The Direction of Death and Life Studies
ICHINOSE Masaki (Leader of the G-COE Death and Life Studies Program, Department of Philosophy)

After a ten year run, as of March 2012, the COE
Death and Life Studies Project has at last come toan end. When the project was launched in 2002 under
the leadership of professor Shimazono Susumu, it was
impossible to predict what the content would become
and what fruit it would bear. Going into it, we had
only the vague understanding that we had to approach
the problem of death and life from the perspectiveof the humanities, and above all we had to bring the
problems of practical ethics into the range of material
covered. However, after the Death and Life Studies
Project was established, we appointed professor
Shimizu Tetsuro the first Uehiro Chair for Deathand Life Studies, and through research into opinions
on death and life, as well as the core research andeducation activities of the so-called recurrent educationof healthcare providers, the factual foundation andstructure of the project was taking shape. As a result,
we have received a considerably high evaluation asa COE project in the arts and humanities. We would
like to express our heartfelt thanks to the DALS
representatives and afﬁliated professors, as well as the
specially appointed researchers and young research
assistants who have supported the project over thesepast ten years.
Having borne the responsibility of leading the
project for its ﬁnal two years, I would like to share a
few feelings and perspectives in these last remarks.
Since even before recruiting for the 21st Century COE
some ten years ago, there was a discourse of The
Uselessness of the Faculty of Letters. In fact, inJapan today university faculties called The Facultyof Letters have become the minority. Many are now
called The Faculty of International something orother, The Faculty of Human something or other,or The Department of Information something orother. Perhaps this is an expression of the principlethat all that rises must come down.
However,while it may be possible for political powers, should
academia simply allow itself to succumb to the whimsof what happens to be fashionable at the moment?
In reality, if one looks only at the condition of booksales, the academic disciplines within the Facultyof Letters enjoy great popularity and are anything
but useless. They are in-and-of themselves of valueeven in view of economic markets. Even more,
the basic perspective of the Faculty of Letters that
discusses the way people live and the way theydie put in the context of language and culture is apromising academic approach. The ﬁrst time I heard
this Uselessness of the Faculty of Letters being
discussed, I felt strongly in this way, and thoughtthat the Faculty of Letters must somehow survive
within this distorted, present-day estimation of its
worth. Then came the COE recruitment, and I
proposed the concept of Death and Life Studies. In
this time of need, I thought that perhaps this could
become a conceptual framework that would be able2

to encapsulate the Faculty of Letters in its entirety.
Even after ten years have passed, I believe it is stillnecessary to maintain an awareness of the danger that
the Faculty of Letters faces.
However, in order for Death and Life Studies tohave a capacity to encompass the whole of theFaculty of Letters and it is necessary for it to become
an area of research with a single independent
discipline in a narrow sense as well. I believe it is not
until the Death and Life Studies establishes such a
discipline that it can become a concept representativeof the humanities in the broader sense. So, howshould it be done? First of all, we must go througha trial and error process of considering what ﬁeld ofstudy it may best conform to. To this end, we must
make a decided effort to expand our territory and not
get caught up by the pre-existing concept that Deathand Life Studies = people s opinions of death andlife. As our project is called Death and Life Studies,
there accordingly needs to be a focus on life, and thisis certainly a characteristic trait of our Death and Life
Studies project in comparison to other projects that
may call themselves Thanatology, and may also leadto it becoming an independent discipline. Thinking
along these lines, I have come to be involved with the
Death and Life Studies Project from a slightly different
point of view. I have taken to dealing with problems
that focus on questions of how to live in this worldin relation to making medical decisions, criminal
liability in legal issues involving the mentally ill, therelationship between people and animals, the problem
of low-level radiation exposure, and so on. As aresult, though still developing, I feel as though thesigniﬁcance of this thing called Death and Life Studies
has come to gradually take shape.
From now, even from the institutional perspective,
is it not perhaps better to declare in advance what
the characteristics of Death and Life Studies will be?
For example, through the training of responders on
telephone life lines, the specialized training for thechaplains of prison inmates and those on death row;or through focusing on the experience of the Great
East Japan Earthquake, and ways in which Death andLife Studies can play an active part in the recovery
effort, can the independent discipline of Death andLife Studies not be fostered by weaving such social
activities into the characteristics central to the conceptof Death and Life Studies? Next year, Death and Life
Studies will be succeeded by the Center of Death andLife Studies and Practical Ethics. Though the journey
is long, we must concentrate on proceeding one step
at a time.

DALS after the COE
ー About the Center for Death and Life Studies and Practical Ethics
IKEZAWA Masaru (Director of the Center for Death and Life Studies and Practical

Ethics, Religious Studies)

Death and Life Studies, established in 2002 andcarried out through the 21st Century COE and the
Global COE programs, is about to come to a close.
However, one of the original aims of the COE program
was to create a new research center, and the various
achievements of the last ten years must be brought
forward into the future. For this reason, the Faculty of
Letters at the University of Tokyo decided last April
to establish the Center of Death and Life Studies andPractical Ethics as a successor organization. Although
the scale of the new center will not be equal to that of
the COE program, budgetary support has fortunately
been put into place starting in April. While the COE
program is drawing to a close, this does not spell theend for Death and Life Studies.
I would like to comment on why the two ﬁelds ofdeath and life studies and practical ethics have beencombined in the name of the new center. Alongside
the COE program, the Faculty of Letters at the
University of Tokyo had for some time also carriedout the university-wide Education in Practical
Ethics Program. This program was closely related
to the COE program, jointly organizing symposia(the symposium Axial Age held in 2008 and theconference The Potential of Death and Life Studies
in 2009 are examples of this cooperation). One of thecentral issues in practical ethics is that of bioethics.
Since this is also a subject that the ﬁeld of death andlife studies is concerned with, the two ﬁelds of inquiry
were combined in the establishment of the center.
We are thinking about four main foci for the center s
activities. First is the expansion of the aforementioned
education program into the Education in Death andLife Studies and Practical Ethics Program.
The
implementation of this program as a universitywide inter-disciplinary project from April onward
has already been decided. While this is an initiative
limited to just one university, it is significant thatspecialized education in the fields of death and life
studies and practical ethics is conducted.
The second focus is to carry on and further develop
the recurrent clinical education for medical andcaretaker personnel that has so far been conductedby the Uehiro Chair for Death and Life Studies (thishas taken the form of the seminar Death and Life
Studies for Medical and Caretaker Personnel and thePractical Clinical Ethics seminar). We are seeking to
not only turn this into a ﬁxed program, but if possible
also into a program that is ofﬁcially recognized by the
University of Tokyo.
Thirdly is the organization of international symposia
and academic conferences. Each year, the COE
program convened special symposia, workshops, andlectures in the double digits, and this formed the centerof its activities. Since the budget will be drasticallyreduced, it will very likely be difﬁcult to continue ouractivities on the same scale. However, through themany conferences that have been organized so far, agrowing network has come into existence that spans
not only Japanese scholars, but foreign researchers
as well. It would be foolish to not use this existing
network. Even if it is only several times a year, these
activities have to be continued.
Fourth is the training of young scholars. I am
realizing that through these ten years of DALS
activities, the term death and life studies as well as its
related mindset ‒ to combine theory and practice inorder to create knowledge about how one should livein full awareness that humans are ultimately bound to
perish ‒ is becoming established in Japan. However,this is still a new field. What is indispensable forthe development of this ﬁeld of study is the trainingof young scholars. This is why the COE program
made the training of young scholars one of its points
of focus alongside the organization of symposia andconferences. Despite the financial limitations, thisinitiative has to be carried on.
Finally, the achievements of ten years of DALS
have been extremely multi-faceted (they havecertainly exceeded what anyone imagined ten yearsago). While I am very proud of this fact as someone
who has been involved in DALS from its inception, I
have to admit that there is still much left to be done.
Take, for example, last year s disaster. Althoughmany of our academic activities have dealt withthe phenomenon of mass death (caused by wars or
disasters), there is still room in the context of deathand life studies for further discussion concerning how
to think about the issue. In this regard, I seek todevelop new areas of inquiry, including the problem of
the ethics of technology that has been brought to lightthrough the nuclear accident.

3

The Earthquake Disaster and the Power of the Traditional
View on Death and LifeSHIMAZONO Susumu (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Religious Studies)

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011,
brought with it damage caused by several tsunamis andthe accident at the nuclear power plant, leaving a trail ofdestruction. It was felt that the mourning of the nearlytwenty thousand victims was the duty of all of us wholive in Japan. Buddhist priests from the entire country
visited the devastated areas on the forty-ninth day after
the disaster and together performed services for the dead.
It is probably almost unprecedented that the signiﬁcanceof funerals and rituals of pacification (irei ) in which
the spirits of the dead are commemorated and grief isshared has been so strongly recognized. During the last
few years, interest has focused on new forms of funeralssuch as natural funerals and tree funerals, and thishas led to the publication of such books as No needfor funerals (Gentosha) by Shimada Hiromi or Temples
that don t do funerals by Akita Mitsuhiko (Shinchosha).
It has been argued that people are increasingly losing
their attachment to traditional funerals. A feeling of
distance towards the traditional view on death and lifeis spreading, and people sense that they need to rethinktheir view on death and life. Attempts to give expression
to this search for such a new view have also increased in
popular entertainment such as comic books, movies, andmusic.
For example, the song Sen no kaze ni natte ( I ama thousand winds that blow ), which became a sudden
hit after Akigawa Masafumi performed it in the annual
New Year s Kohaku Uta song competition in 2006, wassung by Ayano Kanami, a member of the Takarazuka
theater group, at a charity concert held in honor of thetenth anniversary of the Great Hanshin earthquake
in 2005. Various forms of pacifying the spirits ofthe dead emerged in the wake of the Great Hanshin
earthquake, but rather than the traditional Buddhist
rituals, ecumenical forms stood out. Also, in the movie
Departures (Okuribito ), which won an academy award
in 2008, the owner of the funeral parlor emphasized thatthe feeling of sending off the deceased is something that
goes beyond any one particular religion or sect when hesaid, We serve any religion. The basic theme of thisﬁlm is that while the work of morticians who prepare thedead for funerals has absolutely nothing to do with thedoctrines of the traditional religions, it is exactly throughthe ecumenical and non-traditional character of the ritualthat feelings for the dead are deepened.
The systematization and development of Death andLife Studies, in which we are currently engaged, isdirectly related to this situation in which rituals basedon the traditional view on death and life are losing
their relevance and in which people increasingly feel
discomfort with them. The areas of civil life in whichpeople have to make choices for themselves have grown.
On the basis of this phenomenon, gathering academic
insights and offering academic explanations, Death andLife Studies seeks to foster knowledge that can form thebasis of a new professional specialization in responseto this search for meaning by the people. Alongside

4

medical and psychiatric contexts directly related to thegrief caused by death and bereavement, Death and Life
Studies has focused on rituals and customs surrounding
death.
However, in the wake of the Great East Japan
Earthquake it was apparently felt that what is effective
are the traditional Buddhist funerals and rituals of
pacifying and mourning the dead. This might have to
do with the fact that the North-East, which was affectedby the disaster, is an area in which the traditional rituals
still have credibility, and sutra recitations by Buddhist
priests are often shown on television. It is likely that
this is due to the fact that the region has only few large
cities and the age of its inhabitants is also higher than
the national average.
However, this is not the only reason. The Great
East Japan earthquake taught us the limits of humanknowledge and capabilities. Dumbfounded, I watchedscenes in which everything that had been built byhuman hands was destroyed. Miyazawa Kenji s poem
Ame nimo makezu ( Strong in the Rain ) was read alot. This poem seeks to inspire a sense of altruism to help
others, but also encourages being a lumphead (deku nobo ). A lumphead is an image used for the bodhisattva
Sadaparibhuta in the Lotus Sutra. This bodhisattva is an
ascetic who prays for the Buddha nature of all people.
However, he is a ﬁgure who is also completely ridiculedfor this by others.
For Miyazawa Kenji, he is also a symbol for an
attitude of reflecting critically on pride and pridein one s superiority (zojoman ). It can be said that thepoem Strong in the Rain critically reflects on thearrogance of mankind, and depicts an attitude of bowing
one s head before the wisdom of the people of the past.
Can mankind, which has developed scientiﬁc knowledge,
give birth to something new in regard to the view ondeath and life? Even if that was the case, is it not that
ultimately reliance on past views cannot be escaped? It
may be that Death and Life Studies will be forced by theGreat East Japan earthquake to once more become awareof the meaning of reconsidering the power of tradition.
This realization of the power of tradition has probably
been made even stronger by the massive damage causedby the earthquake and tsunamis, and by the nuclear
disaster that occurred on top of this. It seems that thenuclear disaster has caused a critical examination of
our past way of life that has put excessive emphasis on
economic development, and it has made people return toa religious sense of value that expresses awe for natureand is mindful of human arrogance. What is hoped forin regard to future recovery is the restoration of social
bonds and an awakening of a spirit of mutual help. It
seems to me that religion can play many roles also inthis regard. It might be that we are witnessing a turning
point in Japan s modern history, which has heretofore
sought to catch up with and overtake the material
civilization of the West. It appears that those who feel
this way are not few.

Earthquakes, the Vulnerable, and Academia
MUTO Kaori (Associate Professor at the Institute of Medical Science, Medical Sociology)

In October, I visited Fukushima prefecture,accompanying a female friend, who is a wheelchair user and had voiced her desire to see thereality of the devastation caused by the Great East
Japan Earthquake. For many years, she has been
engaged in community services for the disabled, andcurrently offers patient counseling at a local hospital.
Her motivation for the visit was clear in her own
words, I feel that the shock I had initially received
from this disaster is gradually fading, and want tosubject myself to a blow that will not so easily fade…
[omission ]… I want to take part in this unprecedented
loss, event, and turning point for Japan and humanity.
If somebody were to say It is impossible for you tovisit, because you are handicapped, then the same
would as well apply to my current place of residence,
which is completely unaffected by the disaster. I havebeen engaged in changing society for thirty years,
and cannot resolve myself to take the role of an
outsider or spectator in this case. However, with thesethoughts kept to myself, I want to visit the affectedareas. Without being intrusive, as a genuine visitor,
I want to feel in silence what I should do from nowon. (Personal communication with the author) My
students, too, agreed with her unwavering will, andcame along to help and drive our vehicle.
However, before departure, we had to decide what
to do if a tsunami warning was issued while walking
along the coast. We knew that in the coastal area
nothing but the foundations of buildings remain.
Would it be actually possible to reach the designatedevacuation area carrying a woman in a wheelchair? Despite our objections, my friend ordered us
to just leave her in such a case. However, the day of
departure arrived before we had reached a consensus.
We drove along the coast from Soma city to Minami
Soma city and further on to the demarcation line
20 kilometers from Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power
plant. Luckily, we did not encounter a situation thatwould have forced us to evacuate. Taking numerous
impressions away from the experience, everyone
returned to everyday life.
One of the issues that the Great East Japan
Earthquake brought to light was the support system
for those in need of assistance during disasters. In
2005, the Central Disaster Prevention Council required
the municipalities to draw up plans for the provision ofevacuation assistance to the elderly and handicapped.
The various municipalities established plans forassisted evacuations under the motto of Self-help andMutual Assistance. This system was put to the test
during the disaster.
However, the results of this system were extremely
sobering. Among the dead that could be identified,
55.7% were aged 65 or older (September 9, National
Police Agency). Furthermore, those that perished while
engaged in assisting the evacuation of another person(the following figures are aggregates including thedead and missing from three prefectures) also include
202 members of the ﬁre department (April 19, Fire andDisaster Management Agency), 56 social workers (July13, Japan National Council of Social Welfare), and 20
nurses (September 2, Japanese Nursing Association).
There are no official numbers for casualties among
helpers and care workers.
In the 2005 Support Plan for those in need ofassistance during disasters, it was assumed that thosewould come on their own efforts to the evacuationarea, and the Plan only gives guidelines for what
to do after their safe arrival. In 2006, the Plan wasamended to add procedures from the stage of assisted
evacuation to the evacuation areas. This change wasprobably the result of the efforts of those falling into
the category of persons in need of assistance.
However, the number of those who perished during
the assisted evacuation was extremely high in thecase of the Great East Japan Earthquake. The headof a group whose members have intractable diseases
stated that if the outcome of their success invited suchgreat loss of life, then he is truly devastated. What was
the right thing to do for a visiting nurse who pushed
her patient onto the second ﬂoor before disappearing
in the floods, disregarding her superior s evacuation
order? When I asked what the right thing to do
was to friends who are physicians or nurses, theyexpressed their anguish and stated that they have notbeen trained to abandon their wards or that they aredamned whatever they do. This does not only apply
to healthcare professionals. I have also met a married
couple who told me in tears how they looked ateach other and abandoned their grandmother to savethemselves when they saw the tsunami closing in.
Those who survived are plagued by guilt and remorseand occupied with recovery efforts.
For me, the Great East Japan Earthquake was an
event that seemed to mock us, saying, I told you thatthe vulnerable in your society were truly weak. All
the concepts and ideas generated by social movements
and academia to date were also virtually destroyed.
However, as long as one lives in Japan, it is impossible
to live without thinking of disasters. What, then, canJapanese academia do in this situation?

5

The Death of My Heroes
YOKOSAWA Kazuhiko (Professor of the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Psychology)

I would like to write about two Americans ofmy generation who died in the prime of their lives.
What they have in common is that they both made
spectacular achievements in the ﬁeld of high-tech, andas their deaths both received great media attention
in the United States, I am sure that many of you willknow them. In their vigorous productivity up until
the time of their deaths, one perhaps feels a difference
from the death and life perspectives of the Japanese.
However, I do not intend to make such comparisons,but this may in fact end up becoming more of aeulogy offered to my heroes.
One of them was Steve Jobs, who died on October
5th, 2011. Though it was a moment that everyone
was prepared for, his death came unexpectedly soon,
just over one month after he stepped down from his
position as CEO of Apple. His legendary presentationsof new products and his often repeated Stay hungry,
stay foolish closing remarks from a Stanford
University commencement speech caught the attentionof a great many people. The biography Steve Jobs by
Walter Isaacson went on sale in October and become
one of the best sellers of the year in the United States (aJapanese translation was also soon released).
Without a doubt, he was a hero of my generation.
Of course, I never met him, but there was probably
not a day in the last 25 years that I did not touch
one of the products that he introduced to the world.
I am that much of a Mac freak. In the corner of myofﬁce is something my students call the Mac museum,
where all of the old Mac computers I have used in myresearch are lined up on a large set of shelves. WhenI look at them again after all these years, I have thestrong feeling that I have lived along with him for atleast the last quarter of a century.
Steve Jobs asks us, if we imagine that today is thelast day of our lives, is what we set out to do reallyworth doing on our ﬁnal day? If not, then this is thetime to change something in our lives. Surely, even
if it is work valued by society, there are plenty ofthings that we would end up spending time doingthat might not be thought of as suitable for one s ﬁnal
day, but we satisfy ourselves by saying that there isnothing that can be done about it. Not everyone canlive with the willfulness of Jobs. However, if it werepossible, I would like to spend my last day lecturing
and discussing the themes of my research.
There is a model for this ﬁnal lecture. It was thelecture by Randy Pausch, professor at Carnegie Mellon
University. Held on September 18, 2007, this lecture
can be seen on video sites online, and it begins withhim presenting the results of medical examinations
that revealed ten cancerous tumors in his liver, andthe fact that he had been given three to six months
to live. It was light-hearted, however, and not by
any means a serious telling of the story. He touched
only brieﬂy on his own ﬁeld of virtual reality, and the
majority of the lecture was about the importance of6seeking to fulﬁll your childhood dreams (why he chose
this theme becomes clear at the end of the lecture).
He tells us that when an obstacle presents itself on thepath to fulﬁlling our dreams, it is a chance to prove toourselves just how much we truly want what lies on
the other side of the wall. A book entitled The Last
Lecture was released based on this talk (translated
into Japanese under the title Saigo no jugyo - Boku no
inochi ga aru uchi ni ) and became a best seller in the
United States, but he died on July 25, 2008 at the ageof 47. However, this lecture was what helped him tolive longer than the three to six months he had spoken
of at the time.
It is clear that Americans generally like moving
stories of living life to its fullest when the end is near,but I feel that in the stories of these two individuals inparticular we can see an American ideal that accepts
people who have become adults without throwing
away their childhood hopes and dreams. The reason
these two are heroes for me is likely because I myself
have somewhat of an American character. While I
was in the United States I had lively banter with thestudents, and while I regret that I might be revealing
something about myself here, it is relevant. The
Faculty of Letters is a broad field, but at times theJapanese model is too narrow.
At Carnegie Mellon University there is a lecture
series based on the supposition, If you knew of yourown death. This is of course only a supposition, but
Pausch s lecture is also one of this series. I have also
wondered what theme I would choose for my final
lecture, but nothing approaching knowing my own
death comes to mind. When engaged in cutting edge
scientiﬁc research there is no doubt that it is importantto pursue ideals and have dreams. On the other hand,
I wonder if the feeling I have that many students only
act when they know that answers will be forthcoming
is evidence that I have gotten old. Certainly, as thedeaths of people from my own generation who haveworked so hard increase, I cannot help but feel a senseof regret. In these cases all the more, I should follow
the example set forth in Pausch s lecture, and in my
ﬁnal lecture recognize the screaming responsibility to
pursue ideals and realize my own dreams.

Shichi go san and Archaeology
ONUKI Shizuo (Professor of the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Archaeology)

Though not to the extent of my colleagues
who specialize in ancient gravesites, even I as an
insigniﬁcant archeologist have some experience withexcavating graves. While only in the form of thebleached bones of ancient people, I suppose that I
have had the most contact with the bodies of the deadof all the members of the Faculty of Letters teaching
staff connected with Death and Life Studies.
Because of the properties of the acidic soil in Japan,
even when gravesites are discovered in ancientruins they are often empty and it is evidently thecase that the bones have completely decayed andturned to earth. Acidic as the soil may be, wheninvestigating graves from around the time of the Edo
period it is also possible to have the chance discovery
of somewhat fresher remains. As a researcher thisshould be cause for joy because of the plentiful
data that can be gathered, but it is something that I
would rather not encounter if possible. In the Tokyo
University Museum there are a lot of human bones
from the Jomon period on display, but these belong toa rare group of specimens that were found in special
circumstances such as shell mounds and the like.
As the southern part of the Yangtze River basin
in China has the same type of acidic soil as Japan,
remains tend not to last, but in the alkali soil in
China s loess zone bones remain well intact for
thousands and tens of thousands of years. They will
never return to the earth here. Accordingly, a large
number of human bones turn up in surveys of burialsites in this area. Like earthenware and stone tools,
for archeologists thinking about the society of thetime, human bones could be said to be a treasure
trove that bring about a great deal of information. For
archeologists who handle things , however, problemsof the heart are a most difﬁcult subject, and thoughtsof the tears that likely ﬂowed for the entombed whoare being dug up never come to mind. In the natural
course of events, we would ask anthropologists toclassify the bones themselves, and together with theinformation gathered there, we archeologists wouldclassify the burial method and accessories in order toconsider the society and customs of the time.
I believe there to be a difference in notions of what
happens after death, or different thoughts on bones, inareas where bones decay and return to the earth, andareas where the bones remain ad inﬁnitum . Though
it is not a practice unknown in Japan with its acidic
soil, in the loess zone of China it was common eventhousands of years ago that after the body decayed
and only the bones of the deceased remained, there
would be a second burial in a different grave. As a
specialist in the prehistoric period far removed fromlater times with historical documentation, I do notwant to say anything carelessly, but I believe thiscustom may be related to notions of the world after
death.
As I teach a course in Chinese archeology, thesubject of graves constantly comes up. Why are theages of seven, ﬁve, and three ‒ celebrated landmarks
for a child known in Japanese as shichi go san ‒important in life? As I explained above, a great
number of human bones come out of ancient ruins
in China s loess zone. Among them, it was common
practice that only infants were not buried in gravesites
located outside of village or community areas, butwere rather buried in earthenware vessels located justoutside of homes. Accordingly, putting aside whether
or not excavation can provide all of the answers,
theoretically you can calculate the number of people
who were born and died in a given place at a given
time by adding the number of people buried in graves
with the number of infants buried in these earthenware
vessels. And as the bones found in China s loess zone
are well preserved, anthropologists can determine
gender and calculate the approximate age of death.
Having done so, you can go on to calculate theaverage life expectancy for people who were born anddied in the area. The result is that the average life
expectancy in agricultural societies of the Neolithic
period some 7,000 years ago was about 20 years, andthat life was so short in the past is generally quite
surprising. I may have already been caught out bypeople reading this, but there is in fact a trick in themath. If you consider how many adult graves wereexcavated and the number of infants found buried inearthenware vessels, infants account for approximately
40 percent of the total. This means that just under
half of babies born died before reaching the ages ofseven, five, or three ‒ the important landmarks ofshichi go san . Reading books of historical population
studies in Europe, the spread of medicine and hygienic
conditions that allow for babies to be safely raised isvery recent, and the infant mortality rate in Europe
was incredibly high before the Industrial Revolution.
The average life expectancy for children who lived
safely through the most vulnerable time of infancy
and beyond the shichi go san period therefore becomes
35 years. Having said that, perhaps a few of you feelrelieved, but it is still less than 40, and it was veryrare for people to live beyond the age of 60.
Surely, making it through the shichi go san period
and reaching the age of 60 are causes for celebration.

7

Egyptian Japanese International Conference : 2011
Ohtoshi Tetsuya (Associate Professor in the Graduate School of
Humanities and Sociology, Oriental History)

On September 17-18 and September 23, academic
exchange symposia between Egypt and Japan were
held at the International Conference Center Hiroshima
and on the Hongo Campus of the University ofTokyo. These events were the continuation of the
DALS symposia Dialogue on Death and Life: Views
from Egypt held in Cairo and Alexandria in the fallof 2009, which garnered a very positive response,and had the added signiﬁcance of repaying the kind
reception we had received in Egypt. The symposia
in Egypt were the ﬁrst time that DALS had engaged
with the Middle East and Islam, and the two symposia
held in Japan were an important opportunity to further
strengthen this contact.
At ﬁrst, the Japanese symposia were planned with afocus on medicine and bio-ethics in order to continue
the discussions started at the symposia held in Egypt.
However, the world changed signiﬁcantly with the socalled January 25 Revolution in Egypt and the Great
East Japan Earthquake of March 11. With this, ourplans for the symposia themselves changed towards
an ambitious attempt to jointly discuss the current
situation of Egypt and Japan, which are facing theaftermath of a revolution and a large-scale natural
disaster respectively, from a global perspective. Postrevolution Egypt and post-disaster Japan, which is still
groaning under the weight of the nuclear accident, areboth in severe situations, and continue to desperately
search for a solution to their respective problems
amidst this great upheaval. It is precisely despite
the fact that their vectors of experience differ that a
strange resonance can be discerned between the twocountries. It was around this idea that there should beoccasion to reflect together on what has occurred in
the two countries that the plans of the Egyptian andJapanese sides came together.
We decided to invite four scholars from Egypt
with intimate knowledge of the true state of therevolution and who are involved in various projects of
documenting the revolution, and Japanese specialists
with a good grasp of the state of things in the
Tohoku area that was devastated by the earthquake.
Furthermore, we strove to give the discussion more
depth by organizing one of the symposia together
with the Partnership Project for Peacebuilding andCapacity Development of Hiroshima University(HiPeC). Actually, this is the ﬁrst time that anyone has
invited Egyptian scholars to Japan for a discussion of
the January 25 Revolution.
Another peculiarity of these symposia was that
following the wishes of the Egyptian participants,
one of them was held in Hiroshima. Almost all
Egyptians have heard of Hiroshima and because of
the political and geo-political position of Egypt, thename Hiroshima has special emotional connotations
for Egyptians. Through professor Machida Soho, withwhom we had already worked together on a previous
occasion, we asked Hiroshima University s HiPeC for

8

their cooperation.
After visiting the Hiroshima Peace Site on themorning of the 17th, the following two days weretaken up by the international symposium Peace from
Disasters - Indigenous Initiatives across Communities,
Countries and Continents. After a minute of silent
commemoration led by P. Maharajan (Tribhuvan
University, Nepal), and following a welcoming
addresses by Yamane Yasuo (the vice-president ofHiroshima University), Sato Yuhei (Governor of
Fukushima prefecture, read in absentia), Yuzaki
Hidehiko (Governor of Hiroshima prefecture, readin absentia), and Ohtoshi Tetsuya (The Universityof Tokyo/DALS), Togawa Masahiko (Hiroshima
University) discussed the ideas behind the symposium.
In the ﬁrst session, Peace-building and Democracy
across Communities, Countries and Continents,
Khaled Azab (Bibliotheca Alexandrina) and Arai
Etsuyo (JETRO) functioned as chair persons. Becauseof space constraints, I will only touch here upon
those aspects of the symposium that are related to
Death and Life Studies. The ﬁrst presentation was byEzzedine Choukri Fishere (The American University
in Cairo/Former Director of the Egyptian Supreme
Council of Culture, Author) and entitled Peacebuilding
and Democracy: How the Arab Spring Could Be an
Opportunity for a Truly Lasting Peace in the Middle
East and it served to set the tone for the entire
symposium. The presentation refuted the long-heldbelief that authoritarian regimes are needed to keep
the peace in the Middle East. In the same session,
Katsunuma Satoshi (The University of Tokyo) madean interesting historical comparison in regard to theelections that are the greatest focus of the Egyptian
revolution in a paper entitled Egypt's Experienceswith the Electoral System after the Revolution of
1919.
The second session was entitled Nuclear andEnvironmental Peace for Better Human Life. In it,
Kanamori Osamu (The University of Tokyo) gave apresentation with the title After the Catastrophe Rethinking the Possibility of Breaking with Nuclear
Power. Alongside showing the logical foundation anda roadmap for a break with nuclear power, Kanamori
also made a number of valuable suggestions.
Session three, Spiritual Reconciliation from
Devastations, consisted of the two presentations
Unthinking Social Disasters: Three Paths toward
Care for Traumatic Memories by Kawamoto Takashi(The University of Tokyo) and Muslim Christian
One Hand: the Copts under the Islamic Rule byMagdi Guirguis (Kafr El Sheikh University). The
profundity of the presentation by Kawamoto, who ishimself from Hiroshima, and his realistic suggestions
elicited a strong response from the audience. Guirguis
presentation provided thoughts on the coexistence
between Coptic Christians and Muslims, while also
including the current revolution in his considerations.

The next day featured panel discussions starting in
the morning based on the presentations of the previous
day. Alongside the participation of Shimazono Susumu(The University of Tokyo) and Louay Mahmoud(Bibliotheca Alexandrina) from the Death and Life
studies side, functionaries of JICA, UNITAR, andHiroshima prefecture also spoke. As the allocated time
was short, all participants had prepared comments
in response to the presentations. The last session
was dedicated to collecting ideas and suggestions.
Although my own style of communication tends tobe very non-confrontational, an Indian scholar who
was present aggressively argued for the peaceful use
of nuclear energy, and despite the fact that we did nothave opportunity to discuss this issue at the time, theoverall discussion was given a strong impulse thanks
to this contribution.
For Death and Life Studies, the greatest
accomplishment of the Hiroshima symposium probably
was to have gained the opportunity for academic
exchange with participants from South and SouthEast Asian countries, such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh,the Philippines, Nepal, India, and Indonesia. This
was thanks to the HiPeC network, and it was agood inspiration for future academic exchange tobe conducted by DALS, which has had almost no
academic contacts with the South and South-East
Asian countries so far. Also, by choosing Hiroshima
as the site for this symposium, I believe that therelationship between nuclear power and the issue of
atomic weapons on the one hand and the Egyptian
revolution on the other was made very lucid.
After an excursion to Miyajima, we traveled on
towards the Kansai region. Our foremost aim wasto meet Morimoto Kosei, who is not only a top
representative of the ﬁeld of Islamic history in Japan
with experience of studying at Cairo University,
but has also served as abbot of the temple Todaiji.
Currently, he is the director of the Culture Center at
Todaiji. As a typhoon was approaching, we sat ina guest room at Todaiji and listened to Morimoto
expound on the history of the temple. As historians
were also present among the Egyptian participants,
both sides enthusiastically compared their countries
histories. Next, we entered the main hall of the temple
and received a detailed introduction to the teachings ofthe Kegon sect, also including a brilliant comparisonof this branch of Buddhist thought with Islam.
Afterwards, we were invited to Morimoto s house,
which is one of the residences located on the temple
grounds, and our comparative discussions concerning
Egyptian, Islamic, and Japanese civilization would
take no end. The Egyptian participants showedthat they were very impressed with Morimoto sstatements, that put emphasis on maintaining a
sympathetic understanding of other cultures andcivilizations, the same attitude that could also be seen
during the high period of Islamic civilization and alsoin Japanese history. There was even one Egyptian
participant who declared that he wants to train
scholars of Buddhism in Egypt and then send them toJapan for further studies.
After moving on to Tokyo on the 23rd, we held the
Egyptian Japanese international symposium 2011 Commemorating the Dead in a Time of Global Crisis.
First, Shimazono Susumu and His Excellency the
Ambassador of Egypt in Japan Hisham El-Zimaity
gave opening addresses, and the pre-noon ﬁrst session
consisted of two keynote lectures presided over by
Yanagihashi Hiroyuki (The University of Tokyo).
First up, Ezzedine Choukri Fishere talked about
Remembering, Recognizing and Recovering: Helping
Arabs Out of Victimhood, displaying an Arab pride
that seeks to maintain scientific objectivity while
going face-to-face with history and the memoriesof the past. Several members of the audience told
me how impressed they were with this talk. On theJapanese side, Kabayama Koichi (Director of the
Printing Museum Tokyo, Honorary Professor at the
University of Tokyo) gave a talk with the title The
Death and Rebirth of Society ‒ The Consequences of
the Black Death and the Lisbon Earthquake. Basedon a broad range of historical evidence and using a
discussion of the two historical events of the Black
Death and the Lisbon Earthquake, Kabayama showed
how mankind has recovered from massive disasters,
using them as a kind of springboard for revitalization.
I commented on the two talks by showing a variety
of ways in which Egypt and Japan resonate with eachother, such as the Egyptian inﬂuence on global social
movements including Japanese examples.
The second session held in the afternoon wasentitled Records and Memory, and had Suzuki
Izumi (The University of Tokyo) act as chair person.
First, Hara Takeshi (Meiji Gakuin University) gavea presentation with the title Disaster Remembered,
Disaster Forgotten: The Great Kanto Earthquake andthe Imperial Family, in which he compared anddiscussed the reaction of the imperial family to theGreat Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the Great East
Japan Earthquake of last year, probing the essence9

of disaster memories. In his presentation Memory ofModern Egypt and the Revolution Documentation,
Khaled Azab introduced the audience to a project of
the Bibliotheca Alexandria that seeks to document therevolution. Sato Kenji (The University of Tokyo) gave
his comments, focusing on the issues of the people
who are recorded and those who remain unrecorded inhistory, the position of those who are commemorated
or mourned, and the revolutionizing of records.
The third session, Services for the Dead and Memory,
was presided over by Akiyama Satoshi (The University ofTokyo) and consisted of Suzuki Iwayumi (Tohoku University)presenting on Dealing with the Dead ‒ The Reemergence ofEarth Burials after the Great Tohoku Earthquake as well as
Louay Mahmoud talking about "The Relationship with theDead Saints, or Revolution as an Option: the Traditional
Egyptian Means of Defeating Evil." The two presentations
were extremely interesting, dealing with the issue ofwhat kind of changes can be seen in traditional rituals,
customs, and worldviews during times of disaster andrevolution by drawing on new insights and on-theground information from Japan and Egypt. Magdi
Guirguis comments touched on a comparison of religious
specialists in Japan and Egypt, the high standard ofacademic work in Japan and its appeal, as well as
Death and Life Studies oppositional standpoint towards
Eurocentrism.
The fourth session was taken up by the plenary
discussion. After Togawa Masahiko from ourcollaboration partner HiPeC had summarized the various
papers carefully, he commented from the perspectiveof Indian and South Asian Studies on how victims
should be treated in historiography. Furthermore, basedon the accomplishments of previous DALS symposia,
Ikezawa Masaru (The University of Tokyo) made overall
comments about the issue of memories of mass death andthe intensity of aspirations for the future. Afterwards, aplenary discussion was held based on all presentations
and comments, and we were made painfully aware of thetime constraints.
Overall, it was probably unavoidable that it would be
difﬁcult to meet the challenge of discussing the Egyptian
revolution and the Great East Japan Earthquake within
a single framework. However, it can be said that this isexactly the global situation with which we are currently
confronted and that the current question is what kind ofcivilizational choices we will make in this situation. It
is very signiﬁcant that this issue was discussed this lastSeptember. Furthermore, it seems that the co-temporality
and various links between Japan and Egypt in regard to
the different kinds of social movements and the nuclear
issue will be the focus of more discussion. Also, as thediscussion developed in a direction advantageous tohistoriography, as could be seen in the issues of memory
and records, I felt that there is still opportunity left forhistoriography to contribute to Death and Life Studies.
Commenting on the organization of the symposia,
as if reflecting the chaos following the revolution and

10earthquake disaster, the preparations for these symposia
were also at the mercy of the developing situations.
However, just as had been the case during the symposia
in Egypt, when it was time for the Egyptian and Japanesescholars to work together, they saw eye to eye with
one another. I also want to mention that there has beena request for the continuation of these symposia fromthe Egyptian participants. Unfortunately, Emad AbouGhazi, who had already worked with us in organizing theEgyptian symposia could not participate on this occasion,
as he accepted the position of Minister of Culture on
request from the revolutionary forces. He had been the
one who was pushing for the Hiroshima symposium, andwas negotiating a leave to come to Japan until the lastminute, but unfortunately could not make it in the end.
However, the fact that Emad Abou-Ghazi has continued
to organize the Egyptian participants of this academic
exchange certainly contributed greatly to the success ofthe symposia.
As always, I would like to express my deepfelt gratitude to everyone who acted as presenter,
commentator, or chairperson, all DALS project researchers,
everyone at HiPeC beginning with Yoshida Osamu, themembers of Le Club Bachraf (an Arab musical ensemble
that is active worldwide) who enthused the conference
participants with a surprise performance, and more thananyone else Takano Yotaro (The University of Tokyo,
Psychology), who kindly yielded the lecture hall to us.
(Videos of the papers being delivered at the symposium
held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina during our visit toEgypt can be seen on the homepage of the Bibliotheca
Alexandrina.)

Academic Workshop
The Buddhist View on Death and Life ‒ The Basic Tone of Pure Land Thought
Public Seminar Hiraizumi Culture and Commemoration of the Dead
KOJIMA Tsuyoshi (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Chinese Philosophy)

As part of one of the projects that DALS hasplanned and conducted in collaboration with otheruniversities, two events were organized together
with Iwate University s Formation of the Hiraizumi
Research Center project.
In June 2011, the inclusion of Hiraizumi ‒ Temples,
Gardens and Archeological Sites Representing theBuddhist Pure Land in the list of world cultural
heritage sites was decided at the 35th World Heritage
Committee Session. Since before this ofﬁcial decision,a research group with the title Formation of theHiraizumi Research Center had been formed at
Iwate University under the leadership of Professor
Yabu Toshihiro of the Faculty of Education, whichinvestigates Hiraizumi culture from an international
perspective.
The aim of conducting research into the 12th
century Hiraizumi culture, which was founded on
the Pure Land thought that had come from themainland, partly overlaps with the aims of the DALS
project, which seeks to contribute to modern clinicalknowledge while also studying the intellectual
traditions of Asia. It is because of this that the two
events were jointly organized. These events were
not included initially in the plan of activities forthe academic year 2011-2012, but were hurriedly
organized after the Great East Japan Earthquake ofMarch 11, 2011. A summary of the events is provided
below.
1. Academic Workshop The Buddhist View on Deathand Life ‒ The Basic Tone of Pure Land Thought(June 6, 2011, Iwate University)
Pure Land thought provided the intellectual
foundation of Hiraizumi culture. DALS representative
professor Shimoda Masahiro (Indian Philosophy/
Buddhist Studies) gave a lecture at Iwate University
attended by approximately 50 people. I acted aschairperson, and after introducing the audience tothe activities of the DALS project, professor Shimoda
talked for about one hour about the birth process ofPure Land thought and its particularities. In responseto the lecture, Professor Yabu, who specializes in
Chinese philosophy, asked about the differences andsimilarities between Buddhism and Confucianism. The
audience was then given opportunity to ask questions,and a lively discussion was had surrounding thequestions of the nature of Buddhist thought and its
inﬂuence on Japanese folk culture among other issues.
In particular, when at the very end a question about
the Buddhist concept of nothingness (S. sunyata )was posed, professor Shimoda gave an enthusiastic
and easily comprehensible answer based on his own
academic ideas.
2. Public Seminar Hiraizumi Culture andCommemoration of the Dead (August 6, 2011,
Hiraizumi Cultural Heritage Center)
The Hiraizumi Cultural Heritage Center, the venue
for this event, is located at the base of Mt. Kinkei
that towers over Hiraizumi. Apart from the abovementioned project Formation of the Hiraizumi
Research Center, this three-part public seminar
was conducted with the support of the Iwate Higher
Education Consortium, the Iwate Board of Education,
the Hiraizumi Board of Education, Television Iwate,
and Kahoku Shinpo News. The seminar was attended
by 80 people.
I took on the role of chairperson and we dedicateda moment to the memory of the victims of theearthquake. DALS leader professor Ichinose Masaki
gave the opening address, and after a guitar piece
entitled Mourning and Recovery had been performed,
professor Satoh Makoto (Japanese History) from the
Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the
University of Tokyo gave a paper entitled Disasters in
Antiquity and the Ritsuryo State. In the presentation,
he discussed the damage caused by the so-called
Jokan Earthquake and its accompanying tsunami
during the Heian period based on a specialist s reading
and analysis of written historical sources. A panel
discussion formed the third part of the public seminar inwhich professor Oishi Yasuo (Ethnology) from Morioka
University, professor Kikuchi Kazuko (Nursing Science)from Iwate Prefectural University, and professor
Kimura Naohiro (Musicology) from Iwate University,
representing the three universities that form part of
the Iwate Higher Education Consortium, discussed theissue of how the dead have been traditionally sent off
by the living based on their own respective research.
The discussion also naturally extended to the problem
of how the dead should be sent off in the future, andalthough the time available was limited, the event hada profound content.

11Symposium Loss and Purpose in LifeYAMAZAKI Hiroshi (Associate Professor of Medical Sociology at Shinshu University/ formerly

Uehiro Lecturer of Death and Life Studies at the Graduate Schoolof Humanities and Sociology,University of Tokyo)

On July 29, 2011, the symposium Reproduction, Loss,and Purpose in Life was held in a conference room of
the Sanjo Conference Hall at the University of Tokyo.
This symposium was organized by the MEXT sponsoredstudy group Scientiﬁc Evaluation and Development of
an Education that Strengthens a Feeling of Purpose, andheld in collaboration with the Grief Counseling Center,
the Perinatal Loss Study Group at St. Luke s College ofNursing, and the Uehiro Chair for Death and Life Studies
at the University of Tokyo s School of Humanities
and Sociology. DALS also lent its support, and thesymposium was thus realized through the collaborationof many groups.
Since an opportunity for the discussion of loss andmedical care during the perinatal period had already been
provided once before with the autumn seminar Deathand Life Studies of Reproduction that formed part ofthe 2008 foundation course Death and Life Studies for
those in the Medical and Caretaker Professions, thecurrent occasion marked the second time the topic wastreated. However, in global comparison the topic has notreceived much attention in Japan, where the reproductive
mortality is extremely low.
In this situation, what can clinical staff, family
members, friends, and wider society do in order to enable
those who have undergone loss and whose suffering hasgone unnoticed to once more gain a sense of purpose inlife? The aim of this symposium was to discuss this issue
from an interdisciplinary perspective, incorporating deathand life studies, birth help, obstetrics, nursing science,ethnology, and religious studies.
Darcy Harris from the University of Western Ontario,
King s University College, was invited to act as keynote
speaker, giving a presentation with the title Grief in theContext of Reproductive Losses in the pre-noon session.
One thing that was memorable about the presentation
was that it did not only discuss sources of loss andgrief surrounding reproduction that everyone can easily
imagine such as stillbirth, miscarriage, the death of anewborn baby, or abortion, but also included infertility
and menopause among the causes. Another fascinating
point was that there are elements in modern medical
technology that further complicate such feelings of loss
and grief.
For example, by looking at fertilized embryos withthe help of a microscope as part of treating infertility,
the patient can feel affection for the child even before
pregnancy. However, it is not certain that the fertilized
embryo that has become the target of affection will turninto the child one is so strongly hoping for. Therefore, it
can be said that infertility causes an ambiguous loss
that has no physical existence, despite the fact that one
has a clear psychological yearning. Also, in the sensethat infertility constantly reminds one throughout life of
the fact that one has no children, it can be also regarded
as a nonﬁnite loss that causes chronic grief. This was afresh perspective on the issue.
In the afternoon, Ota Naoko from the University of

12

Shizuoka ﬁrst discussed the kind of support available inJapan to those who have experienced loss during theperinatal period. The peculiarity of loss that occurs inconnection with birth is that because in these cases deathoccurs simultaneous with birth, memories of the childare very limited for the mother. Therefore, the idea
was raised that it is the role of the medical personnel tosupport the process in which women become mothers.
Next, Suzuki Yuriko from Tohoku Gakuin University
gave an historical overview of folk customs related to thebirth and death of children in Japan, showing how thedeath of a child through abortion was not regarded as
the death of a person, but that this perception began tochange in the 1970s when it became possible to ﬁnd out
whether a fetus was alive in the womb through advances
made in healthcare technology in obstetrics. As a result,the life of a child came to be respected, giving birth
to the new practice of mizuko kuyo (rituals made foraborted fetuses).
Lastly, Takeuchi Masato from the Toho Humanized Care
Center explained from the standpoint of an obstetrician
that loss and grief experienced during the perinatal period
are becoming a problem due to the relationship between
medical practitioner and patient having become cut andthat the kind of bereavement therapy in these cases
needs to be one based on a more humane approach.
After the three presentations, Yamazaki Akemi from
Sophia University and Shimazono Susumu from the
University of Tokyo commented on the papers fromthe perspective of nursing science and religious studies
respectively, discussing how one can take one s farewellof the children that have been lost through miscarriage
as family members and the difficulty of turning grief
into strength, contributing to the course of the overall
discussion.
A survey conducted among the approximately
one hundred participants showed that many of themlearned a lot about the issue of loss and purpose in life
surrounding reproduction and were highly satisﬁed withthe symposium. There were also many who requested
further events that deal with this topic, and I hope that
there will be opportunity to continue the discussion in
the future.
Finally, as I left the University of Tokyo in September
2011, this symposium was my last main project for
DALS. At this point, I would like to express my deep-felt
gratitude for the cooperation of all involved in DALS. I
wish for the continued success of Death and Life Studies
at the University of Tokyo.

Japanese-Taiwanese Conference
Toward an East Asian Death and Life Studies
ITO Yukiko (DALS project researcher, Ethics/Japanese Thought)

On October 7, 2011, the international JapaneseTaiwanese conference Toward an East Asian Deathand Life Studies (organized by DALS and the Center
for Japanese Studies and the College of Liberal Arts of
National Sun Yat-sen University) was held at National
Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. When
the Global COE program was inaugurated in 2007, one of
its aims was to deepen academic exchange with Asian
countries, and DALS has put this into practice throughconferences in Beijing, Taipei, and Seoul. The conferencein Kaohsiung marked the concluding, fourth event in thisseries.
The audience was very diverse and beyond thenine members of the Japanese delegation and the ninepresenters and chairpersons on the Taiwanese side,
including Taiwanese and foreign students as well as
members of the general public. The conference started atten o clock in the morning.
In the first session, Takeuchi Seiichi (Kamakura
Women s University, Ethics) gave a presentation withthe title The Sensitivity to Evanescence ‒ Crisis as
Tipping Point, discussing the potential that resides in
evoking the genetic memory of our distant ancestors
in the form of the concepts of transience (J: mujo ) andevanescence (J: hakanasa ) in order to overcome thecurrent crisis of the Great East Japan Earthquake and use
it as the basis for a change for the better. Next, Ichinose
Masaki (professor in the Graduate School of Humanities
and Sociology, Philosophy) reported on the discussions
currently taking place in Japan concerning the problem of
prolonged exposure to low levels of radiation in a paper
entitled Unknown Territory after the Great East Japan
Earthquake ‒ The Structure of Debates about Exposure to
Low-level Radiation in Japan. He argued that a responseto the situation is called for that is grounded in a thoroughawareness of the scientiﬁc antinomy and moral dilemmasof the issue.
In the second session that followed the lunch break, Lin
Yaw-sheng (professor in the Department of Psychology
at National Chengchi University) gave a paper entitled
The Cultural Thought of Life and Death Studies in
Taiwan representing the joint research he conductedwith Yee Der-heuy (professor in the Institute of Religion
and Culture at Tzu Chi University), one of the scholars
who created the foundation for death and life studies in
Taiwan. This paper discussed the history of the ﬁeld ofdeath and life studies and the current state of research.
Alongside the following presentation by Yang Chihsiang (associate professor in the Department of Chinese
Literature at National Sun Yat-sen University) with thetitle The Semantics of Funerals and Images of Life andDeath in Asian Cinema ‒ Analysis and Thoughts on the
Cultural Significance of the Films Fuhou qiri (Taiwan)
and Okuribito (Japan), which featured an investigationof how contemporary people perceive traditional rituals
related to death and life based on a comparative readingof Taiwanese and Japanese cinema. By having ageneral and a speciﬁc discussion of death and life studies

combined in a single panel, we were able to gain a good
sense of the state of death and life studies in Taiwan.
Continuing, the third session featured one presentationeach from the Japanese and Taiwanese sides concerning
the further development of death and life studies in
East Asia. In his paper Bio-ethics and Religion ‒ A
Reexamination of Engelhardt, Ikezawa Masaru (Graduate
School of Humanities and Sociology, Religious Studies)
examined the logic of the American bio-ethicist Tristram
Engelhardt, whose arguments concerning bio-ethics
incorporate Christian concepts. Ikezawa showed how
insights on death, life, and bio-ethics can be effectively
derived from religion in East Asia, even if one does notbelong to any specific faith. Liao Chin-ping (research
fellow in the Center for Japanese Studies, National Sun
Yat-sen University) compared the philosophy of death ofthe modern Japanese philosopher Tanabe Hajime and thereligious practice of the Tzu Chi Foundation, a Taiwanesereligious group, in his presentation Death and Life inPractice ‒ Tanabe Hajime s Philosophy of Death and the
Religious World of Tzu Chi. He proposed that a responseto actual instances of death and life, such as the Great
East Japan Earthquake, can be reached by combining
the self-reﬂectivity and practical knowledge of Tanabe sphilosophy with the Tzu Chi Foundation s power to act.
After these presentations, Kaneko Akira (professor in
the Oyasato Institute for the Study of Religion at Tenri
University and currently visiting professor at Chinese
Culture University) made some overall comments, followed
by a discussion among all participants. Incorporating
questions and answers concerning the various papers
as well as the state of death and life studies research in
Taiwan and Japan, the discussion carried on well beyond
the planned closing time of 6:00 pm.
Like Japan, Taiwan is an earthquake-prone country,
having experienced a major earthquake in 1999. As such,
the Taiwanese have shown great interest in the Great East
Japan Earthquake and the nuclear accident. In this regard,
it was the hope of the Japanese and Taiwanese conference
participants to receive new practical impulses concerning
death and life studies by seeing how the Japanese reacted
to the March disaster and how their way of thinking andview on death and life has changed. This whole newtheme meant that the conference was not merely limited
to providing a closing summary of the Toward and East
Asian Death and Life Studies conference series.
Publication of the proceedings of this conference inJapanese and Chinese is planned for spring 2012.

13

30th DALS Research Seminar
ISHIDA Masato (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Hawai'i at Manoa)
FUKUMA Satoshi (DALS Project Researcher, Social Philosophy)
This past July 21, 2011, we invited Ishida
Masato, assistant professor of philosophy at the
University of Hawai i at Manoa to give a lecture
as part of the DALS Research Seminar, which
was held in Lecture Hall 2 of the Faculty of Law
and Letters Building 2. The audience consisted often people, and a lively debate was held aroundthe topic of Dogen s view on death and life,
professor Ishida s talk. To give a brief summaryof Ishida s background, after graduating fromWaseda University, he studied at universities
in Canada and the US, eventually receiving
his PhD in philosophy from Pennsylvania State
University. He specializes in the philosophy ofCharles Peirce, a founder of pragmatism, as wellas traditional Japanese philosophy, the topic of
his lecture on this occasion.
Ishida s talk was entitled Life and Death:
Reﬂections on Dogen s Radical Event Semantics.
As can be discerned from the title, he tried
to illuminate Dogen s teachings from thevantage point of analytic philosophy, and more
speciﬁcally D. Davidson s event semantics.
Ishida focused in his discussion on the line
reading It is a mistake to consider that wepass from life to death (sei yori shi ni utsuru to
kokorouru ha, kore ha ayamari nari ) found in theLife and Death fascicle of Dogens Shobogenzo .
Of course, this line does not suggest that we will
not die. Dogen accepts that we die when ourbodies cease to exist. What, then, is Dogen trying
to say here?
Ishida argues that it is possible to interpret
Dogen s proposition as saying that If we thinkof birth and death as events, then it cannot be
said that birth turns into death. For example, if
we interpret birth and death as events, that is,literally as something that comes into being, thenit is impossible that death follows birth decades
after one is born into this world (unless losing
their identities as individual events). However,Dogen s view on death and life is more complicated than
this. Ishida focuses on Dogen s concept of being-time(uji ). He sees in the concept of being-time theidea that all being is time, which means that all
things do not exist within time, but are time, andthat there is no universal present that cuts acrossdistinct moments. In the case of Dogen, all nows
related to our experience as well as all nows
in general represent an absolute perspective, andthe world and its entire spatiotemporal structure(including the order of events) is interpreted fromthis perspective. Therefore, if one thinks of life
(birth) and death (extinction) as events, thenthey can be interpreted as representing separate
and independent nows ( When we say birth,
there is nothing but birth, and when we say
extinction, there is nothing but extinction (sei to

14

iu toki ni ha, sei yori hoka ni mono naku, metsu
to iu toki, metsu no hoka ni mono nashi ) ).
Accordingly, as birth does not mean thatsomething is actually born into a pre-existingworld, it is therefore called unborn (fusho ), andconversely as nothing actually becomes extinct
in the event called extinction, it is referred to as
non-extinction (fumetsu ) (in Life and Death ).
If thought in this way, life and death are bothmanifestations of the world, and it is not a matterof which is privileged over the other. According
to Ishida, this is why Dogen argues: When birthcomes, therefore, it is just birth [and nothingelse], when death comes, it is just death such thatyou serve it well. Do not shun, do not hope.
To further analyze Dogen s view on deathand life, Ishida introduced temporal pluralism,
perspectival constructivism, and relativity
theory in his discussion, even going so far as toconduct a comparison with Western and Eastern
philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Leibniz, andNishida Kitaro. In conclusion, Ishida stated that
Dogen s arguments constitute an attempt tochange existing ideas and perspectives on deathand life. That is, in order to perceive death andlife with the True Dharma Eye (shobogen ), one
has to abandon one s old familiar views.
After the lecture, the discussion was carriedon vigorously at the reception. (By the way,some members of DALS received the hospitalityof Ishida on the occasion of the East-West
Philosopher s Conference held at the Universityof Hawai i in May.) Through professor Ishida
I became once more aware of the importanceof applying contemporary analytical tools to
Japanese philosophy as one way in which
Japanese scholars can be active abroad.

Conference Death and Life Studies Surrounding
Pacifying the Spirits of the Dead and Radiation Exposure
HOTTA Kazuyoshi(DALS project researcher, Indian Philosophy)
ITO Yukiko(DALS project researcher, Ethics/Japanese Thought)
On December 23 and 24, 2011, the conference Deathand Life Studies Surrounding Pacifying the Spirits the
Dead and Radiation Exposure, organized by the G-COE
Development and Systematization of Death and Life
Studies project, was held in the city of Nagasaki with a
total of 18 professors and researchers in attendance.
Behind the decision to make Nagasaki the venue forthis conference was the Great East Japan Earthquakeof March 11, 2011. The adverse effects of radiation
exposure were not limited only to the area surrounding
the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant that wasdestroyed by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, but
broadened to include areas as far away as Japan s capital
city of Tokyo, and the chain of events that followed
captured the world s attention. For a great many
Japanese, this nuclear accident and the damage causedby the low-level radiation that came with it brought tomind the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
that took place during the Second World War. Having a
fresh look and rethinking how the people of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, direct victims of atomic bombing andradiation, overcame hardship and recovered is somethingthat contemporary Japan cannot help but do as it faces
the current problem. In addition, Nishimura Akira(Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Kagoshima
University), who is a specialist in research surrounding
the pacifying of spirits of the dead in Nagasaki, wasscheduled to deliver a paper, which also contributed tothe decision to locate the conference in Nagasaki.
On the first day in the conference room of the Best
Western Premier Hotel Nagasaki, Nishimura delivered atalk entitled The Power of the Third Person: A Proposal
from Research Concerning the Pacifying of the Spiritsof the Dead to Death and Life Studies. In Nagasaki,
which received virtually no recovery assistance fromthe country immediately following Japan s defeat in
the war, citizens voluntarily took it upon themselves totake care of and lay to rest those who were killed by theatomic bomb. In the process, survivors superimposed
themselves onto the dead to whom they otherwise hadno connection, and created relationships based on asort of comradeship between the living and the dead.
He proposed that the problem found in contemporary
terminal care as to how to consider the involvementof third parties could be perceived in this form of a
sympathetic, but removed third person. This talk was
followed by Kanamori Osamu (Professor of Philosophy/ History of Scientific Thought, Faculty of Education,
University of Tokyo), who commented that as can beseen in the wake of the nuclear incident in Fukushima,
in the contemporary scientiﬁc community in Japan the
consciousness of this construct of a sympathetic third
party that will protect people s health and the public
good is gradually declining. He suggested that becauseof this, in society as a whole it is becoming increasingly
difﬁcult to establish a sense of community or a broader
public sphere. In the discussion that followed, arguments
were exchanged from a number of sides about theimpulse to pacify the dead, the problem of doing so in a
non-ritualistic manner, and so on.
From the morning of the 24th and into the afternoon
we visited the Peace Park, Peace Memorial Museum, andother institutions related to the atomic bombing. As partof the large-scale memorial peace projects conducted by
the administration, Nishimura carefully explained theprocess of how the meaning of the crypts spontaneously
built by the people changed, and variations in the plans
for the recovery of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that we hadheard about the day before.
That evening in the same hall we were in the previous
day, a session was held on the theme of The Issues
and Arguments Surrounding Exposure to Low-level
Doses of Radiation. To begin, Shimazono Susumu(Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities andSociology, Religious Studies) pointed out the deﬁciencies
in epidemiological data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
referenced in discussions of contemporary low-level
radiation exposure, such as the fact that there is no data
related to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the ﬁrst ﬁve years
after 1945, and that because the damage incurred wasunderestimated there are a great number of objections towhat the upper limits of permissible radiation exposure
should be. The mainstream of Japanese scholarship
related to radiation, however, is trying to ignore thesefacts. Next, Ichinose Masaki (Professor in the Graduate
School of Humanities and Sociology, Philosophy)
pointed out that within the confusion among scientists
and specialists concerning an objective evaluation of
the incident, the negative feelings of unreasonableness,anxiety, and distrust harbored by people toward thecurrent nuclear incident transform into an even deeper
sense of despair, and may be becoming the main
obstruction to recovery in affected areas. He carried on
to argue that this state of scientific antinomy and themoral dilemmas involved are spiraling out of control,
and that we must think of a way to deal with this reality
looking forward.
It has now been one year since the disaster. We havein no way exhausted discussion of the issues of how toface the nearly 20,000 victims of the disaster, how toadvance recovery, or how to deal with the problem ofradiation. Including the results of this conference, there
is no shortage of material that Death and Life Studies
can and must transmit. In the ﬁnal year of the COE, thisconference afﬁrmed yet another new challenge for Deathand Life Studies.

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