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"Kokusaika,"
or internationalization, is a Japanese term
full of ambiguity. We should not be misled
by the multiple uses of this term. "Kokusai,"
or international, refers to a political and
historically constructed system of relations
among nation-states. A new global perspective
that calls for global human resources, rather
than international human resources, will
come to the fore.
This article
will examine features of the diphthong found
in the speech of northern areas of Nara.
Moreover, we will investigate its relation
to the method of notation found in the Ofudesaki,
one of the scriptures of Tenrikyo.
Continuing
from the previous issue, this article will
raise examples of "enlightenment"
found in the Ofudesaki, and reflect upon
its meaning. Issues will include "to
know the truth," "selfish human
thought and understanding," and "to
understand through reflection based on the
Ofudesaki."
In 1880, the
French expedition, led by De Plaza, signed
a treaty with the ruler of the Makoko kingdom
and thus acquired a tariff-free zone. While
the terms of the treaty were fairly moderate,
conflict with the natives occur when French
colonization is later initiated. Congo declares
its independence in 1960, but ethnic disputes
continue to erupt.
God the Parent’s
revelation made clear the purpose of human
creation, its being and existence, and a
specific method for salvation. Tenrikyo mission
seeks to transmit this revealed truth and
to carry out salvation in accordance with
the purpose of salvation.
How do business owners who are also Tenrikyo
followers interpret fushi, or difficulties,
that they may face in the course of their
business operations? One such fushi is bankruptcy. The fundamental direction
for Tenri management studies is to not be
upset when facing such difficulties, but
rather to realize that such occurrences are
also a gift of heaven and thus to ponder
upon where Godﾕs intent lies. This article
will feature Shigeharu Komai, the second
president of Duskin, who most self-consciously
carried out this reflection.
To reexamine
the causal relationships between rise of
mass refugees due to environmental destruction
and civilizational atrophy provides an occasion
for us today, living in "the environmental
century," to gain fruitful insights.
This article will examine the Indus civilization,
a focus of renewed attention based on recently
uncovered sites.
Islam is a
religion that restrains the desert features
of human beings. A desert inhabitant (badawi) is molded from a world of constant migration,
a life among domesticated animals and blood
kin. In contrast, Muhammad rejected the illusion
of blood kin, the grounds upon which the
Badabi existed. He taught that it was only
Allah who could save the Badabi from their
psychological anxieties. Outstanding religionists
posses dual dimensions of destruction and
fertility. Respect of tradition and rigorous
rejection of the past manifest simultaneously.
New values cannot emerge from only one of
these aspects.
I feel that "shared sensation" is woven into the fabric of folk dance's raison d'etre. Dance can be understood as a cultural mechanism that enables shared sensation. However, our contemporary bodies have become unable to resonate with unfamiliar forms of bodily sensations. Efforts to become sensitive to unfamiliar bodily sensations help us realize bodily ways of life that are different from our own.
This issue
will raise examples drawn from postwar Japan
and late Edo Japan 1) to investigate the
true cause of declining birth rate in the
postwar period, and 2) to reflect upon the
rise in discourse critical of mabiki, or infanticide, and abortion from the middle
of the eighteenth century.
Online auctions
involving human organs have appeared on the
Internet because of shortages in the number
of organ donors. To resolve this shortage
of donors, research is underway involving
not only artificial organs and biochemically
generated organs, but also xenotransplantation,
or organ transplants taking place between
different species of life, such as humans
and other animals. This issue will introduce
the current state of xenotransplantation
research.
I visited Kyushu Technological College, an
architecture school that was the second educational
institution to receive certification as complying
to the ISO14001 standards. The college conducts
its own inspectorﾕs training course, and
interested students can participate in this
training. Students finishing the course can
take part in the internal inspection of the
college's environmental management system.
While there are views that gambling inhibits the development of sports, there is also a contesting view that the entry of gambling into the field of sports enabled the modernization of sports. This issue will introduce writings concerning sports, play, gambling, and fortune telling.
Reports from
the United States (4) Earth Day and Recycle"
April 22 is Earth Day. Also, in 1997, America
Recycle Day (ARD) was instituted in the United
States. This issue will discuss the significance
of Earth Day and the actual condition of
recycling in the United States.
Many universities are now in a critical situation
caused by a decrease of applicants. But,
since the applications to some universities
are increasing, we cannot assume the thinning
of the younger population to be the only
reason for the present crisis at Tenri University.
Private universities cannot survive without
clarifying their uniqueness and seeking better
education and research. We should realize
that we are in a "survival war"
rather than a "survival race."
In the area surrounding Jiba, alternation
of vowels between "i" and "e",
and "u" and "o" is observed.
The same alternation is seen in Ofudesaki.
It is discussed how the word "satori" is used in Ofudesaki. It is said in Ofudesaki that we can understand the words of God only
through "satori-toru" and we cannot "satori-tsuku" without purifying our hearts. It seems
"satoru" here means "to know" what
is invisible and not yet realized.
What place is Congo? Here the history,
geography, languages, ethnicity and religions
in Congo, and the modern period between the
establishment of Congo Kingdom and the rules
by European countries are overviewed.
Reviewing the life of Sotokichi Yamamura,
who managed seven companies after World War
II as well as founded a Tenrikyo branch church.
I try to articulate his view to management
through his career and the books he wrote.
What messages did he get through his hard
experience of bankruptcy?
Why could Egyptian Civilization last so long?
The secret was its unique "irrigation
pond system" making use of water from
the Nile. And sun-dried bricks used as the
most general materials for housing were recyclable
and reusable. A type of recycling society
was realized in ancient Egypt.
There are various myths on "population":
excess population is the cause of poverty
and environmental demolition in the "Southern
countries": generation was entrusted
to natural procedure in pre-modern society:
there is no contraception in Islamic countries,
etc. How are these true or false?
The Foundress of Tenrikyo stood up against
both feudalism and modern Japan, because
of Moto-no-ri, the Tenrikyo myth, which denounced
the thoughts and religions which supported
both of them. Moto-no-ri reveals the Divine
Will to realize "Yoki-gurashi (joyful life)" and the meaning of existence
of human beings. From each person to the
whole world, whole human beings are the objects
of Divine Salvation. And for that salvation,
spiritual uplift ("isami") is needed and this sense of uplift
can be the hotbed of mysticism.
Many people must be feeling that dancing
is good for health mentally and physically.
But actually it is not always true. Good
exercise is good but excess exercise is harmful
for health. And yet I believe dancing folk
dances brings us a soundness of body and
mind. A circuit is set in folk dances through
which we are led to a certain state of body
and mind.
When I answered that I wanted to be a nun,
I lost the chance to be a queen in the girls
beauty contest. I was captured by the double-bind
between two visions of perfect woman offered
by Catholicism and American mass culture.
This predicted my future involvement in feminism
as a Catholic feminist. The secular and the
religious have been split in the feminist
movement. Now is the time to build a bridge
between political feminism and religious
feminism.
There are two types of donors of organs;
Cadaveric Donor and Living Donor. I take
consideration on three Canadian cases of
living donors; from sister to sister, from
son to father and from two brothers to their
niece.) Living donors are sharply different
in that there is no ambiguity about the judgment
on alive or dead. Here I consider the problem
of organ transplant itself.
Hosei University got a certification as an
institution complying to the ISO14001 standards
only for the Graduate School Building, but
considers it as a step toward realizing its
"Green University Plan."
Chattanooga, Tennessee, was once labeled
the most air polluted city in the US. But
it has regenerated, to be chosen in 1994
as the most comfortable city to live in the
US. Curitiba in Parana State in Brazil is
the city which has developed with the ideal
to live together with nature as the core
of its city planning. Both cities are compared
to find common aspects.
"Luck" is always the most important
factor of the games together with "real
power" obtained through training. But
as the phrase: "luck is a part of power"
shows, only those who have real power are
allowed to enjoy the benevolent influence
of good luck.
In the Moto-no-ri, The Truth of Origin,
the teaching of ura-shugo (implicative providence) forms the background
to an understanding of God the Parent's providence.
This teaching is highly instructive as means
to think about the contemporary movement
towards globalization and the ethnic nationalism
and fundamentalism that stand opposed to
it. Moreover, to specify the distinctive
historical features and the unique cultural
characteristics of the many religious thoughts
found throughout the world in order to meditate
upon their corresponding forms among God
the Parent's Divine Providence constitutes
a cross-cultural hermeneutics of the Moto-no-ri.
Tenri theology must address this cultural
implication found in the paradigm suggested
by ura-shugo.
Words that appear in the Ofudesaki,
one of the scriptures of Tenrikyo, are deeply
related to the "Yamato dialect"
used in Nara prefecture. This article will
compare several specific examples in regard
to speech, vocabulary, and expression. The
Yamato dialect is based in the Nara valley
area, the northern part of the prefecture,
which had been influenced from early times
by the Kansai urban areas, and the southern
mountainous region that employs simplistic
vernacular expressions.
I will reflect upon the etymology
and kanji composition of the term, satori (enlightenment), and examine satori as a Buddhist term, through which I will
highlight issues related to enlightenment.
A series of article will feature the
Tenrikyo Mission in Congo as an example of
intercultural mission. In this series, drawing
upon presentations given at the Missiology
Seminar of the Oyasato Institute for the
Study of Religion by those with ties to the
Congo mission, I will examine its history
and method. In 1960, the second Shinbashira
went to Europe to give a presentation at
an academic conference; on his return, he
traveled through Africa and visited Brazzaville,
capital of what was then Congo. The Congo
Mission takes its point of departure from
an encounter, at that time, between the second
Shinbashira and a Congo national.
The political and religious culture
of the United States, exemplified in the
U.S. Constitution with its guarantee of separation
between church and state, has fallen prey
to a certain schizophrenia, one in which
the secular and religious realms are seen
as mutually exclusive. For women, this is
an especially dangerous fact of life, since
so many obstacles to our equality are rooted
in religious interpretation. Upon illustrating
the functions of this mutual exclusion through
a personal experience during childhood, this
series will call upon activists and thinkers
on both the secular and religious sides to
take a common cause as a way to claim the
active voice in the making of the agenda
that touches upon the lives of women, both
religious and secular.
Dualism between sacred and profane
does not apply to Tenrikyo. In the following
subseries devoted to history, I will examine
three figures who practiced the faith of
Tenrikyo and managed their own business operations.
First, I will look at Morooka Chozo, the
founder of Yoneya Yokan. While garnering
success in his business, Morooka continued
to provide aid to Hiroike Chikuro, the leader
of the Moralogy movement, and to various
social causes. However, many of his contributions
were carried out anonymously, so very few
people knew about his acts of giving.
The foundations of the Mesopotamian
civilization, the world's first urban civilization,
rested upon nature's delicate balance. During
its Ubaidian period, dating to 5500 BC, the
natural environment was capable of sustaining
the people who lived there. But, in the Uruk
period that blossomed in 3500 BC, population
increase outpaced the natural environment's
accommodative capacity, and the ecological
system began to collapse. That this reason
accounts for the fall of the Mesopotamian
civilization provides an instructive message
for those living today.
Minority is not a statistical concept
but rather a political one. Feminism was
borne of minority consciousness and developed
through critical interaction with those of
the multiple minority. I will retrace this
development historically and theoretically
from the perspective of feminist epistemology,
and situate the minority perspective based
upon feminist epistemology.
Mysticism is the water that moistens
the parched condition of life, and myth is
its reservoir. "Moto-no-ri," Tenrikyo's
myth of creation, illuminates the continuity
between human life and those of other sentient
beings. On the other hand, in the Western
civilization which is grounded upon a ruler-ruled
relationship, human beings have ousted God
and have assumed the pinnacle of this relationship
of domination; as consequence, human desire
has been unleashed without bounds and its
exploitation of nature has reached extreme
levels. The "Kagura Service," which
reenacts the "Moto-no-ri," engenders
a new world view upon a contemporary civilization
that has severed its link with nature.
This article will examine features
of folk dance, not from the stance of "folk
theory" based on social conditions and
history, but from the perspectives of the
"movement" themselves of the dance,
of the sounds and movements on occasion of
a stage performance, and of the structure
of cooperative ties among its participants.
I will reflect upon my own encounter with
folk dance and recount the sensation based
upon actual experience and the attachments
to folk dance.
The boundary between life and death
has been rendered ambiguous by the use of
brain death as a standard to decide the termination
of life. As an example of how this standard,
a product of advancements in medical technology,
has caused great psychological pains to various
people, I will raise the case of a pregnant
woman who was diagnosed as brain dead. And
through a reflection upon the beginning and
end of life as seen in the birth of human
genes, I will pose a challenge to the fundamental
mode of operation found in modern medicine.
I paid a visit to Musashi Industrial
University, Yokohama Campus, which was the
first educational institution to receive
certification as complying to the ISO14001
standards. Regardless of the ISO14001, with
the founding of the environmental studies
department, this school has sought to achieve
an ecological campus. Towards such aims,
this school has incorporated facilities and
infrastructure that integrate energy-saving
mechanisms. And with the movements related
to the ISO14001, the school has been able
to induce cooperation of not only the faculty
but also its student body, and has moved
stridently towards achieving a campus that
minimizes its burden upon the environment.
I will introduce two figures acknowledged
for their contributions that will lead the
twenty-first century in terms of sustainable
growth movements in California. N. Khalili
is the foremost figure in sustainable architecture,
and his use of non-wooden architecture and
minimal use of concrete and steel has received
considerable attention. J. Schaeffer is the
founder of Real Goods, a company that has
achieved remarkable growth through providing
environmental goods and educational mediums
directed towards alternative forms of energy
and recycling.
"Luck," which forms the basic
ingredient of gambling, has received both
negative and positive appraisal. The term,
kakeru, is comprised of two dimensions of kakeru
as gambling, which carries a passive and
non-productive meaning, and of kakeru as risk-taking, which implies an active,
subjective dimension. Within the attributes
of gambling itself, there is no basis for
appraisal or moral judgment, and its interpretation
is swayed by the social and cultural context.
Glocalism conjoins the two dimensions
of local and global into one. This bulletin
seeks to reflect upon polarized concepts--such
as the global and the local, the material
and the spiritual, the rational and the expressive,
the bodily and the cognitive, the scientific
and the religious--within the framework of
"oneness in two."
The Ofudesaki, a Tenrikyo scripture,
must be reread as a linguistic expression
written through the medium of the Yamato
dialect. For example, words such as yashiro (shrine) and yashiki (residence) must be reconceptualized as
terms belonging to the Yamato dialect. Also,
the polarized terms of kara and nihon were not symbolic terms for the contemporary
people but rather more concrete and readily
understandable ideas.
Religions may be divided between religions
of "awareness"--that is, "enlightenment"--and
religions of "faith." In order
to discuss the structure of enlightenment
in Tenrikyo, this series will examine its
etymological roots, classify key terms based
on its usage within Oyasama's "enlightenment,"
and compare "enlightenment" within
Tenrikyo with those of other religions. Also,
we will reflect upon similarities and differences
between structures of "revelation"
and "enlightenment" through a comparative
analysis with "revelation" found
particularly among Christianity.
Tenrikyo's overseas mission began in
the 1890s and has extended itself to cultures
around the world. A theory of intercultural
missiology that has assimilated invaluable
knowledge based on experience and practice
of the missionaries engenders a new contribution
to academic studies concerning religion and
intercultural communication, and moreover,
will form the bases for a true understanding
among different cultures in our rapidly globalizing
society and for a universally shared wisdom
realized through genuine cooperation.
The mission to Korea in 1893 is said
to have inaugurated Tenrikyo's overseas mission.
Missionary activities in Southeast Asia begin
some ten years later, and the first church
is established in 1922, in Singapore. Later,
the teachings are transmitted to other areas
and churches are established, but Japan's
defeat in war brings missionary activities
in this region to a close. However, about
20 years after the war, a move towards Southeast
Asia becomes greater, and missionary activity
on a wide scale begins to unfold.
This series will introduce and assess
the ways in which Tenrikyo followers have
pursued simultaneously both the teachings
and business management in everyday life;
also, reflections on management and the economy
found in other religions will be discussed.
An analysis of the contemporary situation
coupled with a prognosis of the future will
render visible the contours of Tenri Management
Studies, which seeks to unify, in "oneness
in two," the dualities of religion and
business management, divine reason and ethics,
pursuit of profit and contribution to society,
the local and the global, and economic development
and environmental protection.
Ecology, in Japanese translation, is
differentiated into two interrelated terms,
seitaigaku (literally, the science regarding
the mode of life) and ekoroji (ecology, rendered
into Japanese phonetics). The former usage
places emphasis on life in the natural environment
whereas the latter stresses human interaction
with nature. In recent years, ecological
movements--here, ecology in the sense of
ekoroji--have begun to generate a global
concern, and have increasingly veered from
ecology as seitaigaku which devotes itself
to fundamental research. Moreover, these
movements have itself branched into those
with strong political aspirations and those
with ethical and religious overtones.
In the first year of the series, I
will consider the various issues concerning
"voices of the minorities," a central
concern among gender and women's studies.
As a point of departure for this inquiry,
I will examine studies in Japan relating
to "women and religion."
A comparative analysis with Islam will
be conducted as a way to reflect upon possibilities
for Tenrikyo mysticism. Tenrikyo's worldview,
based on worship of an absolute god who created
the world and the idea that everything of
this universe is controlled through divine
law, is similar to those of Islam and the
Allah. However, there are critical differences
among qualities attributed to the divine
being as well as teachings concerning interhuman
ties and attitudes towards nature.
There may be a disjuncture between
"artistic techniques" applied as
healing and pure forms of "artistic
practice." However, while acknowledging
the differences between these two forms of
practice, this series will seek to articulate
a perspective that finds their common ground.
Moreover, through an introduction of events
occurring in a French monastery, this series
will reflect upon the interaction of "art,"
"healing," and "religion."
What is the nature of organ transplant
treatment which renders pain and anxiety
upon the human soul in ways unprecedented
in medicine? This treatment requires a process
of waiting for the death of another person,
either sick or healthy, and, as means to
procure a "living organ," an aggressive
application of "brain death," a
product of advancements in medical technology,
as a standard to judge the arrival of death.
This series will introduce contrasting examples
found in Canada and thus seek to problematize
the practice of organ transplant treatment.
I visited Kyoto Seika University, which
is seeking to become the third school to
be certified as complying to the Environmental
Management System ISO14001. I will report
on the developments leading to the university's
passing of the first stage of evaluations.
The sustainable (continuous and communal)
as well as the regenerative will surely become
underlying concepts of human life-style in
the twenty-first century. This series will
introduce a number of specific examples of
attempts in California to construct such
environment and life-style, and thus argue
that a sustained urban growth in the twenty-first
century requires a radical transformation
of mind-set that transcends those of traditional
industrial society.
Grounded in the "theory of sacred/play/profane," this series will examine the meaning of gambling and wagering in light of leisure (play) and religion (sacred). The sacred realm can be experienced through sports and music which share common elements with leisure as activities for the pursuit of enjoyment. With growing secularization and the diminishment of religious/sacred time and space, are not human beings moved to pursue the sacred in the form of leisure?
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