The Ghosts of Tsunami Dead and Kokoro no kea in Japan’s Religious Landscape

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 176-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hara Takahashi

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011, ghost tales have spread throughout disaster affected areas. There have been reports of ghost sightings and even of people being possessed by ghosts of the tsunami dead. In 2013, I conducted a survey to investigate how religious specialists deal with such phenomena. The results show that a substantial number of them were actually consulted by people troubled by ghosts. In this article, I identify four common characteristics of how priests treat such clients: (1) Acceptance and listening, (2) Performing rituals, (3) Providing moral instruction, and (4) Promoting self-care for the afflicted. Priests offer traditional religious care, but the care they provide is based on a psychological understanding of ghosts, while they also account for secular factors when considering how to best treat the people who come to them for help. This attitude toward ghosts and treatment reflects the priests’ struggle to work in the interstices between the secular and the religious in contemporary Japan, a balancing act which accounts for the recent increase of religious specialists offering kokoro no kea (care of the heart/mind) based on secular teachings in clinical fieldsites. Whether this trend will be successful or not is a yardstick by which to judge the secularity or post-secularity of contemporary and future Japanese society.

KIRYOKU ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-164
Author(s):  
Iriyanto Widisuseno

For the Japanese people, the remote work policy which aims to break the chain of the spread of the Corona-19 Virus is a cultural dilemma, because it clashes with the work culture of the people who have a strong work ethic. But in fact, Japan's economic recession rate is not as bad as other developed countries, such as America, China, and Korea. The death rate from Covid-19 is very low. Currently, Japan has started to return to the normal national economy. The mystery behind it all in Japan is the factor of superior immunity or cultural superiority. The assumption is, if because of the cultural superiority factor, what are the basic values that underlie the formation of behavior and culture of Japanese society. This philosophical qualitative study aims to examine philosophical strategies: what are the basic values that underlie the way Japanese people think and behave in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, how to properly solve problems (epistemology), and what normative rules are used to give direction to achieve goals (axiology). Through philosophical descriptive methods, this research can reveal the philosophical values (ontological, epistemological, axiological) behind social phenomena in Japanese society. The results of the study show that Japanese people hold firmly to the value of discipline as an ontological footing, the samurai is used as a way to solve problems, the value of harmony as a normative rule that gives direction to the achievement of goals. The benefits of this research provide enlightenment for the community about understanding the basic problems in society that are often neglected, while many people only focus on the surface of the problem that causes failure to understand.


IZUMI ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Dewi Saraswati Sakariah

This study discusses about the phenomenon of the re-employed senior workers after retirement in Japan’s manufacturing companies. Japan is a country with the fastest aging population in the world that has many problems in itspopulation demographic.Meanwhile, the government launched intensifying efforts to make Japan rises from its economic recession since the 1990s.One of the efforts is call on each of the people who is still able to work to contribute to the employment sector in order to achieve economic growth strategy.One of the encouraged groups isthe post-retirementsenior workers in Japan’s manufacturing companies.The call on was well received while a number of companies were adopting this system with several different reasonsnamely life expectancy increases, the government calls to the people, the needs of the company's senior workers for productivity and skill transfering, the salary and the company's view of the young workers. This research will be interpreted by sosial changes perspective in society from Anthony Giidens. This study concludes that the phenomenon of the re-employed senior workers after retirement is the result of social changes that has occurred in Japanese society today.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (sp) ◽  
pp. 421-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suminao Murakami

Concerned experts and others from a wide range of fields are required to take part in studies on “social” disaster phenomena such as earthquakes and typhoons causing drastic human and property damage and leaving subsequent social and economic destruction. In 2006, the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) decided to be published as an academic journal in English for global society to help expand research beyond a domestic scope. The March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster – in the 6th year of the journal’s publication, has made an impact both domestically and globally due to the unprecedented earthquake and tsunami and resulting radiation leakage at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. JDR will annually publish special issues on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster beginning in this issue of 2012, for five years, for the purpose of informing, recording and utilizing lessons learned from the disaster. Page charges are in principle free and widespread contributions are welcomed. I have studied disasters from the viewpoint of a planner. Nobody who is active and living in society is irrelevant to wide-scale events related to such disasters, and I still feel that it is important for people from a variety of fields to visit devastated sites, hear from the people experiencing such disasters and make their own standpoints. In American society, for example, disaster measures against earthquakes and other disasters have been studied involving a wide range of experts and others. After the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe, research groups consisting of wide range of experts came to be formed in Japan and environments developed to produce a multidisciplinary journal such as the JDR. The ultimate goal of planned research is human research. A society is needed in which “human power” can be manifested in all aspects such as reviving reconstruction and rehabilitation. This is because contributions by researchers from widespread fields are anticipated in the future.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akiko Horiuchi ◽  
Yoshiki Miyata ◽  
Nobuhiko Kamijo ◽  
Lucy Cramp ◽  
Richard P Evershed

The Jomon culture is an ancient Japanese society that existed during approximately 14,000 to 400 BC and which is characterized by Jomon (cord pattern) pottery. To investigate the paleodiet of the people of northeastern Tohoku in Japan during the Final Jomon period (about 1000–400 BC), we studied three sites in Aomori Prefecture, the center of the Kamegaoka culture. The Fubinashi site is on the coast and was supported by a rich fishing culture. Imazu was a coastal salt-making site. Sugisawa is a mountainous inland site on the banks of a river. We determined the 14C ages of the interior and exterior surfaces of carbonized material on potsherds and compared the data with pottery typology and age to study the marine reservoir effect. We also analyzed the bulk carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes and C:N ratios to determine the presence of aquatic foodstuffs. The organic residues from pottery typology corresponding to the described analyses provided a general perspective of differences in the ancient diets at each site. When we recovered sufficient lipids, we analyzed compound-specific stable isotopes of fatty acids to obtain a multilateral view of those diets. Our findings indicate that the diets of inhabitants of both Fubinashi and Imazu consisted primarily of marine products and some terrestrial foodstuffs, whereas people from Sugisawa processed mainly C3 plants and some terrestrial animals and aquatic commodities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Mohammad-Javad Haj’jari ◽  
Noorbakhsh Hooti

Abstract An honest intellectual dutifully standing with truth against lies and treacheries of his society is a parrhesiastic figure in Foucault’s terminology. Foucault takes parrhesia as the fearless and frank speech regarding the truth of something or a situation before truthmongering and public deception and he takes the parrhesiastic as the spokesperson for truth. In this light, Dr. Stockmann in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People occupies a unique position within Ibsen’s political philosophy. Dutifully criticizing what the majority blindly take for granted from their liar leaders in the name of democracy, Dr. Stockmann fulfills the role of a parrhesiastic figure that stands against socio-political corruption. He enters a parrhesiastic game with both the majority and the officialdom to fulfill his democratic parrhesia as a truthful citizen before the duped community, while covertly preparing for his own philosophic parrhesia or self-care within the conformist community. However, his final failure lies in his confrontation with democracy itself, which wrongly gives the right of speaking even to the liars. This article thus aims at analyzing Ibsen’s play through a Foucauldian perspective regarding the concept of parrhesia and its relation to democracy. It is to reveal Ibsen’s satire on the fake ideology of democracy and highlight the necessity of humanity’s parrhesiastic self-care for the well-being of the self and the others.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Kyei ◽  
Stephen Ocansey ◽  
Emmanuel Kwasi Abu ◽  
Bismark Nyarko Gyedu

The purpose of the present study was to assess the practice of ocular self-medication among people of the Cape Coast Metropolis, Central Region of Ghana. A population-based survey involving 421 respondents ≥18 years old was conducted. A pre-tested interview-based questionnaire was used to collect data on demographics, ocular symptoms for which selfmedication was practiced, medical knowledge and self-care orientation. Households were systematically and randomly selected as study units. Analysis was done using SPSS version 16. Descriptive results were expressed as frequency, percentage, and mean±standard deviation, X2 test was used for associations, and logistic regression was used to test for predictors of the practice of ocular self-medication. Prevalence of ocular self-medication was 23.3% with itchy eye being the main ocular symptom for which self-medication was practiced. Local pharmacies were the main source of drug for ocular self-medication. There was no association between medical knowledge and the practice of ocular self-medication (X2=0.126; P=0.722). Some 25.5% experienced adverse effects. In conclusion, the practice of ocular self-medication was without recourse to adequate concept of the practice of self-care but its negative effect was mitigated by the low self-care orientation of the people.


Author(s):  
Yuriko Kadokura

Abstract: Since the Meiji period, companies throughout Japan have published shashi, or company histories. Shashi contain not only the company’s history but also numerous descriptions of the contemporary social environment including the effects of disasters and war. Shashi show how various companies, and Japanese society as a whole, dealt with the difficulties they faced, how they chose their path to recovery, and how these actions were recorded to be shared with future generations. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, we added the category “Disaster and Revival as Seen in Shashi” to the blog of the Resource Center for the History of Entrepreneurship. The category allows users to access information from the “Shashi Index Database Project,” which is currently under construction, and introduces shashi articles on “Disaster and Revival,” particularly the Great Kanto Earthquake.   和文抄録: 明治以降日本各地の会社が出版した「社史」の中には、会社の沿革や事業だけではなく、災害や戦災などを含む当時の社会情勢に関する記述が数多く見られる。その内容からはそれぞれの会社や日本の社会が降りかかる困難に対峙してどのように対処したか、復興の道筋をどのようにつけたか、そしてそれをどのように記録し次代に伝えようとしたか、といったことを読みとることができる。 2011年3月11日の東日本大震災に際し実業史研究情報センターでは、センター・ブログに「社史に見る災害と復興」というカテゴリーを新設した。そこでは現在構築中の「社史索引データベースプロジェクト」の蓄積データを検索し、「災害と復興」特に「関東大震災」に関する記事を含む社史について紹介している。


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