Master Sorai's Responsals was to eighteenth-century Japan what The Prince was to Renaissance Italy. Like Machiavelli, Ogyu Sorai was a humanist scholar who served a prince and drew on his experiences as a house philosopher and on his vast knowledge of history and political affairs in his work. In 1720, when he began to write the letters that comprise this text, the Tokugawa regime was more than a hundred years old and beset with grave administrative and fiscal problems, about which (...) Sorai had much to say.Samuel Yamashita's impressive translation of this work offers modern readers a rare glimpse of the prevailing political discourse of the day and the specific concepts that rulers had at their disposal as they struggled to manage their domains, find talented men for their bureaucracies, create new sources of revenue, and keep their subjects well fed and happy.Sorai himself, of course, is a presence in the text. He is by tunes earnest, frank, impatient, utterly confident, and occasionally condescending. Unlike his Renaissance counterpart, he is something of an optimist: he was convinced that the introduction of archaic Chinese culture and institutions to Japan would solve its myriad problems.Well-versed in Chinese history, philosophy, religion, medicine, and belles lettres, Sorai holds forth on everything from archaic Chinese divination to Sung poetry and prose. He offers advice on how to become a Confucian gentleman, how to learn to read classical Chinese, and which books to read and which to avoid. He even discusses his belief in a sentient, Chinese-style "heaven," a topic not well understood by modern scholars. Long regarded as one of Sorai's best works, Master Sorai's Reponsals bristles with the sharp and clear opinions of the most influential thinker of Tokugawa Japan. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between education and technological rationality from the perspective of the philosophy of education, and to show that while education is deeply related to technique, skills, or technology, it can never be reduced to technical knowledge, and that there are things in education that overflow technical knowledge. I will here ask why there is something in education that overflows technical knowledge — I will define it as knowledge of pathos — and (...) why it is necessary to redefine the meaning of education in terms of knowledge of pathos. In order to address this issue, I will first examine the relationship between technology and transcendence in the world of education in Kei Hachiya’s Education and Transcendence. Second, I will show that recent outstanding theoretical achievements of Japanese philosophers of education — Satoji Yano’s Education from the Perspectives of Gift and Exchange, Yasuo Imai’s Medial Perspective on Education, and Tsunemi Tanaka’s Clinical Theory of Human Becoming — are all located within the problematic area of ‘technology-pathos-education’. Finally, I would like to propose a ‘philosophy of education built on fragile parts’, with a view to redefining education through the knowledge of pathos, paying attention to the experience of pathei mathos and the opportunity of weakness in the philosophy of education. (shrink)

Rousseau a bien compris, mieux que ses contemporains peut-être, le paradoxe de la communication propre aux Lumières, prises entre le développement du savoir et la constitution d'une opinion publique. Avec l'accélération de la circulation des discours et des écrits, comment parler et agir philosophiquement sans se perdre? Comment concilier la culture du secret, issue de la tradition littéraire du libertinage érudit, et la publicité, qui ouvre de plus en plus grands les horizons de la sphère publique? Masano Yamashita examine (...) ici l'articulation entre les stratégies rhétoriques de l'adresse au lecteur chez Rousseau et sa conception proprement philosophique de la communication. Elle met en lumière l'originalité et la lucidité de Rousseau face aux difficultés liées à cette société de l'information d'Ancien Régime. Rousseau cherche les conditions de possibilité d'une parole émancipée et pleinement publique. Au moyen d'une philosophie incarnée mettant en scène une figure de lecteur, il met à l'épreuve l'idée d'un sujet universel, la constitution d'un espace public, le sens de l'exercice de la philosophie, les enjeux politiques et éthiques des actes de discours. La réception des textes et le rapport au public constituent ainsi pour Rousseau un enjeu philosophique. Entre exigence de transparence et désir d'expérimenter les diverses facettes du moi public, se dessine la conception originale que Rousseau se fait de l'homme des Lumières. Masano Yamashita montre que la réflexion de Rousseau sur les manières de vivre dans un espace public, social comme littéraire, débouche sur une véritable vie philosophique. (shrink)

This is a brief historical view, based on my personal experience, of the phenomenological study of the assembly of actin in Japan. The morphogenesis and dynamics of protein filaments and cytoskeleton now represent one of the central problems in cell biology. The approach to this problem at the molecular level was first undertaken on actin from muscle.

地球環境問題など、文明社会がもたらしたさまざまな負の作用がクローズアップされているいま、必要なのは量の時代から質の時代への移行である。「人間」「科学」「技術」がどのように相互作用してきたかをふりかえり 、人間、自然、地球が豊かになるための道をさぐる。.

ヨーロッパの“美”と日本の“うつくしさ”の邂逅―それは単に比較文明の問題ではない。両者の邂逅に、西洋形而上学が形而上学=美学の歴史であった所以が立ち現われるなか、“あるがまま”という“うつくしさ”の存 在論が、ヨーロッパの存在論の忘れられた根底と呼び合う。.

狂信的な国粋主義者か、はたまた魂の尊厳を問うた求道者か。民俗学と国粋主義の親和性とは。多角的な視点からファシズムを再考する。.

Intervention studies on sedentary older adults have demonstrated that commencing physical exercise at an older age has a positive effect on brain structure. Although this suggests that older athletes with lifelong sports training have larger gray matter volume in some brain regions compared to age-matched non-athletes, evidence in the literature is scarce. Moreover, it remains unclear whether a larger GMV is associated with training intensity or period of training in life. To address these gaps in the literature, we compared regional (...) brain GMV between 24 older athletes and 24 age-matched non-athletes. The period of sports training and the current training time of the athletes were assessed. Both groups were evaluated for physical activity intensity as well as cognitive and motor performance. Although no group differences were noted in cognitive and motor performance, athletes reported higher physical activity intensity than non-athletes. Whole-brain structural analysis revealed a significantly larger GMV in several brain regions in athletes. Notably, the GMV of the precuneus in athletes was positively correlated with earlier commencement of sports training and training duration but was negatively correlated with current training time. Our findings demonstrate that early-commenced and continued sports training predicts structural maintenance of the precuneus in old age. Our results also suggest that excessive training time in old age may have a negative impact on the GMV of the precuneus; thereby delineating how the precuneus is associated with lifelong sports training in older athletes. (shrink)

This study compared 30 older musicians and 30 age-matched non-musicians to investigate the association between lifelong musical instrument training and age-related cognitive decline and brain atrophy. Although previous research has demonstrated that young musicians have larger gray matter volume in the auditory-motor cortices and cerebellum than non-musicians, little is known about older musicians. Music imagery in young musicians is also known to share a neural underpinning [the supramarginal gyrus and cerebellum] with music performance. Thus, we hypothesized that older musicians would (...) show superiority to non-musicians in some of the abovementioned brain regions. Behavioral performance, GMV, and brain activity, including functional connectivity during melodic working memory tasks, were evaluated in both groups. Behaviorally, musicians exhibited a much higher tapping speed than non-musicians, and tapping speed was correlated with executive function in musicians. Structural analyses revealed larger GMVs in both sides of the cerebellum of musicians, and importantly, this was maintained until very old age. Task-related FC analyses revealed that musicians possessed greater cerebellar-hippocampal FC, which was correlated with tapping speed. Furthermore, musicians showed higher activation in the SMG during MWM tasks; this was correlated with earlier commencement of instrumental training. These results indicate advantages or heightened coupling in brain regions associated with music performance and imagery in musicians. We suggest that lifelong instrumental training highly predicts the structural maintenance of the cerebellum and related cognitive maintenance in old age. (shrink)