction model is updated according to a Bayesian rule or a stochastic gradient. In the second half of our study, we focused on the experimental examination of this hypothesis. In our experiment, human subjects were repeatedly asked to observe a moving square on a computer screen and press a button after a beep sound. The button press resulted in an abrupt jump of the moving square on the screen. Experiencing the various stochastic time intervals between the action execution button-press) and the consequent event square jumping caused gradual changes in the subjects' degree of their SoA. By comparing the above theoretical hypothesis with the experimental results, we concluded that the update (adaptation) rule of the prediction model based on the SoA is better described by a Bayesian update than by a stochastic gradient descent. (shrink)

Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation honors two of the most beloved and productive scholars in the field of Islamic Studies, Professors William Chittick and Sachiko Murata. For the past five decades, and in over 40 books (monographs, editions, translations, edited volumes) and more than 300 articles, Professors Chittick and Murata have presented us with philologically astute and analytically sound expositions of the pre-modern Islamic intellectual tradition, particularly in the areas of Sufism and philosophy. They have done (...) so primarily by zeroing in on the technical vocabularies of these disciplines (in Arabic, Persian, and Chinese), demonstrating just how important the functions of philology and cross-cultural translation are when studying pre-modern cultures and civilizations. (shrink)