This article examines some of the difficulties of universalistic science in situations of deep conflict over global nature, using empirical material pertaining to ongoing controversies in the context of Japanese whaling practices. Within global-scale whaling assemblages since the 1970s, science has become a ‘‘post-sovereign’’ authority, unable to impose any stable definition of nature on all actors. Instead, across spaces of deep antagonistic differences, anti- and pro-whalers now ontologically enact a multiplicity of mutually irreconcilable versions of whales. Empirically, the article (...) attempts to map out a ‘‘cosmogram’’ of Japanese pro-whaling enactments of abundant and ‘‘killable’’ whales. Following the political ecology of Bruno Latour, the global-scale situation is conceptualized as one of cosmopolitics, the politics of forging a common world across divergences in nature-cultures. Pointing to tensions inherent in this concept, the article ends by suggesting a move toward ‘‘agonistic cosmopolitics,’’ in clarifying the constructive potentials of a Latourian anti-essentialist political ecology. (shrink)

Using conversation analysis, this study investigates how Japanese rehabilitation team members use their geographic knowledge to search for long-term care facilities for stroke survivors in multidisciplinary team interactions. The study uncovers the orderly use of decision rules during discharge planning activities by exploring the following two questions: What decision criteria are discursively used? In what order are the criteria handled through sequential operations? The data comprise 65 video-recorded rehabilitation team meetings and ethnographic information regarding local care facilities and patients’ (...) residential addresses. The analysis shows that the participants deal with decision criteria in an orderly manner. They identify the type of facility and location preferred by the patient’s family and search for a facility accordingly. Moreover, they routinely select facilities closer to the patients’ and their families’ homes. However, these rules are modified if the family’s choice is inappropriate, or when a facility in a different location is preferred by the family. The study contributes to the conversation analytic understanding of interprofessional decision making and prioritization through the analysis of orderly methods of search procedures interactively accomplished by participants in ongoing medical team interactions. (shrink)

In the preface to his new monograph, Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics, Steve Odin proposes to do two things: better understand Alfred N. Whitehead's "poetic vision of tragic beauty" through comparison with Japanese aesthetics, and thereby also suggest a "new religio-aesthetic vision of tragic beauty and its resolution in the supreme ecstasy of peace". He does more than that, though. Besides thoroughly discussing Whitehead's aesthetics throughout the latter's works, from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural (...) Knowledge to Modes of Thought, he enriches this aesthetics by discussing similar themes in American philosophy and literature, including Charles Peirce, John... (shrink)

Often enough, the uniqueness of Japanese economic history has been analysed in terms of overarching ‘cultural’ imperatives. The following paper utilizes key episodes in the transition of the Japanese economy in order to suggest that its impetus lay in the political economy of the nation's relations with Western science and technology and the subsequent developments whereby technological change became institutionalized. The power of the Japanese State—forged from a heady mixture of relative backwardness, fear, and militarism—was a necessary (...) feature of national ‘response’, and therefore an integral ingredient of the process whereby Japan began to pose a serious challenge to the superiority of ‘Western’ modes of development and change. The learning process was not, predominantly, one of national acculturation. Rather, the Japanese leadership from the Tokugawa period onwards deliberately and overtly set out to assimilate Western science and technology within an institutional framework which would ensure self-sustained and increasingly independent economic development. We end with an approach to technological systems which may be considered of more general interest to historians of modern technology. (shrink)

In this paper we provide evidence from Japan that bears on a general theory of agenda power in legislatures. By agenda power we mean the power to determine: (a) which bills are considered in the plenary session of the legislature and (b) restrictions on debate and amendment to these bills, when they are considered. While a substantial amount of work has focused on the second category of agenda power, including studies of special rules in the US House (e.g., Sinclair forthcoming), (...) closure in the UK House of Commons (e.g., Cox, 1987; Dion, 1997), and the guillotine in the French National Assembly (e.g., Huber, 1996), there is very little on the first and arguably more fundamental sort of agenda power. This agenda power is our focus here, and henceforth when we refer to we shall mean this narrower conception. (shrink)

... and customs prevail in Japan. In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my wife, I found that without understanding feudalism ...

What is culture? What can we learn from art, architecture, and fashion about how people relate? Can cultures embody ethical and moral ideals? These are just some of the questions addressed in this book on the cultural philosophy of three preeminent Japanese philosophers of the early twentieth century, Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō and Kuki Shūzō.

Harmony is one of the most fundamental Japanese values. It is derived from Confucianism and encompasses a state of mind, an action process and outcomes of the action. This article draws on research data and discusses Japanese nurses’ perceptions of harmony as reflected in their everyday practice. The most important virtues for these nurses were reported as politeness and respect for other persons. The outcome from the nurses’ harmonious practice, it is claimed, benefited patients and created peaceful, harmonious (...) relationships for all. Because of the unique link between harmony and the location of interaction, the ideal ‘workplace harmony’ threatened some nurses’ professional decision making. These nurses confused harmony with conformity by superficial agreement. The Japanese seniority system could be a major factor contributing to this problem. Ethics education that includes traditional values and concepts in Japanese culture is strongly urged. (shrink)

I will argue that Japanese liberalism is distinct from its Western counterparts by adopting Maruyama Masao’s description of how the development of Japanese liberalism has been continuously influenced by the ethical and political thought of the Yamazaki Ansai school. I will use Maruyama’s description of the relationship between the two to demonstrate that the distinctiveness of Japanese liberalism from its Western counterparts in the current period provides us with one of the manifestations of the inconsistencies of communitarianism. (...) I will show that it is an inconsistent position since it is still bound by the association of consciousness and rationality. To be more explicit, my argument against communitarianism will emphasize that Japan’s adoption of liberalism as the basis for the legitimacy of rule in its nation-state is best understood in the context of liberalism’s emphasis on the association of consciousness, rationality, and their respective roles in the creation of social reality. (shrink)