The Symbolism of Death in Initiation Rites
ー The Case of Mozart's Magic Flute ー
FUKASAWA Katsumi (Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Occidental History)

The letter Mozart sent his mortally ill father on
April 4, 1787, was made famous in Japan when it
was quoted in the writings of Kobayashi Hideo andYoshida Hidekazu. It has been thought for a longtime that certain expressions used in this letter, suchas calling death our best friend or the key to ourtrue happiness reﬂected Mozart's own individual viewof death. However, since the French musicologist
Jacques Chailley began to see these expressions in
the context of Masonic initiations, a view on which
he also based his interpretation of the Magic Flute(Die Zauberflöte), a reconsideration of the collective
and historical meanings of these expressions used by
Mozart has become possible.
Freemasonry, which spread all over Europe during
the Century of Enlightenment, carried on anddeveloped a set of rites of death and rebirth probably
originating in ancient agricultural rites that had beenpreserved in a variety of mystery cults. However,when the ﬁrst federated body − the Grand Lodge ofLondon − was founded in 1717, almost no rituals or
symbols referring to death existed. The introductionof such elements was the result of a complex
development spanning several decades. The point of
departure for this development was the creation of
the degree of Master Mason and the legend of Hiram
Abiff. With this development, not only was the threetiered symbolic hierarchy consisting of the degrees ofEntered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason
brought to completion, but the fictitious experienceof the death of Hiram was also introduced into therite of promotion to the rank of Master Mason. Hiram
Abiff was a ﬁgure believed to have been the mastercraftsman who supervised the construction of King
Solomon's Temple. According to the legend createdby the Freemasons, which is not actually reﬂected in
the Old Testament, Hiram was killed by evil fellow
masons. The act of taking the body of Hiram into
one's arms was used to symbolize promotion to thedegree of Master Mason.
Another important element was the institution of
the Cabinet of Reflections, which was to precede
initiation as Entered Apprentice. The candidate for
initiation was locked in a small, dark room andinstructed to meditate with the aim of spiritual
puriﬁcation. The inside walls of the small room wereadorned with images of skulls and skeletons as wellas such proverbs as If you have come only out of
curiosity, be gone! After signing a philosophicaltestament to assert his death as something profane,
the candidate was blindfolded and led into the lodge,
experiencing a dramatic transition from darkness
to light. This system was probably introduced in
the middle of the eighteenth century and likely
developed under the inﬂuence of alchemistic thought
or Hermeticism in connection with the idea of theearth trial. Correspondingly, water and fire trials
were introduced as well, and alongside hints of the2existence of a fourth element (air, wind), the system of
the trials of the four elements was completed.
In fact, all of these elements can be found in the
Magic Flute . As Chailley pointed out, when Tamino
faints at the beginning of the first act and Pamina
does the same in scene eleven of the same act, thisvisualizes the symbolic death preceding the riteof initiation. From the terrible night in scene twoof act two that corresponds to the beginning of theinitiation rite, over the training in the fundamental
Masonic virtue of silence (scenes three to five ofact two), to Tamino and Pamina hand-in-handundergoing the trials of water and ﬁre (scene twentyeight), the various elements of the initiation rite are
depicted accurately. Mozart, who had been initiated asEntered Apprentice in December 1784 and advanced
to the degree of Master Mason in April 1785, was very
familiar with this series of rites, in which the symbolicthreat of death featured repeatedly. In this regard, theexpressions found in the letter to his father may also
be interpreted in the context of Masonic philosophy.
However, upon rereading the script of the Magic
Flute , some things still remain inexplicable. According
to a French Rites handbook dating to 1788 that was
discovered several years ago, the walls of the lodge
used for the initiation rites to Master Mason wereindeed adorned with exhortations such as memento
mori or The life of a man is nothing but a passage
as well as images of death such as crossbones andskulls. Nonetheless, the threat of death did not playa predominant part in the initiation rites described inthis handbook. In contrast, death is omnipresent in
the Magic Flute , not only for Tamino and Papageno
who are persistently forced to confront death, and for
Pamina and Papageno who attempt suicide in despair,
but also for the Queen of the Night who orders herdaughter to kill Sarastros, as well as for Monostatos
who attempts to seduce Pamina under threat of death.
At this point it is difficult to say whether thisunusual obsession with death stems from the twisted
taste of the theater manager Emanuel Schikaneder
who is believed to have written the script, or whether
it reflects the musings on death of Ignaz von Born,eminent enlightenment thinker and Freemason,suspected by Chailley to be the true creator of thescript, as well as of Mozart himself. Von Born andMozart both died in 1791, the year the Magic Flutewas ﬁrst performed.

Putting Death into Words
ANDO Hiroshi (Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology,
Japanese Language and Literature)

Literature cannot deal with death itself. What itdeals with are the stories that surround death.
The Great Kanto Earthquake, the Second World
War, the ﬁre bombing of Tokyo‥‥ When one parses
through modern literature, one realizes how few works
actually directly depict these terrifying disasters.
Let us take the Great Kanto Earthquake of
September 1, 1923, as an example. The generalinterest and women's magazines of the time were ﬁlledwith depictions of people engulfed in smoke jumping
one after the other into a river to their death. The
language of these descriptions is so vivid they makeone want to turn away. Scenes like these, however,are almost never found in novels.
For example, Hori Tatsuo, who grew up in one ofthe downtown areas of the city, lost his mother to theﬁres that erupted after the earthquake, and wanderedalone through the burnt-out wasteland, did notincorporate his experiences in his writings. As seenin The Wind has Risen (Kaze tachinu , 1938), what hestrove for in his novels was rather to depict the storyof the living engaged in observing death.
Hara Tamiki's Summer Flowers (Natsu no hana ,1947) is a well-known work of atomic bomb literature.
The following is a passage describing the scene ofdestruction immediately after the bombing:
Glittering shards and ash grey cinder
Spaciously stretching out before the eyes
The strange rhythm
Of dead bodies writhing, burning, and festering
All the things that were, or could have been
Stripped away in an instant: the world after
Depicted in this passage is cold, surrealistic scenery.
Expressions such as Stripped away in an instant:
the world after cannot serve to convey a sense of thetragedy. Summer Flowers , taking this scene describedlargely in katakana phonetic script as its point of
departure, is the story of the protagonists' search
for their relatives and families, and their attempt torebuild a network of human relations, which is largely
expressed in the novel in hiragana phonetic script. I
dare venture to say that Summer Flowers does notdepict the atomic bomb. The book's content is thedrama of the reconstitution of life through language
after the bomb. Is raw death, then, something that is
ultimately divorced from literary imagination?
Returning to the great earthquake of 1923, it is arelatively unknown fact that Akutagawa Ryunosuke
and the young Kawabata Yasunari roamed theburnt out areas together for several days after thecatastrophe. Although neither of them subsequently
included this experience in their works, it constituted
for both of them an important opportunity thatlaunched them into their own phantasmagoricalrealms. I believe that Akutagawa's interest inparanormal phenomena that started with Mirage(Shinkiro ) in 1927 was intricately connected to thequestion of how language can be retrieved from thecondition of Stripped away in an instant: the world
after.
The following is a passage from an early short story
by Kawabata called Lights Moving in the Sky ( Sorani ugoku hi ) published in 1924.
More than anything, to relativize the idea of theabsoluteness of man astonishes and awakens people.
Isn't this what this earthquake has accomplished
for the moment? (…) We have to cherish the idea ofreincarnation like a single flower blossoming amidst
the charred ground. More than the idea of man being
reborn as a penguin or an evening primrose I likethe thought that the evening primrose and man areone. It is through this thought alone that the world of
the heart of man, in other words love, might become
expansive and free.
This passage marks the moment in which the themeof reincarnation (rinne tensho ) that is so characteristicof Kawabata's writings emerges.
This is to take the physical reality of death andreassemble it through human imagination, essentiallyremaking it with renewed enthusiasm. In this sense
it can be said that literature is also the attempt to put
death back into human hands. To put it even more
succinctly, it should probably be said that literature is
the act of putting this process of putting death back inhuman hands into words. In this regard, death is not
merely death itself, but it turns into the continuationof life as an internal story of human beings. It is herethat we find the eternal paradox that literature canonly be literature as long as it can keep its distancefrom death as such.

3

Death and Life Studies After March 11
IKEZAWA Masaru (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology,
Department of Religious Studies)

According to a newspaper report from May 30, a list
produced by a British think tank called the Institutefor Economics and Peace ranked Japan as the third
most peaceful country in the world. While the two
top positions go to Iceland and New Zealand, thelowest ranking countries are Sudan, Iraq, and Somalia.
However, according to a note, the ranking does notconsider the effects of natural disasters.
This means that peaceful refers here solely tothe absence of war. One can assume that some kindof anti-war mentality influenced the creation of thisranking and that the actual ranking does not havethat much meaning, since it can easily change by
employing different parameters. However, it seems
more than a little odd to call a country peacefulin which more than twenty-thousand people have
perished due to a natural disaster.
Of course, peace and security are good things.
However, is peace not valuable precisely because it is
difﬁcult to attain? Likewise, security, too, is something
extremely hard to achieve. Do death and chaos notlurk beneath the thin veneer of a peaceful and secure
cultural life? Is a culture that does not rest on theawareness of the vulnerability of the human species
not devoid of meaning? Is not the striving of man
for peace and security noble exactly because of thisvulnerability? Is a ranking in which the third mostpeaceful country is not in constant danger of being
degraded to the 153rd rank not worthless?
The above are ideas and thoughts that came to
my mind based on what I saw and read about thedisaster of March 11 in the media. I believe that theexperience of this disaster will cause a paradigm
shift in Japanese academia (or, if it does not occur,
there is no meaning to academia, in my personal
opinion). For a long time, the sciences have sought
to create cities less vulnerable to earthquakes andother disasters, while the political sciences have been
occupied with analyzing and improving systems ofcrisis management. However, I believe that in thehumanities this paradigm shift should be marked bya reconstruction of our intellectual approach based on
an awareness of the vulnerability of mankind and thevulnerability of any system or culture.
The ambition of Death and Life Studies is toconfront man's inherent vulnerability and mortality
and rethink modern society from this vantage point.
Modern society puts great emphasis on life, and values
overcoming anything that could interfere with it, be
it nature or one's own body. What Death and Life
Studies sought to point out is that this life-centricmode of being, by making life subordinate to one's
desires, might actually impoverish life. Life is precious
exactly because it is so ephemeral. That is, from itsvery beginning, Death and Life Studies has aimed at
restructuring scholarship based on this notion of thevulnerability of man.
Having said that, it is also true that Death and Life

4

Studies in its current form has not accumulated theinsights necessary to appropriately respond to thedisaster of March 11. Death and Life Studies has so
far mostly dealt with questions of technology andscience, that is issues related to clinical practice.
Of course, these kinds of issues will retain theirimportance, but I believe that academic inquiry in
Death and Life Studies post-March 11 has to further
extend to the issue of mass death (whether caused bydisaster or war). While specific issues and questions
that can be raised are easily imaginable (for example,
the grief of the bereaved, the question of death rites,
the issue of the commemoration of the dead), theactual philosophy based on which these questions areto be asked still eludes me. Death and Life Studies
should not occupy itself only with individual death,but should rather be grounded in an awareness ofthe death of communities, societies, cultures, andultimately humanity itself. In history, examples of
embodied civilizations abound (the Indus civilization,
the Mayan civilization, the Aztec kingdom, etc.).
Alongside the deaths of many individuals, history
mourns the deaths of these entire cultures. Deathand Life Studies must deal with the memory of these
instances of mass death. We have to elucidate what
the death of a civilization enacted in these instances
tells us. This has to be done to also prevent treating
those who perished in the Great Tohoku Earthquake
as mere victims.

Living In the Aftermath ofWhat Should Not Have Happened
AKAGAWA Manabu (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Department of Sociology)

Much has already been said about the string ofdisasters − the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear
accident − that began at 2:46 pm on March 11, 2011.
I, myself, have heard and seen a great deal of thesedisasters. What corresponds most closely to my current
feelings is the footage of a foreign female televisionpresenter right after the explosion occurred at reactor
no.3 of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. Footageof the explosion is still seldom shown in Japan, but
can be found easily on Youtube. The presenter was
speechless for several seconds after the footage of the
explosion aired. To me, her silence signiﬁed a senseof having witnessed something that should not have
happened in the first place. Actually, alongside theterm unforeseen (s teigai ), the phrase what should
not have happened has happened (okite ha naranai
koto ga okite shimatta ) has been frequently used bythose in favor of nuclear power when expressing theirregret about the events. However, even those opposed
to nuclear power share similar ideas.
I was born in a sleepy village on the Noto peninsula
in Ishikawa prefecture. Within a ten kilometer radiusof my home village, there are now two nuclear power
plants. As long as I remember, there has been conﬂict
about the building of the plants. The locals there are
divided into those who hold that nuclear plants aresafe and necessary for regional development, and those
who think that if only once a serious accident happens
then an area of several ten kilometers in radius will
disappear from the map. When I was young, I thoughtthat if nuclear plants were really that safe then theyshould also be built in the middle of Tokyo or Osaka.
In my area, however, those in favor of the plants
had the upper hand, and after many twists and turns
the plants began operating in the mid-1990s. Even
now, when I visit home and drive past the nuclear
plants, I experience mixed emotions. I would still likethem to be abandoned, as just one accident will haveirrevocable results. On the other hand, since they are
already in operation, I hope that they are safe. That
is why upon seeing the explosion at the Fukushima
I Nuclear Power Plant, I became angry thinking,what are you doing! and, what should never have
happened has actually occurred.
The sight of that explosion is the most shocking
sight I have ever seen, and I was ﬁlled with a feelingthat could be called apocalyptic. To put it in an
extreme way, it was a feeling that something had
occurred that the mere thought of makes carrying out
daily life difﬁcult.
The sociologist who first put this feeling intowords was probably Osawa Masachi. In his recent
book Shakai ha taezu yume wo miteiru (Society isconstantly dreaming), Osawa compared Japanesesociety to the spaceshuttle Challenger that exploded in
mid-air and crashed into the sea on January 28, 1986.
He describes current Japanese society as having toinvest vast amounts of money and labor for decades

to decommission the nuclear power plant which hasturned into a heaping mess, which is now uselessand continues to pose a lethal threat. The astronauts
on the Challenger were probably alive for anotherthree minutes as they plunged towards the sea after
their craft exploded. In these three minutes, there wasnothing apart from fear (at the absence of the greatother that gives human life meaning) as it was certainthat one will die, becoming space debris. Osawa
argues that after the destruction of March 11, we are
all aboard the Challenger falling through the sky.
This is the keen perception of a sociologist. From
now on we have to live a faltering meaningless life in
the heaping mess created when what should not have
happened did in fact actually happen. I think thatmany people have become aware of this condition.
However, even if this were to be a meaninglesslife forsaken by God, it carries on nonetheless. Froma scientific perspective, to go on existing alongside
this heaping mess might require the creation of newtechnologies, and from a radiological perspective, it is
an issue of managing the contamination risk emittingfrom this giant heap of trash. From the perspectiveof the state, the issue we are facing is probably toretrieve the faith that has been lost in the scientificand technological powerhouse that is Japan. As whatshould not have happened has already happened, there
is not much that we can do, but life goes on. Indeed,
the show must go on, as they say. As Osawa recounts
how he was able to get through a personal crisis withthe help of his friends and acquaintances, we who are
only passengers on the falling Challenger will fill
our faltering lives until the last moment by spending
it together with our loved ones. This is a further
sociological fact. At this point, I think this is the best
course of action open to us.

5Death and Life Studies and the Difﬁculty of LifeISHIKAWA Kumiko (DALS Project Researcher, History of Japanese Political Thought)

Since I had the good fortune to become a DALS
project researcher, three years have passed in theblink of an eye. With the support of a large numberof people, I have come face to face with death andlife through the loss of loved ones, and the birth ofmy third child during this time. Human death andlife cannot be separated, and everyone is inevitably
connected to both the living and the dead.
In the thought of Japanese National Learning(kokugaku ), my chosen field of study, the questionof where people go after death is a major subject.
Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) argued that everyone
will go to a netherworldly realm called Yomi no
kuni after death. Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843) heldthat after death, the bones of a deceased person areinterred in the earth while the soul goes to the hidden
world (yumei ) and bestows protection and good
fortune on those to whom the dead was connected inlife. Furthermore, according to Atsutane, a trial of thedead is conducted by the deity Okuninushi, in which
the dead are punished for their crimes in life andrewarded for their good deeds. We can discern a typeof established soteriology in these ideas: the living
are protected by the dead and the gaze of the deadbestows an everyday ethic and norm onto the living.
One of the thinkers who further developed thethought of National Learning in the modern period
was the folklorist and scholar of literature Orikuchi
Shinobu (1887-1953), who also wrote poetry underthe moniker Shaku Ch k . Orikuchi deﬁned National
Learning as a field pursuing a moral conviction(donen ) or moral sense (moraru sensu ) as he called
it, and throughout his life he continued to criticize socalled State Shinto and the wartime state. After thewar, while rejecting family-based ancestor worshipand championing the issue of the salvation of theincomplete spirits (mikanseirei ) of the young people
who died in the war, he propagated the transformationof Shinto into a monotheistic, universal religion
centered on Okuninushi as the judging and punishingdeity. In light of all these accomplishments, can wethen say that Orikuchi was a strong person?
Orikuchi was, in fact, a deeply hurt, weak person.
His younger twin brothers were born to his father
and the eldest of his mother's younger sisters, andhe himself was tormented by doubts about whether
he was actually really born to the person he thought
was his mother. Coupled with failure at school, these
doubts led to repeated suicide attempts. Coming toterms with the fragile and transient nature of life, hebegan to perceive beauty in the will to live in spiteof these problems. In a published conversation hehad in later years with Kitahara Hakushu entitledMidorigaoka yawa (An Evening Conversation inMidorigaoka, 1928), he stated that, If Akutagawa
Ryunosuke wanted to die this badly, it would havebeen better if he had chosen a way less glorifyingof death. There are many who want to die, but

6live because they cannot bear the thought of others
belittling the reason for their death.
Norinaga saw weakness (something he referred toas memeshi ) as the fundamental nature of humanbeings. Orikuchi's discussion of the The Tale of Genjishows a clear influence by Motoori Norinaga's viewof humans. Orikuchi viewed repentence in the faceof his continued transgressions by a weak Hikaru
Genji very positively, and saw in his struggle tobecome like a deity (kami ) a form of atonement forthese transgressions. He also praised Genji's wavering
nature. Orikuchi stated in his Hansei no bungaku
Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji − A literarywork of self-reflection) that it is The Tale of Genji
which best displays the deepest soul-searching of theJapanese people, and that people should learn how tobear suffering and improve themselves from suffering.
While Orikuchi strongly rejected the logic of thehousehold (ie ), he did not seek a solitary life. In his
systematic discussion of marebito (literally rarepeople − spiritual entities that occasionally visit
villages to bestow blessings upon their people),he depicted the disempowered weak as forming afellowship of wanderers and overcoming vagaries
through their strong will. This fellowship of marebito
might be called an intimate sphere. While Orikuchi
stayed single, he did not live alone. His disciples werealways by his side in life, and were also those who
witnessed his death. Orikuchi called his disciples hischildren, and the bond between them was verystrong.
I have the fortunate opportunity to teach intellectual
history at several universities. At the end of a course,
I always bring up Orikuchi to drive home the message
that everyone is supported by a number of people
including the dead; that failure is not the end and that
one can always atone; that one should not despair andisolate oneself from others regardless of how painful
it may be. I frequently receive feedback from thestudents stating that Orikuchi's ideas saved them or atleast made things easier for them. For me, youth is aboundless source of conﬁdence and my own student
days were brimming with hope and anticipation.
However, today's students are tormented by a senseof isolation that is far removed from such a senseof confidence, and they are squashed by a strongemphasis on personal responsibility telling themthat everything ends if they fail. For the young, it isprobably life rather than death that is the foremost
source of suffering. I believe that to narrate life in ameaningful way to these young people is a majortask of both myself and Death and Life Studies on thewhole.

Japanese-Korean International Symposium:
Towards an East Asian Death and Life Studies
IKEZAWA Masaru (Professor, Religious Studies)

On November 20, 2010, the Japanese-Koreaninternational symposium Towards an East AsianLife and Death Studies was held in Seoul. Thissymposium, which followed conferences held in2008 in Beijing in collaboration with the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences and in 2009 in Taipei
together with National Chengchi University, wasorganized in collaboration with Sungkyunkwan
University and marked the third event in the
Towards an East Asian Death and Life Studies
conference series. As on these previous occasions,
Professor Takeuchi Seiichi (Kamakura Women's
University) was the organizing force on the G-COE
side. Professor Kim Tae Kyoung (Sungkyunkwan
University) acted as the facilitator on the Koreanside. Both scholars also functioned as chair-persons
during the symposium. Park Baeyeong (DALS
Project Researcher), Jeong Yuri (Graduate Student
at the University of Tokyo), and Kim Joung Hee(Part-time faculty at Sungshin Women's University)interpreted for the conference participants. A
conference room on the second ﬂoor of the Koreana
Hotel in the center of Seoul served as the conference
venue.
After opening words by Lee Hee Mok (headof the Research Institute for Humanities at
Sungkyunkwan University) and Ikezawa Masaru,
the first panel consisted of Ikezawa discussing
Tradition in Confucian Bio-ethics − Thinking
about China: Bioethics , Trust , and the Challenge ofthe Market (Julia Tao, ed., 2008) and Choi Il Beom
(Sungkyunkwan University) presenting the paper
Concerning the Confucian View on Death andLife of the Korean People − Focusing on Yulgok
Yi Yi. After the lunch break, the second panelfeatured Yamazaki Hiroshi (Uehiro Chair of Deathand Life Studies Lecturer, University of Tokyo)
giving a paper entitled An Investigation into theIssue of Blame (seme ) as Depicted in Atomic Bomb
Manga − The case of Yunagi no machi , Sakura no
kuni , and Jung Hyo-Oon (Dung-Eui University)
considering the issue of Death and Life Studies
Research as a Discourse of Intellectual Integration.
The third, and last, panel consisted of Ito Yukiko(DALS Project Researcher, University of Tokyo)
whose paper was entitled Positioning Death andLife, and Han Young Gyu (Hongik University)
gave a paper entitled The Tradition of Lamenting
the Death of Loved Ones in Classical Korean Poetry
and the Elegiac Poetry of the Colonial Period.
The individual papers were followed by a general
discussion. Apart from the presenters, the Japaneseparticipants further included Kanamori Osamu(University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Education),
Fukuma Satoshi (DALS Project Researcher), and Erik
Schicketanz (DALS Project Researcher).
Attendance to this conference was restricted tothe presenters and a select number of participants

to allow for an intensive discussion. While thediscussion was indeed intense, the atmosphere at thisconference differed markedly from that of the Beijing
and Taipei conferences. What can be pointed out ﬁrst
is that the Korean participants expressed a certain
discomfort in regard to the idea of establishing
death or death and life as a field of study. Han
Young Gyu pointed out in a preliminary statement
before the start of the discussion that in Korea,
academic fields are usually given an affirmative
name, and that a ﬁeld called Death Studies would betherefore unthinkable. Also, a graduate student from
Sungkyunkwan University asked me during one of
the coffee breaks about the reason why we should
treat death as an academic ﬁeld of study. This marks
a fundamental difference to mainland China andTaiwan, where Death and Life Studies is alreadywidely recognized as an academic discipline. Despite
this fact, interest on the Korean side in the G-COE
program was high. Jung Hyo-Oon's paper was asurvey of the state of the ﬁeld in the US and Japan,
and he displayed a keen awareness of the activitiesof our G-COE program. I must honestly admit that
I was surprised to see to what extent our academic
activities have been followed outside of Japan. The
reason for an increase in interest in the issue of
death in Korea is the rise in suicides among young
people and the employment difficulties believed tobe the cause for its rise. It was pointed out in oneof the papers that it has been almost impossible inrecent years for university graduates to gain fulltime employment after graduation. This state evensurpasses the plight of Japanese college students
who are forced to concentrate on job-hunting
starting with their third year at college, and I could
easily recognize the direct correlation between theselife difficulties and the phenomenon of suicide.
Other interesting issues, such as embryonic stem cellresearch were also covered and the event turned into
a fruitful discussion.

7

Workshop Report:
The 5th International Tokyo Workshop on Applied Ethics and Philosophy
ー A Lecture by Cheng Kai-Yuan from National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan
ICHINOSE Masaki (Head of DALS, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology,
Department of Philosophy)

On January 19th 2011, the DALS program organized
the 5th International Tokyo Workshop on Applied
Ethics and Philosophy (TWAP). The workshop washeld in the Department of Philosophy at the Graduate
School of Humanities and Sociology, University ofTokyo. This time around, TWAP invited associate
professor Cheng Kai-Yuan from National Chung
Cheng University in Taiwan to give a lecture. An
audience of about twenty gathered in the Departmentof Philosophy, which functioned as the workshop
venue. Symbolizing the recent trend towards
increasingly lively academic exchange among scholarsof philosophy in East Asia, the workshop turned out tobe a very exciting affair.
The title of the lecture was The Nature of Self
and Death in Zhuangzi . Although Cheng specializes
in Western philosophy with a particular focus on
Wittgenstein and has conducted extensive research on
modern analytic philosophy, on this occasion he choseto discuss the thought of the Chinese philosopher
Zhuangzi. It is actually a current trend in the study ofEast Asian philosophy to examine Eastern philosophy
from the viewpoint of analytic philosophy, and it ispossible to locate Cheng's talk in this context. By
reading Zhuangzi (the title given to the philosopher
Zhuangzi's major work) through the lens of the issuesof the modern self and death, Cheng sought to show
the signiﬁcance of this Chinese philosopher for modern
philosophy.
While death and life are taken by Zhuangzi toform part of the natural order and should thus not
be feared, he further divides death into a biologicaland a subjective dimension. Despite his perception ofdeath as part of the natural order, Zhuangzi does in noway downplay the subjective and psychological fearof death. The question, then, is what exactly are thesubjective mind and the self that governs it? Cheng
recognizes in the thought of Zhuangzi similarities tothe ideas of Hume, who regarded the self as a bundleof perceptions. According to Cheng, this perspective
displays another similarity between Zhuangzi andmodern philosophy in that the self is perceived in bothas a kind of arena. Cheng went on to show how theself can be understood through various metaphors.
However, he argued that to truly apply this readingof Zhuangzi to the self, one has to deal with the storyof the dream of the butterfly. In this story, a mancalled Zhuangzhou one day dreamed that he hadturned into a butterﬂy. While in this dream state, he
forgot his own name and ﬂew around happily. Whenhe suddenly awoke, however, he realized that he wasa man named Zhuangzhou. But then he questioned
this realization and wondered whether he was indeed
a man who had just dreamed he was a butterﬂy, or
was he was in fact a butterﬂy now dreaming he wasa man? From this, Cheng deduces that the I whichforms the center of the personal arena is something
accidental. Cheng therefore asserted that the center of8

the arena is actually empty, and the self is merely
an illusion. Based on these observations, Cheng
reached the surprising conclusion that subjective death
is a form of illusion and there is nothing to fear about
it, as the subjective self does not even really exist in
the ﬁrst place.
I was a little puzzled about what to make of thisshocking line of argument, but everyone present
was intellectually stimulated by the realization thatsuch an outlandish argument, which resonates evenwith modern philosophy and manages to shockcontemporary listeners, resides in the classical Chinese
philosophy of Zhuangzi. A variety of questions arosein the following discussion and Cheng carefully
answered all of them. I posed the question of how theidea that the self does not exist can be reconciled with
our social lives, which revolve around the notion of
responsibility. Responsibility logically requires a self
to which it can be attached. In asking this question
I very much had Hume in mind who differentiates
between a self regarding thoughts and a self regarding
passions, and to whom Cheng had also referred.
Cheng responded that Zhuangzi's thought has indeed
been criticized for lacking ethical considerations andthat he plans to consider this issue at a future point.
After the workshop, the discussion carried on into thereception. This occasion once again displayed to me
the increasingly lively nature of academic exchange
among East Asian scholars of philosophy.

Symposium Report: Rawls' A Theory of Justice Today
ー Towards a Society of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternalism
FUKUMA Satoshi (DALS Project Researcher, Social Philosophy)

On February 2, 2011, the symposium Rawls' A
Theory of Justice Today ‒ Towards a Society of
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternalism was held at the
Tetsumon Memorial Hall in the Faculty of Medicine at
the University of Tokyo. The symposium was jointly
organized by DALS and the University of Tokyo Coop bookstore. The event also received the supportof the Kinokuniya bookstore chain, the Keiso shobo
publishing house, and the University of Tokyo Press.
Wide interest in the issue of justice was sparked
when NHK broadcasted Justice with Michael Sandel ,a program developed by John Rawls' academic rival
Michael Sandel, who made frequent references to
Rawls' work in his program. This symposium washeld in celebration of the publication of a Japanesetranslation of Rawls' A Theory of Justice: Revised
Edition in November of 2010.
The symposium was divided into two sessions.
The first session consisted of a keynote address
entitled Revisiting the World of A Theory of Justice‒ A Reverse Reading given by Kawamoto Takashi(Graduate School of Education). Based on theobservation that scholars frequently read books inreverse order ‒ that is, they decide whether to buy abook based on the quality of its index, footnotes, andafterword ‒ Kawamoto invited us into the World of
A Theory of Justice through such a reverse readingof the work. First, Kawamoto brought up a shortquote praising the work taken from the New YorkTimes Book Review featured on the wrapper bandof the Japanese translation. The praise, dated to
December 3, 1972, reads: The talented or sociallyadvantaged person hasn't earned anything: Those
who have been favored by nature, whoever they are,he writes, may gain from their good fortune only onterms that improve the situation of those who havelost out, Rawls's arguments for this proposition are
persuasive; its political implications may change ourlives. He then pointed out the four thinkers coming
up most frequently in the index (Kant, Mill, Aristotle,
Sidgwick) and terms that were newly added to theindex in the Japanese translation, such as sewa suru
( to take care of someone ) and kokoro wo kudaku ( todevote oneself to something ). Finally, he explained
Rawls' wartime experiences that were touched upon in
the translators' afterword.
The second session of the symposium consisted of apanel discussion entitled A Dialog of Six Experts on
A Theory of Justice . Mori Masatoshi (Graduate Schoolof Art and Sciences) opened the panel discussion bymentioning how it had been Nishibe Susumu who
had first become aware of Rawls in Japan. He also
discussed the problematic appeal of A Theory ofJustice by pointing out the awkwardness of the two
principles of justice proposed by Rawls and bringing
up the muddled nature of the meaning of the term
liberal (its different meanings in actual politics andin political philosophy). Next, Osawa Mari (Instituteof Social Science) pointed out that Japan ranks 18thout of ninety countries in the economic security
index (according to this index, Japan ranks lower
than Scandinavian and western European countries,
while Britain ranks 15th and the US is ranked 25th).
This evaluation is based on seven indicators including
stability of income and employment, workplace safety
and hygiene, and the existence of labor unions. As
an example of the application of Rawls' politicalphilosophy, Osawa proposed the idea that economic
security should be a human right. She also criticized
the fact that although the concept of care does comeup in A Theory of Justice , no mention is made of
the recipients of this care. Seiyama Kazuo (Graduate
School of Humanities and Sociology) stated that it
was his encounter with A Theory of Justice that led
him to turn from an interest in the normative issue ofclass and the Hobbesian problem of order to Rawls'
theory of justice. Moriyama further said that Rawls'
theory of justice is accepted as axiomatic in sociology
and economics, and that it was his dissatisfaction
with this interpretation of Rawls that led him to write

Riberarizumu to ha nani ka − Roruzu to seigi noronri (What is Liberalism − Rawls and the Theoryof Justice, published by Keiso shobo). In conclusion,
he pointed out the significance that Rawls' conceptof the savings principle has for considerations of
the issue of intergenerational justice. Lastly, Inoue
Tatsuo (Graduate School of Law and Politics) passedout mock grades in the subject of justice, giving
the early Rawls (A Theory of Justice ) and the late
Sandel (Public Philosophy ) a B, while assigning
the late Rawls (Political Liberalism ) and the early
Sandel (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice ) failing
grades. Inoue explained that while the early Rawls
was brilliant for causing the paradigm of Liberalism
to shift from liberty to justice, the later Rawls' ideaof overlapping consensus cannot solve the problemof political legitimacy. Taking questions from theaudience, the concluding general discussion, in which
Kawamoto also took part, addressed such issues as
what constitutes the best system of taxation and social
security as well as the interpretation of the difference
principle and the possibilities of property-owning
democracy.
Being one of the translators of A Theory of Justice ,I acted as chair-person for the second session. Likely
due to the influence of Sandel, the symposium
attracted more than two hundred participants and thebook stalls set up by Iwanami and other publishers
were also busy. This symposium owes much to
the efforts of Tsujitani Kentaro, head of the Co-op
bookstore at the University of Tokyo. Seeing the
producers of books (authors, translators, editors), theirreaders, as well as the mediators between these twosides (that is, the booksellers) meet and exchange
views suggested to us one possible direction for the
publishing industry in the digital age.

9

2010 Clinical Death and Life Studies/
Ethics Research Group Report
YAMAZAKI Hiroshi (Uehiro Lecturer, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology,
Death and Life Studies/ Medical Sociology)

2010 marked the fourth year of the existence of the Clinical
Death and Life Studies/ Ethics Research Group. Presentations
and lively discussions concerning the practical side of Deathand Life Studies were conducted one Thursday evening almost
every month in room 215 of the Faculty of Law and Letters
Building 1. This year, each of these gatherings drew between
twenty and forty participants, and I realized how great theinterest in issues of clinical Death and Life Studies and Ethics is.
Below, this year's presenters have provided summaries of theirtalks.

First Meeting: April 15th, 2010
Research to Smoothen the Transition to Palliative Care and its
Practical Application and Background − The Issue of Cancer
Treatment and QOL Evaluation
MIYAZAKI Kikuko (Graduate School of Medicine and Facultyof Medicine, Kyoto University)
Research to smoothen the transition to palliative care andits practical application was begun in 2009 as a result of theexperiences had by counselors in clinical settings with patientsand their families, surveys concerning the various problems
arising in this transitional period, and the difﬁculties experienced
in carrying out QOL surveys. The fervent discussion that
followed the presentation reflected that the nuances of theterm palliative care depend very much on the speaker using
it. Based on ongoing joint research by several institutions,interview surveys, and the analysis of written data, I became
again aware of the importance of producing practical insightsthat can be applied to the clinical setting.

10

abortion, then this is an indispensable human right giving
women the liberty to live their own lives. However, amovement of disabled persons criticizing selective abortion has
raised the issue that there may be a limit to which the notion of
agency supported by modern rights can be applied to the female
body, which becomes pregnant and gives birth. By summarizing
how abortion has been thought of terms of legality and rights,
this presentation sought to show how the women's movement
demands reproductive rights that go beyond these dimensions.
Fourth Meeting: June 24th, 2010
The Effectiveness of Advance Directives and the Benefits of
the Greater GoodHIKASA Haruka (Graduate School, Faculty of Arts and Letters,
Tohoku University/ JSPS)
The question of what is good for a hospitalized patientis central, particularly in cases in which the selection oftreatment and medical care according to advance directives
is considered to stand in opposition to his or her immediate
beneﬁt. Focusing in particular on the issue of dementia, I dealt
in this presentation with problems related to the effectivenessof advance directives. Mostly basing my discussion on Western
discourse, I approached the issue on this occasion mostly from aperspective that redeﬁnes the basis of the notion of autonomy. I
received many valuable comments in the question and answer
session following the presentation, including concrete examples
taken from medical practice. Based on this new input, I plan
to continue my research on the issue considering the agency
involved in decision-making, the advantages and disadvantages
that come with certain methods of treatment, and the evaluationof their consequences.

Second Meeting: May 27th, 2010
A Report on Ten Years of Activities by the Pet Lovers' Meeting− Japan's First Pet Loss Self-help Group
KAJIHARA Hazuki (Pet Lovers' Meeting)Since 2000, I have been running a self-help group inwhich people can discuss the grief they feel over the loss ofa companion animal (pet) with other people. I was scheduled
to give a presentation at the July 2010 conference of theInternational Association of Human-Animal Interactionsin Stockholm one month after this meeting, and used theopportunity here to try out my English paper on an audience forthe ﬁrst time. I received many valuable suggestions regarding
the issue of how to explain to Western researchers and activists
the consideration for the life of an animal that is so characteristicof Japanese pet owners, and expresses itself in the tendency to
avoid euthanasia and the great attachment to the remains ofa deceased pet. As someone who is not used to presenting at
international conferences, I am very grateful to have had theopportunity to give the paper in this setting ﬁrst, which gave
me conﬁdence for the conference in Stockholm.

Fifth Meeting: July 29th, 2010
The Current State of Cancer Patients as Seen from the
Perspective of Telephone Counseling by Hospice Staff
FUJIMOTO Keiko (Division of Palliative Care, Higashi-Kobe
Hospital)
For admission to the palliative care ward at Higashi-Kobe
Hospital, there is a waiting period of about two months
between the request for admission and the admission interview.
Since there is a further delay before actual admission to thehospital, there has been an increase in patients dying before
being hospitalized. The reason for this is that acute hospitals
recommend patients they cannot treat to make reservations at a
hospice as soon as possible, as well as that cancer patients whoneed nursing care−having no place to go−become refugees
in the nursing care system, ﬁnally ending up at hospices. An
effort is made to fairly distribute the limited resources whenhospice reservations are made, and through discussion with theresearch group participants, I was able to reconsider the futurerole of palliative care wards.

Third Meeting: June 10th, 2010
Rethinking Reproductive Freedom − On the Right of Selfdetermination in Abortions
HAYASHI Chiaki (Graduate School of Humanities, Josai
International University)
If one defines reproductive rights narrowly as referring to

Sixth Meeting: September 16th, 2010
Oral Care and Death and Life Studies ‒ The Unexpected
Relationship between Oral Care and Death and Life Studies in
Terminal Patients
SAKAGUCHI Hideo (Graduate School of Medical and Dental
Sciences, Tokyo Medical and Dental University)

For a long time the academic origins of oral care for terminalpatients and the elderly, which is carried out to allow themto go on eating until their deaths, was unknown. However,last year saw the rediscovery of a volume entitled Terminal
Patient: Oral Care published in 1973. It was the first book to
use the term oral care in its title. Remarkably, this volume did
not come out of the medical or nursing ﬁelds, but was rather
published by a Death and Life Studies foundation establishedin 1967. The book outlines the problems related to oral carefor terminal patients. I introduced the audience to the contentsof this volume and was able to receive valuable feedback andinsights from the listeners.
Seventh Meeting: October 14th, 2010
The Crossroads of Life and Death − A Consideration from theView of the Problem of Fetus Specimens with Hansen's Disease
SEKI Masakatsu, SON Kazuyo, HANAZAKI Kohei,
MATSUURA Junko (Kurmikurumareru inochi no tsudoi).
The fetus specimens preserved in formalin that werediscovered after the Hansen's Disease verdict in Kumamoto
showed how the rights of life and reproduction of patients with
Hansen's Disease were violated during the period in which
they were excluded from mainstream society by law. In thispresentation, we listened to recordings of women recounting
their experiences of forced abortion, discussed the situation ofthat time in which women suffering from Hansen's Disease
were not allowed to give birth, and outlined our activities
opposing the plans proposed by the Ministry of Health, Labourand Welfare and sanatoriums for people with Hansen's Disease
to incinerate all such fetus specimens. Through these efforts webecame more aware of the rights of those involved (especially
the women), and that the ethics of life have to be strengthened
from a citizen's standpoint.
Eighth Meeting: November 4th, 2010
Classroom Practice Concerning the Topic of Organ Transplantsfrom Brain Dead Patients
TAKAHASHI Mayu (Graduate School of Human andEnvironmental Studies, Kyoto University)
In my presentation, I reported on classroom practice at three
middle schools. In the classroom environment, materials wereprepared that made students consider a variety of issues fromthe viewpoints of a family with a member waiting for an organ
donor, and a family with a member close to brain death. To
further deepen the thinking processes of the students, the issues
at hand were changed in later classes. What was signaled
through this set of educational techniques was that the dilemma
between donating one's own organs and donating the organsof a family member provides students with a good opportunity
to think. After the presentation, audience members pointed out
the unclear nature of my own position as an educator as wellas insufficiencies in my analytical method. I received many
valuable comments and felt greatly encouraged.
Ninth Meeting: December 16th, 2010
Can Medical Practitioners Involved in Grief Care Support the
Grief Work of Persons Who have been Bereaved by Medical
Accidents?

UCHIDE Kiyoshi (Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
Kanazawa University Hospital)
Grief work for persons who have lost loved ones to medical
accidents begins by knowing whether the cause of death wasan accident or a medical error. However, the reality is thatthe boundary between accident and error is ambiguous, andbecause there are diverging perceptions how the two differ
between medical practitioners and the bereaved, it happens thatthe grief work does not progress and angry bereaved families
take legal action. But, unlikely to be satisﬁed in court, this leads
to fresh conflict and the grief work of the bereaved family isfurther disrupted. In this presentation, I brought up the necessityof reestablishing trust within the clinical environment as aprerequisite for grief care, and pointed out that realizing the
responsibility and duty one carries as a health professional could
be a ﬁrst step toward achieving this.
Tenth Meeting: January 20th, 2011
The View of Death and Life Expressed in Sekimon Shingaku− With a Focus on the Philosophy of Ishida Baigan
SAWAI Tsutomu (Graduate School of Human andEnvironmental Studies, Kyoto University)
In this presentation, I discussed the view on death and life of
Ishida Baigan (1685-1744), the founder of Shingaku ( HeartMind Learning ) who also referred to himself as a Confucian.
Normally, Confucianism is very much concerned with theissues of the soul and ancestor worship, but in the Edo period,
Japanese Confucians stayed mostly silent on these topics.
From a historical perspective, it can be said that this is because
Buddhism took over all funeral rites. I pointed out that Baigan
conducted ancestor worship as part of folk beliefs, and throughhis own enlightenment transcended the concepts of life anddeath. In his efforts to spread Shingaku, he emphasized his own
way of life as an example for others to follow, suggesting thatthey do the same. In the future, I seek to give Baigan's texts
an even closer reading based on the comments by audience
members after the talk.
Eleventh Meeting: February 3rd, 2011
Thoughts About the Form Informed Consent of Living Liver
Donors Should TakeNAGATA Akira (Graduate School of Medicine, Ehime
University)
Based on interviews with people who have donated theirlivers, many state that of the explanations received fromdoctors before surgery, they could only remember information
concerning the probability of survival for the recipient of theliver, but not their own post-surgery condition. Although theyreport that they were shocked at the size and shape of theincision after surgery, they resigned themselves to the fact that
this had been their own decision. I further outlined activities toprotect living donor rights in the United States, and discussed
whether similar activities would be also possible in Japan. The
research group participants gave me valuable advice that will
beneﬁt me greatly in future research.
This research group continues to meet, and everyone iscordially invited to participate.

11

Public International Symposium:
Images and Visions in Christian and Buddhist Culture
AKIYAMA Satoshi (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Art History)

The third international symposium in the conference
series Death and Life and Visual Culture washeld on February 13. The title of this symposium
was Images and Visions in Christian and Buddhist
Culture. Following the symposium Interrelationshipof Relics and Images: An Attempt at a Comparative
Art History in 2007 and the symposium Miraculous
Images in Christian and Buddhist Culture in 2008,
this event marked the last part in the Death andLife and Visual Culture series that has sought toinvestigate images connecting this world and the next
from an art historical perspective. On this occasion,
we were able to invite the famous scholar of Western
medieval art history Herbert Kessler (Johns Hopkins
University) to give the keynote address. Kessler was
the teacher of Erik Thuno who we had invited to theInterrelationship of Relics and Images symposium,
and Gerhard Wolf, who participated in the Miraculous
Images in Christian and Buddhist Culture symposium,
had also studied extensively with him. Although
Herbert Kessler is already seventy years of age anddespite the fact that he could only stay four nights inTokyo due to his teaching obligations, he accepted
our invitation and arrived from snowy Baltimore
as planned. Other participants from abroad who
took time off from their busy teaching schedules toparticipate included Michele Bacci (University of
Siena) and Fabio Rambelli (University of California,
Santa Barbara), although they were also only able
to stay for an extremely short period of time. Since12

the last two symposia featured many presenters fromJapan specializing in sculpture, we decided it was time
for a change. Alongside the two experts in Chineseand Japanese Buddhist painting, Ide Seinosuke(Kyushu University) and Masuki Ryusuke (Agency
for Cultural Affairs), we invited Satoh Hiro'o (Tohoku
University), who specializes in Japanese intellectual
history. Also deviating from the pattern set by theprevious two symposia, we invited one of the leading
Japanese authorities on Western medieval art, Kimata
Motokazu (Nagoya University). By inviting Kimata as
well as Fabio Rambelli, who specializes in the studyof Japanese Buddhism and Shinto, it was a great
pleasure to provide a truly boundary-crossing venue
for academic exchange between Japanese and Western
scholars on religious culture.
While this event marked the end of the DALS
sponsored conference series Death and Life andVisual Culture, we plan to carry on our activities
in the direction of comparative investigations ofreligious culture in the form of further domestic andinternational symposia. I count myself very luckythat I, as an art historian, was unexpectedly able
to participate in the DALS project and was able toexpand my own academic horizon in this way. I am
deeply grateful to have been given this opportunity.
The contents of this symposium will be published in
English in a forthcoming volume of the DALS Bulletin
and I would like to refer anyone interested to thispublication.

Symposium Report: What to Do When One Can No Longer Eat?
ー Thinking About Terminal Care for the Demented
AITA Kaoruko (DALS Project Researcher, Medical Ethics)

On February 27, the symposium What to Do When
One Can No Longer Eat? − Thinking About Terminal
Care for the Demented was held at the Tetsumon
Memorial Hall at the University of Tokyo and anumber of other, smaller on-campus venues. The event
was organized by the Japan Geriatrics Society incooperation with the Japan Academy of GerontologicalNursing and the Japan Socio-Gerontological Society,as well as with the help of DALS. Approximately four
hundred eighty people involved in the health careindustry as well as ordinary citizens attended thesymposium.
As Japan is the world's fastest aging society, avariety of issues related to the problem of terminal
care are becoming increasingly important. However,
simply taking the knowledge developed in otherindustrialized countries and emulating their practices
will not enable Japan to provide for the needs of its
own citizens. In particular, Japanese discussions ofapplying artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH)in the case of oral ingestion problems in patients
suffering from an advanced stage of dementia reﬂect
value judgments and views on death and life that are
informed by Japanese culture.
Because of this situation, the Japan GerontologicalSociety, a conglomerate of seven Japanese gerontologicalsocieties, decided to issue guidelines and started the
project Preliminary Considerations for the Creation of
Guidelines Concerning the Administration, Withdrawal,
and Termination of Artiﬁcial Hydration and Nutritionin Demented Elderly Patients (2010 Project for the
Enhancement of the Health of the Elderly, Health andWelfare Bureau for the Elderly, Ministry of Health,Labour and Welfare). This symposium was held aspart of this project.
After Ouchi Yasuyoshi (Graduate School of
Medicine, The University of Tokyo), president of theJapan Gerontological Society and Japan Geriatrics
Society, explained the contents of this project, Iijima
Setsu (Graduate School of Comprehensive Human
Sciences, University of Tsukuba), head of the ethics
committee of the Japan Geriatrics Society, gave the
keynote lecture entitled Issues in Terminal Care forthe Demented Elderly. The Japan Geriatrics Society
announced in 2001 their Declaration Concerning Our
Position on the Issue of Terminal Care for the Elderly.
This declaration was the precursor for guidelines
concerning terminal care that were produced by theJapanese Association of Medical Sciences. In the ten
years since, these issues have only become more
serious, and there is an urgent need to tackle thequestion of artificial nutrition and hydration. Next,
the ﬁndings of three surveys were outlined that had
examined the state of this issue in clinical practice, as
well as the perceptions of medical practitioners andthe families of the patients.
Based on questionnaire results gained from membersof the Japan Academy of Gerontological Nursing,Suwa Sayuri (Graduate School of Nursing, Chiba
University), the President of the Academy, argued
that what was required of nurses in the future wasto understand the process that the demented elderly
are undergoing, and to be able to communicate
with patients, their families, and the wide variety ofpractitioners and institutions involved about whatkind of life would be most desirable for the patient.
Based on questionnaire results gained from doctors
who have membership in the Japan Geriatrics Society,I pointed out that only six percent of doctors did not
see any problems with the decision to introduce ANH,
while many doctors perceived ethical problems bothwith withholding and administering ANH. The same
survey also showed that concern about legal problems
would make responding to the needs of patients more
difﬁcult in clinical practice.
Nishimura Michiyo (president of the NPO Assisted
Living Network) discussed an interview survey offamily caregivers looking after demented elderly
who introduced the use of a percutaneous endoscopic
gastrostomy (PEG) tube to feed their patients. As aresult of this survey, the vast communication gap
between family caregivers and doctors became clear.
The necessity for improved communication was madeevident by the fact that more than seventy percent offamily caregivers stated that they had not received
any instructions from doctors regarding how to supply
the patient with nutrients in the event that conditions
worsened or oral ingestion became impossible. In thepanel discussion that made up the latter part of thesymposium, Toba Kenji (director of the Hospital andNational Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology), whosits on the board of directors of the Japan Geriatrics
Society, Ohta Kikuko (dean of the Faculty of Nursing
and Medical Care, Keio University), the presidentof the Japan Academy of Gerontological Nursing,
Higuchi Norio (Faculty of Law, The University ofTokyo), and Shimizu Tetsuro (Graduate School of
Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo/
DALS representative) discussed policy-making andeducational activities. There were many questions andcomments from the audience, including heartfelt ﬁrsthand accounts, and many audience members called fora swift and continuous effort to deal with the issues at
hand.

13

Fit for the Future? Modern Technology, Liberal Democracy andthe Urgent Need for Moral Improvement
FUKUMA Satoshi (DALS Project Researcher, Social Philosophy)

On May 13, we invited Julian Savulescu to givea talk. Savulescu is professor at the Oxford Uehiro
Centre of Practical Ethics at Oxford University, a sisterchair to the Uehiro Chair of Death and Life Studies
at the University of Tokyo. The audience was about
forty people strong and the key concepts of Savulescu's
talk were discussed in a lively manner such asenhancement, global justice, and environmental
problems, which seemed to be mutually exclusive inthe beginning.
At the beginning of his lecture, Savulescu brought
up radical technological power, liberal democracy, andhuman moral nature as possible reasons for the future
extinction of mankind. Savulescu calls these threeelements the Bermuda Triangle of Extinction. First
up in the discussion was radical technological power.
In today's world, it is possible for many people tobring the means of mass-killing into their possession,and there exists enough plutonium to create twentythousand nuclear warheads beyond that which isalready contained at nuclear power plants. Second,
human moral nature enables us to perform altruistic
acts toward people we are close to, while remaining
indifferent to the suffering of the many to whom wehave no such close connection. This is our moral
psychology that has developed through the processof human evolution. While the income gap between
the richest and the poorest countries continues togrow, one reason why aid to other countries is
not sufficiently granted originates in this parochialhuman moral nature. Even domestically, solving
environmental problems has become difﬁcult because
trust is lacking among fellow citizens of large stateswith populations numbering into the tens of millions(the tragedy of the commons). Finally, Savulescu
argued that the liberal democratic state is inadequate
to successfully deal with problems such as global
justice (international aid), and the environment.
Having said that, a sense of justice is indeed neededin order to solve the problems of global justice and theenvironment, and in this regard Savulescu focused on
the notions of Tit-for-Tat and fairness. Based on
experiment results taken from the so-called ultimatum
game, it has become apparent that whether someone
behaves fairly when dividing up shares is determinedby his DNA, and that the environment only has
a slight influence on his behavior. (In the case ofchimpanzees, offers of eight parts to two are accepted,
but humans refuse such unfair offers even if it meansthat they themselves will suffer because of this. Also,in the case of identical twins, a similarity can bedetected in the share that they tend to accept and theshare they tend to offer themselves. That means that
if the offer is fair, so is the recipient.) Furthermore,racial prejudices and animosities also factor into theequation.
Savulescu argued that enhancement (referring to
the use of natural or artificial means going beyond

14

medical purposes to temporarily or permanently
overcome the current restrictions imposed by thehuman body) is necessary to overcome the constraintsof human nature. What he had in mind was to use
these enhancement techniques to make humans
smarter, to decrease their aggressiveness, to improvetheir perception, and to increase their morality.
Chemical enhancement is already a daily occurrence(for example, sugar, nicotine, and caffeine are used
to improve our memory and ability to stay awake),
and as experimentation on mice has shown, genetic
enhancement (creating a super mouse ) has also
become possible. Savulescu also pointed out that it isabuse experienced as a child as well as genetics that
influence the emergence of anti-social behavior, andthat it is possible to increase cooperation and decrease
aggressiveness by administering medications such as
Prozac (SSRI).
What, then, is necessary to break out of the triangle
described above? In the political arena, a decreasein liberalism is necessary (the implementation of a
speciﬁc value system, the lowering of living standards,
and the implementation of long-term policies).
Savulescu concluded that because our constricted
humanity (human nature) has become the greatest
danger to humanity (mankind), morally lacking andimperfect humans are in need of moral enhancementthat will change their nature.
The question and answer time following thelecture was extremely lively, with many queries
posed to Savulescu. At the same time, I could not
help but question whether we really need to survive
as a species if this is only achievable through thetechnological altering of our human nature, and what
becoming more moral through technology means.

10th East-West Philosophers' Conference
TAKEMURA Hatsumi (Recipient of Grants and Aid for DALS Junior Research Associates,
Religious Studies)

Four DALS members took part in the 10th EastWest Philosophers' Conference that was held in
May 2011 at the Manoa campus of the Universityof Hawaii. These four people were DALS leader
Ichinose Masaki, the two DALS project researchers
Fukuma Satoshi and Yanagihara Yoshie, and myself.
The conference was organized by the East-WestCenter of the University of Hawaii and held fromMay 16 to May 24. The Hawaii Imin International
Conference Center located on the university grounds
served as the conference venue, and the topic of theconference was Value and Values: Economics andJustice in the Age of Global Interdependence. Many
scholars of philosophy from Hawaii, North America,
Asia, and Europe congregated for the occasion, andthe conference was a large-scale event with nearly
two hundred speakers. The presentation topics werevaried, and as beﬁts the University of Hawaii with its
focus on non-Western philosophy, many of the panels
were dedicated to discussions of Confucianism andBuddhism.
Ichinose gave his paper on the death penalty
entitled Rethinking the Death Penalty: Uncertainties
over Harm, Blame, and Dangerousness on May 18.
Yanagihara and myself also gave our presentations
that day, while Fukuma gave his paper on theprevious day. In regard to the content of Ichinose's
paper, I would refer readers to his previous
publications. Below, I will focus on the presentationsof the two project researchers and myself.
Fukuma Satoshi's paper Rawls in Japan: A Brief
Sketch of Reception of John Rawls' Philosophy. He
touched on such issues as why it had been economists
and jurists that introduced Rawls to Japan in the
1970s, the problems with the Japanese translationof Rawls' magnus opus A Theory of Justice , theshortcomings of research on Rawls in the 1980s, aswell as recent developments in the new century.
In her paper Recasting the Concept of Surrogacy:

From an Analysis of History and Development,
Yanagihara Yoshie discussed the history of theconcept of surrogate motherhood in the East andWest. American mediators in the 1970s pointed tosurrogate motherhood as a gift of science. Actually,a similar system of having another person give birth
to one's child traditionally existed in East Asia.
However, this custom of surrogacy was suppressed
after modernization. However, when this later Westernnotion of surrogate motherhood appeared, demand
for the previously suppressed surrogate motherhoodarose again, and the market for it is still growing tothis day. Based on this historical outline, Yanagihara
concluded that the most important issue to point out
about surrogate motherhood is the ethical problem ofwhether society permits the use of the body of a third
person.
Last, I presented my paper entitled From
Pornography to the Great Earth Mother: Recent
Changes in the Japanese Imagination Forward
Hawaii. During the so-called spiritual boom of
the 1990s, a new image of Hawaii began circulatingin Japan. This new image was one of Hawaii as anisland of healing. I see this phenomenon as forming
part of the globalization of religiosity in society today,
and discussed how contemporary Japanese project
their desires onto Hawaii.
Lively discussions were conducted in a casual
atmosphere in all of the panels, and for the ﬁrst timein a long while, I was able to experience the free spiritof an American university. Practical considerations
such as the conference schedule, venue amenities,
accommodation, and catering were also very wellorganized, and made me think of the great effort put
into the conference by the conference staff. Finally, I
would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Ishida
Masahito from the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Hawaii for spending so much time with
us despite his extremely busy schedule.

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