Recent theorists of cultural studies have noticed the emergence of metamodernity as an ideal type, categorized by an oscillation between postmodern deconstructivism and modern idealism, into a form of transcendentalism. I argue in this chapter that this type of transcendentalism, informed by the historical American Transcendentalist Movement, is the emerging ideal called “Transhumanism.” I use a case study of five Japanese anime to demonstrate how transhumanist, metamodernist, and transcendental thinking often recur in key core plot points and narratives found (...) within. I further suggest that meditation on the major themes in these anime, especially those of metamodernity and transhumanism, is necessary if we are to understand our place in the world today and into the future. -/- The final version of this paper can be found in Anime, Philosophy, and Religion, Ed. Hayashi and Anderson, by Vernon Press. See "external links" for how to order the whole volume, the final version is also available on google books (see link). -/- A previous version of this paper was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Paper Award 2023, Southwestern Sociological Association. (shrink)

Nowadays virtual reality has gained extreme popularity among adolescents around the world, thanks to the possibility they offer to create a new life for their users. Especially for teenagers affected by the hikikomori syndrome, who experience struggles in establishing communication with others, virtual reality has become a tool to forsake their “adverse” reality, shaping fictitious safe environments and creating relationships with similar-minded users. This issue of virtual reality has been depicted in recent Japanese animation, whose country is mostly (...) affected by this issue. I will show mainly two approaches to the phenomenon: the one given in the anime series Sword Art Online (2012), in which virtual reality is perceived as the only place where true communication can happen; the second is the interpretation given by director Hosoda Mamoru in his animated features Summer Wars (2009) and Belle (2021), where virtual reality is a tool to support real life’s difficulties. (shrink)

Animal cafés, a type of business where customers pay by the hour to spend time relaxing with nonhuman animals and other animal lovers, became popular in Japan during the late 2000s as part of the iyashi, or healing, boom. Young Japanese customers in need of positive affective experiences to address feelings, economic and social precarity turn to businesses like these to meet their emotional needs, engaging socially with animals in a commodified space. This article explores the kinds of intimate (...) bonds that are created between the human customer and animal “staff” in these contexts, where customers engage with animals on their own terms, enjoying their companionship without any long-term responsibility for their care, and the effect this has on the lives of the café animals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese AnimationJoseph MurphyAnime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. By Susan Napier. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001. Pp. vii + 320.Certain progressions can be marked from Antonia Levi's Samurai from Outer Space in 1996 to Susan Napier's Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation in 2001. While both (...) survey the phenomenon of Japanese animation as consumed in North America, the palpable underdog subcultural context and sense of mission in Levi's earlier work has given way to a confident mainstream appreciation in Napier's, with the term "Japanese animation" replaced in English by the naturalized anime (a-ni-mé, pl. anime). In a fast-moving media phenomenon both were dated as soon as they were published; however, bolstered by the worldwide critical and financial success of Miyazaki Hayao's work, and contemporary with the exposure to youth by the rise of 24/7 cartoon networks and the runaway success of the card game-anime nexus, Napier's Anime finds itself still in the right historical moment. Though the book has limitations in terms of both its own systematicity and its treatment of potentially interesting philosophical themes in anime, it is a reliable and sometimes inspired guide to a new phenomenon that forms an increasingly important default in the background your students bring.Napier is concerned not so much with accounting for the visual and perceptual properties of anime as with its narrative qualities: "Japanese animation merits serious consideration as a narrative art form and not simply for its arresting visual style.... Much of this book will be an investigation into the themes, imagery, and ideas of some of the most memorable anime created over the last two decades" (p. 10). The strengths and weaknesses of this book are nicely summed up here. Concentrating on narrative—a formal property of storytelling transposable across media—allows a broad and well-chosen survey of themes, images, and ideas. However, there is some question as to whether this will allow the reader to satisfy the ambition to "understand what makes anime the distinctive art form it is" (p. 10).The book is comprised of twelve chapters in four parts. Part 1 is an introduction that argues for the importance of anime and sketches a quasi-Aristotelian method as the basis for Napier's taxonomy. Parts 2-4 cover major thematic divisions that characterize the particular obsessions, power, and drama of anime, and these are particularly well-chosen to reflect not just the relatively palatable work deemed suitable for TV or subtitled for video distribution in the United States but also the anarchic diversity of the phenomenon as it circulates in Japan. Part 2 is on the essential theme of the changeable body and includes discussion of the monstrous adolescent body, pornographic anime, and the cybernetic body, and will allow you to catch up with classic anime like Akira (1988), Ranma 1/2 (TV version, 1990s), and Ghost in the Shell (theater version, 1996). Part 3 is on fantasy and romance as genres and the unusual [End Page 493] space in anime for female leads, and includes discussion of Miyazaki's pastoral work and the comedy TV series Urusei Yatsura (1980s), Oh My Goddess (1980s), and Video Girl Ai (1990s). Part 4 discusses anime that have sought to make a self-conscious contribution to historical debate, including Barefoot Gen (1983) and Grave of the Fireflies (1988), on the bombing of Japanese cities in World War II, and Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke (1997), which presents a multicultural picture of Japan's past produced in consultation with Japan's leading ethnologists. Discussions are balanced and entertaining, introducing the major auteurs of the last twenty years (Oshii Mamoru, Otomo Katsuhiro, Takahashi Rumiko, etc.) and creating the sharp impression that the genre of anime is not the same as the American concept of "cartoons."Though the anime phenomenon raises interesting sociocultural and critical questions about narrative and image culture, it is not immediately certain that there is a philosophical issue to anime. One might seek this philosophical content within the medium itself or in a systematic quality... (shrink)

In the 1940s, children in war-torn Japan would hear warning sirens and look skyward with dread, fearing a firebomb attack from enemy aircraft. But for young Jiro Horikoshi in The Wind Rises, airplanes mean ‘beautiful dreams’ and self-actualisation. Animation films like The Wind Rises (The Wind, 2013), In this Corner of the World (This Corner, 2016), The Boy and the Heron (The Boy, 2023) and Grave of the Fireflies (1988) focus on children’s agency in confronting Japan’s conflicts regarding memory, (...) national identity, and pacifism. The Wind explores Japan’s historical paradoxes, juxtaposing pride in innovation with a pacifist critique of militaristic nationalism. This Corner emphasises the plight of quotidian existence during wartime, highlighting collective memory and trauma. The Boy examines grief and healing through fantastical allegories, underscoring the significance of imagination in coping with trauma. This paper applies Igarashi’s theory of ‘absence presence,’ – referring to Japan’s self-protective absence of exploring the war’s haunting memories – Andrew Hoskins’s ecology of memories, and Michael Rothberg’s ‘multidirectional memory’ to contemplate the intricacies of nationalism in Japan. The paper explores these films within the context of national and international reactions to how Japan confronts its wartime past in the context of its postwar pacifist identity. (shrink)

This study addresses the relationship between Japanese aesthetics and anime. There are three premises: (1) the abstract concepts promoted by Japanese aesthetics; (2) the abstract and the concrete coalesce in the visual domain; and (3) anime can help us appreciate many aspects of Japan's aesthetic legacy"--Provided by publisher.

At the core of Félix Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm is a conception of subjectivity that somehow relies upon the notion of animism. Even though this apparently Romantic return to animism may seem vague and perhaps even naive, it forms the very framework that Guattari asks us to pass through, at least provisionally, in order to fully grasp his last project. I will therefore attempt to demystify this important concept theoretically before showing how the aesthetic machines of Japanese contemporary art – (...) and more specifically, the conceptual art of Yoko Ono – stage one key aspect of Guattari’s animism: machinic heterogenesis. Guattari travelled to Japan many times in the years leading up to the publication of Chaosmosis and Japanese contemporary art allowed him to bolster some of its theoretical claims with concrete examples. I will argue that it is through the lens of Japanese contemporary art that Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm might propel us beyond the old-guard strategies of modernism. Just as we are asked to pass through a certain notion of animism to understand the relational onto-logic of Chaosmosis, Japanese contemporary art itself demands a similar conceptual framework in order to be disappropriated from an all-too-Western canon. To this end, I supplement Guattari’s work with speculative readings of Japanese philosophy. (shrink)

Ongoing research on making “human-animal chimeras” or “animals containing human material” to solve the shortage of organs available for transplantation has raised many ethical issues regarding the creation and utilization of such constructs, including cultural views regarding the status of those creations. A pilot study was conducted to explore Japanese public attitudes toward human-animal chimeras or ACHM. The February 2012 study consisted of focus group interviews with citizens from the Greater Tokyo Area, aged between 20 and 54. The 24 (...) participants were divided into four groups. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed and participants’ attitudes categorized. Five categories of participant attitudes were identified: resistance to the unnatural, concerns about animal welfare, concerns about controlling human-animal chimeras, concerns about the possible birth of intermediate entities, and resistance to creating and utilizing animals containing my material or my child’s material. Our FGI results showed a broader and greater variety of public concerns than those reported in previous studies. While researchers have tried to establish new methods to avoid creating intermediate entities, our participants expressed concerns about not only intermediate entities but also animals containing their own material or their child’s material. Based upon their responses in the interviews, we are introducing a new ethical concern: “animals containing my material/my child’s material.”. (shrink)

In this Open Access book, the reader is presented with an outlook on current developments in Japanese Animal Ethics and how Andō Shōeki's depictions of non-human animals, as well as the examination of Chinese and Japanese traditions of animal description, could give a new impetus to the field. Andō Shōeki is one of the most important thinkers in Japanese intellectual history, as a philosopher who demonstrates remarkable creativity in his critical engagement with the traditional knowledge of China (...) and Japan. This makes him an ideal starting point for a book on non-human animals in pre-modern Japan. This book not only explains the world of one of the most fascinating thinkers of pre-modern Japan in simple terms, but also introduces the reader to the Chinese and Japanese zoological traditions. It provides well-founded information on the role of each non-human animal in the Japanese (and also Chinese) human-animal relationship. Melissa Ann Kaul is an SNSF-Postdoc.Mobility Fellow and a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh. Her research topics include Japanese Animal Ethics, Andō Shōeki, and Neoconfucianism. Her latest article has appeared in the Journal of Animal Ethics. She is currently working on a translation of Andō Shōeki’s Hōsei Monogatari. (shrink)

How ethical ideologies relate to public attitudes toward nonhuman animals is an increasingly prominent topic, yet it has been largely unstudied, particularly in Asian countries such as Japan. Using the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ), Animal Attitude Scale (AAS), and Animal Issue Scale (AIS) in the present study, we examined how ethical ideologies and human demographics relate to public attitudes toward animals from a Japanese cultural perspective. The results of a questionnaire (N = 900) distributed throughout Japan indicate that public (...) attitudes toward animals were positively associated with idealism and negatively associated with relativism. These findings are similar to those from China, but partly in contrast with those from the United States, where relativism was unrelated to attitudes toward animals. Our findings add to a growing recognition of how individual philosophy relates to public attitudes toward animals in Asian countries. (shrink)

Since World War II Japanese artists have employed two seemingly contradictory ways of working, using aesthetics, materials, artistic methods technologies, and approaches that are either radically innovative and wildly experimental, or traditional/classical. Many other artists, however, in a move that seems paradoxical. have combined the two to explore the new themes of the post-atomic period. Three narrative works dealing with the effects of the World War II war effort and the atomic bombings that ended them, Yasunari Kawabata’s novel The (...) Sound of the Mountain (1952), Rio Kishida’s avant-garde play Thread Hell (1984), and the film Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen), directed by Mori Masaki and written by Keiji Nakazawa (Masaki and Nakazawa 1983), exemplify this third approach. Set in the pre-War textile industry that enabled the War, during the atomic bombings, and the post-War American Occupation, all three explore the experience not only of the horrific objective effects of war but of the Japanese experience of psychic numbing, which damages the person’s sense of self and their sense of agency—their ability to act effectively in the world. All three utilize classical aesthetics to provide aesthetic experiences, for their readers/viewers, to make the experience of the work tolerable, and for their characters—to demonstrate the roles of positive aesthetic experience in making life worth while and in grounding a renewed sense of personal identity and selfhood in a self that has been shattered through trauma. (shrink)

This article examines ethnographically the production of anime (Japanese animated films and TV shows) by focusing on how professional animators use characters and dramatic premises to organize their collaborative creativity. In contrast to much of the analysis of anime that focuses on the stories of particular media texts, I argue that a character-based analysis provides a critical perspective on how anime relates to broader transmedia phenomena, from licensed merchandise to fan activities. The ideas of characters, premises, and world-settings also (...) specify in greater detail the logic of anime production, which too often is glossed as emerging from a generalized Japanese culture, as in the ongoing debates about `cool Japan'. I conclude that an ethnographic approach to anime production through a focus on characters can offer new ways of thinking about what moves across media, what distinguishes anime from other media forms, and what gives anime its value. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose the concept of the “animated persona,” a soundless voice that says, “I am here” and appears on the surface of someone or something. This concept can bring clarity to the experience of perceiving a kind of personhood on a corpse, a wooden mask, or even a tree. In the first half of this paper, I will examine some Japanese literature and a work of Viktor Frankl’s that discuss these phenomena. In the second half, I (...) will analyze the concept of animated persona from five perspectives: (1) a compelling power, (2) surface-ness, (3) religious experience, (4) universality, and (5) the meaning of “I.” Lastly, I will discuss the relationship among the three layers of biological object, animated persona, and self-conscious being. My aim is to shed new light on the meaning of the encounter between the living and the dead. (shrink)

In a wide range of contemporary debates on Japanese cultures of technological practice, brief reference is often made to distinct Shinto legacies, as forming an animist substratum of indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmological imaginations. Japan has been described as a land of Shinto-infused ‘techno-animism’: exhibiting a ‘polymorphous perversity’ that resolutely ignores boundaries between human, animal, spiritual and mechanical beings. In this article, we deploy instances of Japanese techno-animism as sites of theoretical experimentation on what Bruno Latour calls a (...) symmetrical anthropology of nature-cultures. In staging a dialogue between actor-network theory and Japanese techno-animism, we show how Shinto cosmograms provide an enlivening and alternative diffraction device on several of the ontological motifs manifested in Latour’s work. In particular, by mobilizing the territory of a ‘new’ animism debate in anthropology – manifested in the work of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro – we attempt to infuse Latourian ‘multinaturalism’ with new, other-than-western analytical energy. Extending actor-network theory, we argue, Shinto cosmograms offer an interesting vantage point for interpreting the immanent, affective, enchanting and enabling powers of non-humans in contributing to collective life. By thus broadening the ‘cosmopolitical’ imagination beyond Latour’s own European-Catholic frame of reference, Shinto techno-animism offers up a wider reflection on contemporary entanglements of science, politics, ecology and cosmos. This reflection, we conclude, opens up a new intellectual territory, allowing us to trace techno-animist streams of thinking both ‘East’ and ‘West’, beyond the confines of the scientific naturalism indigenous to European thinking. (shrink)

Comparative environmental philosophy is valuable in many ways. Perhaps it is most valuable because it reveals some of the foundational assumptions that run so deep in the poles of comparison that they might otherwise have gone unnoticed. These revelations may invite us to challenge those assumptions that have led to the kind of thinking responsible for much of the environmental degradation that we see today. Japanese Environmental Philosophy gathers papers focused on the environmental problems of the twenty-first century. Drawing (...) from Japanese philosophical traditions they investigate our relationships with other humans, nonhuman animals, and the environment. The heart of the book consists of chapters written by fifteen top scholars from Japan, the United States, Europe, and Australia. The essays cover a broad range of topics drawn from various strains of Japanese thought—including Zen Buddhism, Shintoism, the Kyoto school, and Japanese philosophy of art and aesthetics—as well as from traditional Japanese culture and the contemporary science of planning for natural disasters. These articles demonstrate that Japanese scientific, philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions can provide meaningful insight to address the current global environmental crisis. (shrink)

In this paper I consider whether traditional behaviors of animals, like traditions of humans, are transmitted by imitation learning. Review of the literature on problem solving by captive primates, and detailed consideration of two widely cited instances of purported learning by imitation and of culture in free-living primates (sweet-potato washing by Japanese macaques and termite fishing by chimpanzees), suggests that nonhuman primates do not learn to solve problems by imitation. It may, therefore, be misleading to treat animal traditions and (...) human culture as homologous (rather than analogous) and to refer to animal traditions as cultural. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive, in-depth English language study of the animals that were left behind in the exclusion zone in the wake of the nuclear meltdown of three of the four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake of magnitude 9.0.The Japanese government designated an area of 20-kilometer radius from the nuclear power station as an exclusion zone and evacuated one hundred thousand residents, but left companion (...) animals and livestock animals behind in the radioactive area. Consequently, about 90 percent of the animals in the exclusion zone died. This book juxtaposes policies of the Japanese government toward the animals in Fukushima with the actions of grassroots volunteer animal rescue groups that filled the void of the government. (shrink)

A través del análisis del lenguaje audiovisual y la comprensión del proceso de creación de algunas de las series anime más destacadas de la última década, este artículo pretende establecer las cualidades estéticas y técnicas actuales más representativas de este modelo de animación. Unos aspectos significativos que podrían dar lugar a una nueva etapa en la historia de la animación japonesa, ya que no solo las técnicas de producción o difusión han seguido evolucionando sino también su narrativa y estética han (...) traspasado la frontera de lo establecido, desarrollando un proceso de creación tan eficiente que se ha convertido en un referente para las producciones occidentales. (shrink)

This chapter “Government Animal Relief Operations in the Exclusion Zone” examines the policy (and the lack thereof) of the Japanese government on animals in Fukushima. The government designated an area of 20-kilometer radius from the nuclear power station as the exclusion zone and evacuated residents to temporary shelters outside the zone. However, it did not undertake animal rescue operations in earnest, but conducted only pro forma rescue operations for a short period of time, leaving countless animals starving to death.

This chapter “Volunteer Animal Rescue in the Exclusion Zone II” highlights other grassroots animal rescue operations in the exclusion zone, as well as the discord and even rivalry among animal welfare groups, which partly derived from the preferential and unequal allocations of public donations by the Headquarters for Animal Relief in Emergencies. This chapter then assesses the overall animal rescue operations in the exclusion zone by juxtaposing those of the Japanese government with those of the private groups.

This chapter “Other Animals Left Behind in the Exclusion Zone” considers a variety of animals—domesticated and wild—that lived in the exclusion zone, including chickens, pigs, and ostriches, as well as foxes, Japanese raccoon dogs (tanuki), and wild boars. This chapter also looks at local aquariums that sustained enormous damage. The scientific studies of the local wildlife, such as Japanese macaques and pale blue butterflies, have indicated adverse effects of the radiation on them.

A hybrid Japanese philosophy, integrating traditional Japanese Buddhist thought with the Western philosophical canon emerged during the twentieth century in response to the program of modernization instituted by the Maiji Restoration. Japanese culture, however, has been as important in shaping Japanese environmental ethics as have Japanese philosophical values. Japan has an extensive cultural heritage that has been built on mythology and folklore, and on religious beliefs and practices, and these ingredients have influenced the Japanese (...) ethical consciousness. The indigenous Shinto religion, which evolved from animism, teaches that the ever-present _kami_ (spirits) bind the Japanese to their environment. Their presence imparts a strong moral consciousness. Thus an understanding of the relationship of the _kami_ to the Japanese people is essential for appreciating Japanese environmental ethics. Most Japanese have an intuitive belief in the _kami_ that has been significant in forming their caring attitude toward the natural world. (shrink)

The Japanese are rumored to have a deep understanding of nature and therefore a deeper bond to the natural world as well as the creatures that inhabit it. However, recent studies to determine the attitudes, knowledge, and behavior of the Japanese toward free-living animals have proven the popular image of a nature-loving people to be misleading. Instead, the results have displayed an almost frightening ethical and ecological indifference toward free-living animals. In order to understand this contradictory attitude toward (...) nonhuman animals, I claim that it is necessary to take a closer look at the ancient Chinese encyclopedic sources that have shaped the discipline of honzōgaku 本草学 (“natural history”) in early modern Japan. This article aims to show how the depiction and descriptions of nonhuman animals in medieval Chinese encyclopedias were passed on to Japan and became the basis of their knowledge of the nonhuman world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores philosophically the experiences of laughter and irony, focusing on Japanese sources but with a cross-cultural outlook. I ask whether globally unfavorable attitudes towards the comic in the European canon might have left unexplored or misunderstood several insights offered by the bodily and spiritual dimension revealed by laughter, and examine them through Japanese sources. Following a short but poignant triad of examples in Kuki Shūzō’s work, the paper analyses three instances of Japanese laughter and (...) irony: the orgiastic laughter of the gods luring Amaterasu out of the Heavenly Cave in Kojiki; the anthropomorphic animal scrolls of Chōjūgiga, and the “Tiger Cubs Crossing” stone garden in Ryōanji, Kyoto, concluding how each one of them offers an important insight on the bodily and conceptual phenomenological cluster of laughter and irony. I conclude with a further exploration of laughter in Zen, a religious tradition with a unique stress on the spiritual potential of humor, following Nishitani’s reading of Mumonkan and his connection to the experience of “emptiness”. (shrink)

This study provides a qualitative analysis of a corpus comprising 54 Japanese proverbs, collected from various Japanese folklore books and linguistic resources. Based on Roland Barthes’ (Mythologies, Hill and Wang, 1972; The Semiotic Challenge, Hill and Wang, 1988) semiotic theory, the analysis moves beyond literal translation to deconstruct how these proverbs operate as complex sign systems that naturalize cultural history. The study examines how mundane signifiers—ranging from food and animals to nature—are appropriated to transform straightforward expressions into powerful (...) ideological messages. The analysis aims to reveal the cultural myths they convey and highlight important Japanese cultural values and societal norms. Five main patterns of cultural myths emerged: Diligence, Prudence, and Strategic Effort; Social Harmony, Respect, and Interpersonal Conduct; Intrinsic Worth and Substance over Superficiality; Resilience, Humility, and Continuous Growth; and Gendered Roles and Societal Realities. These thematic insights enhance our understanding of how proverbs function as cultural artifacts; they reinforce values such as unwavering perseverance, cautious deliberation, reciprocal interdependence, and codified gender expectations. The analysis demonstrates that proverbs operate as a second-order semiological system (myth), where symbols are emptied of their literal context to carry ideological weight. Barthes’ framework thus offers a tool for analyzing the interaction between language, culture, and meaning-making within a non-Western context, making a new contribution to proverb scholarship. (shrink)

As a globally respected art form, Japanese animation transcends national boundaries and integrates into popular culture worldwide. In this chapter, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki examines the Studio Ghibli film Gake no ue no Ponyo (Ponyo) (2008), directed by Miyazaki Hayao and scored by Hisaishi Joe. The film delivers an environmentalist critique through a narrative loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. Notably, references to Wagner’s Ring Cycle, particularly Die Walküre, permeate both the narrative and the musical score. (...) Hisaishi’s use of leitmotif underscores these musical connections, collectively illustrating how Ponyo employs elements from Wagner’s Ring Cycle to promote a Japanese notion of “nature nationalism.”. (shrink)

Although modern civilization has brought about great technical achievement, mankind face various problems today. It seems that humans are endlessly pursuing economic development, and they often neglect the preservation of the environment. Japan is not free from this world-wide problem. However, Japanese civilization would be able to offer an important paradigm for the future course of mankind. In particular, animism and tolerance towards religious differences seem to be vital elements for the betterment of this world.

A través del análisis del lenguaje audiovisual y la comprensión del proceso de creación de algunas de las series anime más destacadas de la última década, este artículo pretende establecer las cualidades estéticas y técnicas actuales más representativas de este modelo de animación. Unos aspectos significativos que podrían dar lugar a una nueva etapa en la historia de la animación japonesa, ya que no solo las técnicas de producción o difusión han seguido evolucionando sino también su narrativa y estética han (...) traspasado la frontera de lo establecido, desarrollando un proceso de creación tan eficiente que se ha convertido en un referente para las producciones occidentales. (shrink)

Tense/aspect morphology on verbs is often thought to depend on event features like telicity, but it is not known how speakers identify these features in visual scenes. To examine this question, we asked Japanese speakers to describe computer‐generated animations of simple actions with variation in visual features related to telicity. Experiments with adults and children found that they could use goal information in the animations to select appropriate past and progressive verb forms. They also produced a large number of (...) different verb forms. To explain these findings, a deep‐learning model of verb production from visual input was created that could produce a human‐like distribution of verb forms. It was able to use visual cues to select appropriate tense/aspect morphology. The model predicted that video duration would be related to verb complexity, and past tense production would increase when it received the endpoint as input. These predictions were confirmed in a third study with Japanese adults. This work suggests that verb production could be tightly linked to visual heuristics that support the understanding of events. (shrink)

Based on an empirical illustration of Onta pottery and more broadly a discussion of the Japanese Mingei movement, we study the intimacy between craft work, ethics and time. We conceptualize craft work through the temporal structure of tradition, to which we find three aspects: generational rhythms of making; cycles of use and re-use amongst consumers and a commitment to historically and naturally attuned communities. We argue these temporal structures of tradition in craftwork are animated by two contrasting but co-existing (...) ideas of the good: the moral and the ethical. By developing the work of Elizabeth Grosz, we conceptualize this distinction between moral and ethical as a temporal phenomenon, specifically in differing relations to ideas of the future. Moral aspects of craft work understand the future as a progression from past, whether in preserving practices and norms, or improving upon them in relation to ideals. Ethical aspects understand the future as inherently open to chance and divergence, valuing difference, accident and the possibilities for creativity these entail. Empirically, we show evidence of both aspects in the case of Mingei—a organized movement dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional Japanese craft work. We contribute to studies of craft work by revealing and classifying its temporal aspects. We contribute to studies in business ethics by conceptualising a generative distinction between morals and ethics configured through differing understandings of time. (shrink)

This chapter “Kumamoto Earthquake and Animal Rescue” examines the plight of the animals and animal rescue in the wake of the Kumamoto Earthquake that shook the southwestern region in April 2016, and studies whether the Japanese government and people learned lessons from Fukushima, as well as from the Mid-Niigata Prefecture Earthquake of October 2004.

In this dialogue, Hiroki Azuma discusses with Yuk Hui about the perception of technology in Japan after the defeat in the Second World War, from the Kyoto School to the postmodern critics, and the ambivalent conflicts between the modern and the tradition. The postmodern culture has a different signification in Japan than in the West as well as in other parts of Asia. Azuma documents the rise of the Otaku culture in Japan, and calls them “database animals,” a thesis that (...) he formulated through his reading of Alexandre Kojève’s end of man and the absorption of the human subject into the technological world. (shrink)

The turn of the millennium has witnessed an extraordinary paradox—one identified by Jacques Derrida as a simultaneous increase in violence against nonhuman animals and compassion toward them. This article turns to critical legal theory as well as to recent work by continental philosophers on the human/animal distinction in order to make sense of the ways the paradox manifests in law, arguing that so-called animal welfare laws that appear to be politically progressive are, in fact, iterations of the very violence they (...) purport to redress. What legislation designates as “animal” has neither language nor a recognized image, which not only renders this singular object of law voiceless but also denies that object access to any experience of death, and thus, to life. Through a deconstruction of recently enacted Japanese “animal welfare” legislation, this article proposes that the inability of the legislator to think the animal as having a relation to death belies a deeper struggle at the heart of law itself, to constitute its subjects through language. (shrink)

This chapter traces the emergence and consolidation of Chinese animation from the early twentieth century to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. It begins with theoretical reflections on the definition of animation and its early global origins, including optical devices such as the zoetrope and praxinoscope, before situating the medium in the Chinese context. The pioneering work of the Wan brothers in Shanghai is examined as the foundation of a national industry that sought to integrate indigenous (...) artistic traditions with cinematic innovation. Their milestone film Princess Iron Fan (1941) is highlighted as both a landmark of wartime propaganda and a source of inspiration for Japanese animation. The chapter further explores the role of animation in the Republican era, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and throughout the revolutionary period, emphasizing its function as a medium of ideological communication. With the establishment of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, animation flourished artistically while increasingly bound to political agendas. The Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution brought severe repression, reducing animation to a tool of propaganda and silencing creative voices. By 1976, the industry had endured alternating phases of innovation and constraint, laying the groundwork for its later revival under reform policies. (shrink)

The moral foundations theory (MFT) proposes that there are five moral foundations that work as the standard to make moral judgments. Among them, the purity foundation is a complex concept. It is considered to be a distinctive foundation compared with the other ones partly because it involves religious beliefs. The assumption underlying the purity foundation is Christian beliefs, so the MFT was developed and made prevalent mostly in the Western cultures. However, because of that assumption, cultural differences in perceiving the (...) purity foundation should be observed with a non-Western sample, such as Japan. It would be important to discuss and clarify the Japanese unique aspect of their orientation toward the pure and impure. We constituted a scale to measure people's tendency toward purity orientation–pollution avoidance (POPA), based on the purity/sanctity subscale of the MFT. For validation, we administered several scales along with POPA. In Study 1, we developed the scale and measured the relationship between the degree of one's POPA, disgust, and animism. We identified four factors as POPA subscales. In Study 2, we investigated the test–retest reliability of POPA and conducted questionnaire surveys to measure attitudes toward paranormal phenomena and the degree of concern for each of the moral foundations. The results showed the validity of the scale, based on the moderate correlations with other scales. The POPA can be a promising tool to better understand the phenomena involving the purity foundation in a Japanese context. (shrink)

The ecological factor has always played an important role in the “human-nature-society” interaction. The author discovers birth and formation of the ecophilia outlook in the Japanese and the Ukrainian culture. The main idea of it is in careful attitude to the nature from the side of the human (society), realizing their tight connection on the traditional stage of the evolution. The following points are typical of the traditional culture: to prefer collective over individual, conservatism, priority of traditions and habits, (...) high dependency of the human (society) from the natural and geographical conditions, primary role of religious and mythological beliefs as regulators of individual and social vital activity. Tight contact of human (society) with the wildlife and inanimate nature was being based on the emotional perception, practical exploration of the living space and observation. These factors defined advantages of natural phenomenons over limited abilities of the traditional human community (including Japanese and Ukrainians). All these generated in human consciousness the idea of mysterious, powerful, obscure energy (spirits, souls, deities) that controls all natural and anthropic events. Trust in animacy of the natural world had caused beliefs in unity of real and supernatural, started awakening fear and voice of the “inner conscience” in the human souls (Japanese and Ukrainians) in case of harming and punishment from the supernatural creatures. The author had shown similarities of ecophilia outlook in the Japanese and the Ukrainian cultures based on traditional religious and mythological beliefs from ancient (animatism, animism, totemism) to polytheistic religions – shintoism and paganism. The author also determined functional and symbolic content in interaction “human-nature-society” system on household and sacred levels of being. Japanese and Ukrainians are both agricultural nations and their ecophilia attitude is expressed in agricultural labors and observation on a nature. Trust in existing of the supernatural creatures in the nature influenced the production of the effective principles of agricultural labour, endorsed active exploration of the earthly and heavenly natural processes by empowering them with the human-like features. The author believes that the content of traditional religious and mythological beliefs, practical vital knowledge and the ecophilia outlook was reflected in the image of World Tree. By means of which Universe became structured and each living and inanimate object has taken specific place. Ecophilia attitude of Japanese and Ukrainians can be tracked in their folk medicine and ceremonial actions. Traditional religious and mythological beliefs fixed prejudices in social life, produced primitive zoological, botanical, healing, psychotherapeutic knowledge. Japanese and Ukrainians empowered animals and trees with specific qualities and believed that during the ceremonial activity human and society meet with the supernatural powers of the nature and contact with them. Modern century is marked with the anthropocentric ecological outlook, people are focused on the material wealth and comfort. Depreciation of moral and religious norms in human with human, human with nature interactions is still a characteristic trend and this provokes ecological crisis as well as disasters. The author states that appeal to the ecophilia experience of past generations can help to wake interest in traditional religious and mythological heritage of any culture (including Japanese and Ukrainian), learn some ideas worth spreading and implementing in both theoretical and practical plane. It will contribute in saving ecosystem of the Earth and prosperity biodiversity. Keywords : ecophilia outlook, traditional culture, religious and mythological beliefs, beliefs, nature, folk. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to define the 'ethnocategory' mushi in Japanese culture, through a semantic analysis of the Chinese characters bearing the radical "mushi," and fieldwork research in rural Japan. The research offers criteria for an animal's inclusion in the category, reveals the differences in people's perception of mushi according to age and gender, and elicits a structure of the category as a series of concentric circles around a semantic core. The richness and complexity of the findings provide (...) insight into Japanese attitudes towards animals and nature. (shrink)

One of Kant’s famous questions about being human asks, “What may I hope?” This question places individual life within an encompassing horizon of human history and speculates on the possibility of perspectives beyond death. In our time mortality is generally repressed, though the development of personal consciousness is closely linked to realization of one’s finitude. This raises especially urgent questions for children, and they are left to deal with them alone. From the time awareness begins, knowledge that death can occur (...) at any moment is one of the a priori determinants of being alive; that is, life is structured in advance by its future pastness. . According to Max Scheler, death reveals itself as a necessary and manifest constituent of all possible inner experiences in the life process. The cultural and individual interpretations of death’s meaning and consequences derived from this insight opened up an ample space for imagined possibilities of “continued existence,” which affected approaches to life. In our research project “Inochi – The Concept of Life after Death in Children’s Construction of the World. A German-Japanese Comparison,” carried out with German and Japanese research support, we examine concepts developed within the community of inquiry concerning “the individual’s afterlife” as soul, angel, animal, star, etc. In this we want to examine whether a globalized media environment leads to a cultural convergence in children’s ideas, and whether there are differences between views of girls and boys. Relevance of ideas about death is seen in the example of Japanese children who, believing in reincarnation chose “killing oneself” with relative frequency as a problem-solving strategy. Our contribution will present children’s imaginings using the drawings they created within this framework, since these can be interpreted as expressions of “narrative philosophizing,” especially for the Japanese children. Here we follow Mark Johnson who says” Human beings are imaginative synthesizing animals” . These imaginations make up a large part of our understanding, not just our beliefs, but rather our socially constructed way of being in and inhabiting a world. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that children learning a variety of languages acquire similar early noun vocabularies and do so by similar and universal processes. We report here results from two studies that show differences in the early noun learning of English- and Japanese-speaking children. Experiment 1 examined the relative numbers of animal names and object names in vocabularies of English-speaking and Japanese-speaking children. English-speaking children's vocabularies were heavily lopsided with many more object than animal names whereas Japanese-speaking children's (...) vocabularies were more evenly balanced. Experiment 2 used a novel noun extension task to examine what young children know about the different organizations of animal and artifact categories. The results suggest that early learners of English but not Japanese over-generalize what they know about object categories to animal categories. The role of culture, input and linguistic structure in early noun acquisitions is discussed. (shrink)

This chapter provides a concluding outlook on how human approaches to constructing non-human animals—such as classification and description—shape our behaviour towards them. It briefly discusses the social construction of animals through classifications in encyclopaedias and then shifts to Literary animals. In conclusion, the current state of Japanese Animal Ethics is summarised, and a brief discussion will explore how incorporating ideas from premodern Japanese thinkers like Andō Shōeki could shed light on the historical human-animal relationship in Japan.

How did the very first meaning components arise in animals? We argue that answers interact in interesting ways with data on current and ancestral animal communication systems. Using standard notions of evolutionary stability in biology, we develop a simple framework to analyze the emergence of three meaning components: individual signals, nontrivial combinations, and pragmatic principles of competition among signals. We show that for elementary signals to arise, they should have null cost, or be understood from the start. While this conclusion (...) dovetails with the traditional idea that signals often originate in cues, i.e., informative byproducts of non-communicative processes, the two scenarios (null cost vs. understanding from the start) can be distinguished in case studies involving ancestral meaning reconstruction. For nontrivial combinations of the form CC’ (such as pyow-hack sequences in putty-nosed monkeys and ABC-D sequences in Japanese tits), we show that their emergence is heavily constrained because they should initially give rise to some miscommunication, as CC’ could also be understood as the (trivial) combination of separate utterances C and C’. Finally, we investigate the evolution of two pragmatic principles that were posited in recent animal linguistics: the Informativity Principle and the Urgency Principle. We argue that both have a clear evolutionary path, especially if they start appearing in production, and then in comprehension. Overall, recent work in animal linguistics can be fruitfully combined with simple principles of evolutionary stability and with ancestral signal reconstruction to address in a precise fashion questions about the very first meaning operations in nature. (shrink)

In what follows I distinguish «postmodern animism» from my preferred term «postmedia animism», which I propose is a better term to express a minor, virtual, contrarian art and media. In the time of planetary trauma, ecological devastation and collapse, this term will serve as a heuristic concept to trace the passage from pandemic, panic, catastrophe and crisis to the series pandemonium, delirium and the carnivalesque. My gambit is to invoke a rebellious and affirmative Yōkai imaginary (妖怪, ghost, phantom, strange apparition) (...) in order to contest passive forms of «transcendental narcissism» or «transcendental miserabilism».This we shall designate s an aesthetics of existence. In particular, I will analyse the relationship between natural disasters and politics within the Japanese imagination through reference to Namazu-e (鯰絵, woodblock prints depicting catfish), and their political effects in the aftermath of the earthquake of October 1855 (安政江戸地震, Ansei Edo Jishin) in the Edo period of Japanese history (FIG 1). My intention is to show that this historic art form, which grew out of trauma, demonstrates a fabulatory, dissensual and political aesthetics of resistance and creativity. It is an imaginary which appears conspicuously absent in our contemporary moment. (shrink)

This chapter “Mid-Niigata Prefecture Earthquake and Animal Rescue” reviews the policy of the Niigata prefectural government toward animals in the wake of the Mid-Niigata Prefecture Earthquake that struck the coastal region of the Sea of Japan in October 2004. The local government deployed the Niigata Prefecture Disaster Relief Air Service not only for people but also for animals, and rescued companion animals as well as bulls and Japanese carp (nishiki-goi) by helicopter. Niigata prefecture also became the first government in (...) Japan to establish a new regulation that allowed companion animals to live in evacuation shelters with their owners. (shrink)

This chapter examines the transformation of Chinese animation from the late 1970s to the early 2010s, highlighting the impact of economic reform, marketization, and globalization. Following the Cultural Revolution, animators returned to the Shanghai Animation Film Studio and other institutions, reviving creativity through productions such as Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979). Television became a central platform for animation, expanding audiences and shaping a second golden age. However, as foreign content, especially Japanese anime and American cartoons, (...) entered China, domestic studios faced new competition. Many animators moved into outsourcing for international companies, particularly in Shenzhen and other Special Economic Zones, altering the structure of the industry. The 1990s and 2000s brought technological modernization, with digital tools, 3D animation, and co-productions emerging as significant trends. The state increasingly treated animation as part of the creative industries, establishing subsidies, festivals, and industrial parks to encourage growth. Despite increased production and market expansion, challenges persisted, including limited originality, uneven quality, and dependence on service work for global studios. The chapter concludes that this period was both transitional and contradictory, combining remarkable industrial growth with structural fragilities that would shape the future of Chinese animation. (shrink)

In this chapter, the reader explores different stages in the history of zoology within the Chinese and Japanese traditions. Since many of the animal descriptions in the subsequent chapter’s translations contain unusual concepts of animal perception in Chinese and Japanese culture, it is beneficial to investigate how humans acquired knowledge of non-human animals and the main motivation behind this. In China, the approach stemmed from ancient Chinese lexicons such as the Erya and aimed to classify beings based on (...) human and moral analogy, fitting them into a larger cosmic order rather than analysing them as physical entities with distinct biological systems. In an additional subchapter, Japan will be presented as a potential special case in the development of natural history. Since the country’s borders were closed to Western powers at the beginning of the Edo period, the transmission of Western knowledge was limited, allowing Chinese tradition to dominate Japanese zoology, with the BencaoGangmu serving as its primary source. (shrink)