Discussion 1
Yasuji Kojima(Hokkai-Gakuen University)

All three presentations seem that they share a common problem about
the passiveness and the activeness which has something to do with Dr. Frank’s
basic idea in terms of the reflections on illness.
It has been construed as a matter of course that the activeness is valuable
in itself particularly in the modern Western world. Human beings should be
absolutely rational and accordingly could control everything around them bythemselves. Therefore the body has been thought as a perfect tool to work andcontrol environment well. If it would be out of order, it must be repaired as soon
as possible. “…Institutions consider bodies only as resources for production, notas lives being lived. Thus the sympathy an ill person receives has institutionallimits. While I was in active treatment, the university where I work was mostsolicitous. …But as soon as treatment ended, the other institutional face appeared.
Some of the same people now asked for the work I was supposed to have been
doing. It didn’t count that I had been ill…”(Frank, 1991) I would like to callthis type of activeness as ”an external activeness” since it is mainly relevant to thecontrol of an external world.
Modern Western man is gradually being troubled by the suspicion that anexternal activeness may have been only a controversial concept. Post-modern
thoughts, introduced by Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx, who argued that the spirit ofhuman should be out of control by itself, commonly denied the existence ofunconditional external activeness.
There are some post-modern thinkers such as Sartre who has still
dwelled on the will and activeness as the absolute in a society and emphasized on－109－solidarity with others through participation, in which the case the Western idea ofactiveness becomes ultimately something not so different from the Japanese. In
Japan or in the East Asia, an external activeness is not unconditionally thought as agood thing from the beginning.
Then what kind of activeness has been thought in Japan?
There is another type of activeness which is rather relevant to an inner world, so I
would like to call this type as “an internal activeness” making reference to Dr.
Frank’s same book above.

“…But living among the everyday is also theopportunity of illness, which brings me back to gravy. Gravy is beyond health orillness, beyond the desire of health, which necessarily brings the fear of the illness.
Gravy does not romanticize illness but is willing to accept it for what it canbring.”(Frank, 1991) This type of activeness needs contradictorily an absolute
passiveness since the gravy is something like a blessing or a godsend, which one
can not actively get it by oneself but rather only can passively accept it by one’sown will.
It is noteworthy that the book “Tannisho” of Shinran’s sayings is rather
like Martin Luther’s “On Christian Liberty” which is one of the most important
Christian writings. There are amazing similarities found in these works. Shinranis the representative priest of the ‘other-power’ school of Buddhism in the medieval
era in Japan. Although some would say that Shinran’s idea is quite different fromanother Buddhist schools like Zen (‘self-power’ school), if we look closely at what
Zen masters work, we find a striking similarity to Shinran’s writing easily. Thisexample could be used as evidence that different religions do not conflict eachother even among East and West.
How do we get internal activeness? Not until we confront death orserious disease do we have an opportunity to access to an internal activeness. In
other words, we must go beyond the absolute passiveness like birth and death
before attaining the state of selflessness. Perhaps one would call it into questionthat the absolute passiveness includes not only death but also birth as its example.
－110－Needless to say, we can not choose when, where, from whom to be born, and whichrace, family, class, neither.
This idea ought to be discussed in relation to Erikson’s concept ofidentity sharing a question who am I. And inevitably, it also related to the laststage known as a sense of integrity which is defined as the individual’s ability toaccept his personal life cycle as meaningful. It might lead up to the problem ofeuthanasia.

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