Religious Discourse in Modern Japan explores the transportation of the Western concept of “religion” in in the modern era; the emergence of discourse on Shinto, philosophy, and Buddhism; and the evolution of the academic discipline of religious studies in Japan.

Previous studies have suggested that musical training in childhood is beneficial for sociability. However, it remains unclear how age of onset of group music lessons is associated with the late sociability of children from a long-term perspective. This study investigated associations between group music lessons conducted at a music school and children’s levels of sociability by focusing on the age of onset of the lessons. We conducted a survey of 276 children aged 4–5 years (M = 58.5 months) and 6–7 (...) years (M = 82.7 months) who commenced music lessons at ages 1, 2, 4, and 6 years. We found that (1) the empathy scores of children aged 6–7 years who began lessons when 1-year-old were greater than those who began lessons when 4-years-old, (2) the communication scores of children aged 4–5 years who began lessons when 1-year-old were greater than those who began lessons when older than 1 year, and (3) the empathy and extraversion scores were high in those aged 6–7 years who began lessons in that age range. The results suggest that early onset of music lessons could positively influence children’s sociability; in contrast, after about age 7 years, children who already had high sociability may be more inclined to select group music lessons. By focusing on the impact of regular group music lessons from a very young age on later levels of sociability, these results further elucidate the effects of musical lessons. In sum, participation in group music lessons 2–4 times per month can be effective social training for very young children and foster their later sociability. (shrink)

Children, in their everyday lives, encounter several types of humanoid robots. The purpose of this study was to investigate children’s folk knowledge of robots using the card-choice task. In the task, both adults and five- and six-year-old children were given nine questions concerning the biological and psychological properties of robots. They were asked to choose the appropriate stimuli from among five objects including living things, nonliving things, and a robot. The results revealed that the children tended to attribute certain biological (...) properties to the robot. These results accorded with previous results. However, in our study, contrary to previous such studies, even older children showed such a tendency. Moreover, the children were unable to choose all the cards in the same way as the adults. Thus, it can be concluded that children’s knowledge of robots is incomplete. And the children’s knowledge is changed by method. (shrink)

政治社会への新しい視座を導く案内書。「正義」からではなく「不正義」から見ると自明とされている制度や規範はどのように異なって見えるのか。思想家たちが問題を発見してきた視座に注目し、この社会の政治を問い返 す。.

Using connectionist modeling, we address fundamental questions concerning the acquisition process of musical tonal schema of listeners. Compared to models of previous studies, our connectionist model (Learning Network for Tonal Schema, LeNTS) was better equipped to fulfill three basic requirements. Specifically, LeNTS was equipped with a learning mechanism, bound by culture-general properties, and trained by sufficient melody materials. When exposed to Western music, LeNTS acquired musical ‘scale’ sensitivity early and ‘harmony’ sensitivity later. The order of acquisition of scale and harmony (...) sensitivities shown by LeNTS was consistent with the culture-specific acquisition order shown by musically westernized children. The implications of these results for the acquisition process of a tonal schema of listeners are as follows: (a) the acquisition process may entail small and incremental changes, rather than large and stage-like changes, in corresponding neural circuits; (b) the speed of schema acquisition may mainly depend on musical experiences rather than maturation; and (c) the learning principles of schema acquisition may be culturally invariant while the acquired tonal schemas are varied with exposed culture-specific music. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida KitarōThomas P. KasulisZen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitarō. By Michiko Yusa. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. 482 pp.Readers of this journal know that much Buddhist-Christian dialogue over the past three decades has featured Kyōto School philosophy for the Buddhist side of the conversations. The major figures in that school known to the West are Nishida Kitarō, (...) Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji, Takeuchi Yoshinori, and Ueda Shizuteru. Other philosophers not formally connected to the school but in some ways kindred spirits with it include Watsuji Tetsurō, Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, and Abe Masao. Both individually and collectively these philosophers represent a formidable intellectual tradition, simultaneously challenging and inspiring their Western theological and philosophical counterparts. In surveying the Western responses to the Kyōto School, however, I often find an odd lacuna: the philosophers behind the thought are often absent or, at best, caricatured.The mischief here comes from two directions. On one hand, there are the Western theologians and philosophers who read in translation the works by Nishitani or Tanabe and are astounded by the sophistication of the thought and the way familiar Western philosophical thinkers such as Hegel, Kant, Heidegger, and Plato are interwoven in the arguments. Not being Asian specialists, these readers quite naturally focus on parts of the texts most familiar and intelligible—the interplay with Western ideas and values. This approach has helped Western thinkers discover hidden cultural assumptions in their own philosophizing and religious thinking. Missing, however, is the culturally Japanese character of the Kyōto School philosophers. At least until very recently, these philosophers did not write for a Western audience, but [End Page 268] for their Japanese compatriots. Thus, however much their philosophies might be Western in style and content, it is likely that at least some of their questions (and therefore their answers) were responses to Japanese, rather than Western, concerns. Given the upheaval that Japanese culture and society underwent in the first half of the twentieth century, it is especially important to factor into the equation such contemporaneous cultural concerns.Partly in response to this situation, there has more recently been a response from some Western intellectual historians of Japan who seek to debunk the Kyōto School as a whole, finding in it nothing more than disguised ethnocentrism, jingoism, and imperialism. In making their case, they often ignore the full philosophical systems developed by the Kyōto School thinkers and focus instead on comments from public forums or lectures. Sometimes no more than a few isolated quotations are used to support the case. What is wrong here is not necessarily the claim that Kyōto School philosophy was implicated in the political thought of the wartime years, but rather the cavalier scholarship used to support that claim. A whole school of philosophers tends to be lumped together with little concern for sorting out individual differences. For intellectual historians of this ilk, it is as if books are written by ideologies rather than individuals (or even individual ideologues). Such caricatures of the Kyōto School may even minimize the significance of the fact that some philosophers associated with the movement, Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka Jun for example, died in prison for their leftist ideas and practices. The Kyōto School is not nearly as hegemonic as some of its critics like to claim.In short, these two commonWestern approaches to reading the Kyōto School philosophers tend either to overlook their Japaneseness or to deny their individuality. Either way, the philosopher disappears from the philosophizing. Here Yusa's book is a vital corrective. Her intellectual biography both Japanizes and humanizes Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945), the founder of the Kyōto School and the inspiration for most of Japan's modern philosophy. Her narrative gives us insight after insight into the concrete contexts in which Nishida's thought developed. Her discussion of each progression in Nishida's thought over his lifetime is framed by relevant events in his family life, his professional career, his interaction with colleagues, and the readings that were inspiring him at the time. Japanese editions of modern writers' collected works commonly... (shrink)

Past research suggests that spiritual leadership plays a pivotal role in enhancing employee job performance, yet we have little understanding of how and when spiritual leadership enhances employee job performance. The present study explores how and when spiritual leadership promotes job performance by examining relational energy as a mediator and leader integrity and relational energy differentiation as boundary conditions. We tested the theoretical model with data gathered across three phases over 12 months from 497 employees and their supervisors in 108 (...) groups. Results showed that the positive relationship between spiritual leadership and job performance was mediated by relational energy. Moreover, we found that leader integrity amplified the mediated relationship between spiritual leadership and employee job performance via relational energy. In contrast, relational energy differentiation weakened this mediated relationship. (shrink)

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are impaired not only in social competencies but also in sensory perception, particularly olfaction. The olfactory ability of individuals with ASD has been examined in several psychophysical studies, but the results have been highly variable, which might be primarily due to methodological difficulties in the control of odor stimuli (e.g., the problem of lingering scents). In addition, the neural correlates of olfactory specificities in individuals with ASD remain largely unknown. To date, only one study (...) has investigated this issue using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The present study utilized a sophisticated method−a pulse ejection system−to present well-controlled odor stimuli to participants with ASD using an ASD-friendly application. With this advantageous system, we examined their odor detection, identification, and evaluation abilities and measured their brain activity evoked by odors using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). As the odor detection threshold (DT) of participants with ASD was highly variable, these participants were divided into two groups according to their DT: an ASD-Low DT group and an ASD-High DT group. Behavioral results showed that the ASD-High DT group had a significantly higher DT than the typically developing (control) group and the ASD-Low DT group, indicating their insensitivity to the tested odors. In addition, while there was no significant difference in the odor identification ability between groups, there was some discrepancy between the groups’ evaluations of odor pleasantness. The brain data identified, for the first time, that neural activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was significantly weaker in the ASD-High DT group than in the control group. Moreover, the strength of activity in the right DLPFC was negatively correlated with the DT. These findings suggest that participants with ASD have impairments in the higher-order function of olfactory processing, such as olfactory working memory and/or attention. (shrink)

Multi-modal integration, which combines multiple neurophysiological signals, is gaining more attention for its potential to supplement single modality’s drawbacks and yield reliable results by extracting complementary features. In particular, integration of electroencephalography and functional near-infrared spectroscopy is cost-effective and portable, and therefore is a fascinating approach to brain-computer interface. However, outcomes from the integration of these two modalities have yielded only modest improvement in BCI performance because of the lack of approaches to integrate the two different features. In addition, mismatch (...) of recording locations may hinder further improvement. In this literature review, we surveyed studies of the integration of EEG/fNIRS in BCI thoroughly and discussed its current limitations. We also suggested future directions for efficient and successful multi-modal integration of EEG/fNIRS in BCI systems. (shrink)

Tosaka Jun (1900-1945) was one of modern Japan's most unique and important critics of capitalism, the emperor system, imperialism, and everyday life in wartime Japan. This collection of translations contains some of Tosaka's most important essays and original articles on Tosaka.

This third paper locates the synthetic neurorobotics research reviewed in the second paper in terms of themes introduced in the first paper. It begins with biological non-reductionism as understood by Searle. It emphasizes the role of synthetic neurorobotics studies in accessing the dynamic structure essential to consciousness with a focus on system criticality and self, develops a distinction between simulated and formal consciousness based on this emphasis, reviews Tani and colleagues' work in light of this distinction, and ends by forecasting (...) the increasing importance of synthetic neurorobotics studies for cognitive science and philosophy of mind going forward, finally in regards to most- and myth-consciousness. (shrink)