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In this study, we focus on ethical education as a means to improve artificial companion's conceptualization of moral decision-making process in human users. In particular, we focus on automatically determining whether changes in ethical education influenced core moral values in humans throughout the century. We analyze ethics as taught in Japan before WWII and today to verify how much the pre-WWII moral attitudes have in common with those of contemporary Japanese, to what degree what is taught as ethics in school overlaps with the general population's understanding of ethics, as well as to verify whether a major reform of the guidelines for teaching the school subject of "ethics" at school after 1946 has changed the way common people approach core moral questions (such as those concerning the sacredness of human life). We selected textbooks used in teaching ethics at school from between 1935 and 1937, and those used in junior high schools today (2019) and analyzed what emotional and moral associations such contents generated. The analysis was performed with an automatic moral and emotional reasoning agent and based on the largest available text corpus in Japanese as well as on the resources of a Japanese digital library. As a result, we found out that, despite changes in stereotypical view on Japan's moral sentiments, especially due to historical events, past and contemporary Japanese share a similar moral evaluation of certain basic moral concepts, although there is a large discrepancy between how they perceive some actions to be beneficial to the society as a whole while at the same time being inconclusive when it comes to assessing the same action's outcome on the individual performing them and in terms of emotional consequences. Some ethical categories, assessed positively before the war, while being associated with a nationalistic trend in education have also disappeared from the scope of interest of post- war society. The findings of this study support suggestions proposed by others that the development of personal AI systems requires supplementation with moral reasoning. Moreover, the paper builds upon this idea and further suggests that AI systems need to be aware of ethics not as a constant, but as a function with a correction on historical and cultural changes in moral reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reprint of the article originally published in the March 17, 2011 issue of the journal "Religion Dispatches." The article discusses the religious interpretation and response of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Japan that destroyed large swaths of the eastern coast of Japan. Topics include the tsunami as divine punishment to wipe out Japanese egoism according to Tokyo governor Shintarō Ishihara and various faith-based disaster relief efforts.

In urban sociology, C.S. Fischer has argued that urbanism promote homophily of networks. Because urbanism gives us low limitation of social relations, people choice alters who has similar characteristic. This argument is a major focus of Fischer's subcultural theory of urbanism, but only few attempts have so far been made at studying about urban effect on homophily in Japan. So I applied the multilevel model to ego-centric network data, and investigated to urban effects on homophily of four dimensions that are age, education, occupation, and hobbies. By multilevel analysis, I obtain two results. First, urban effects have not appeared in homophily of age, education, occupation. Second, urbanism promote homophilyof hobbies. These results showed that homophily of hobbies is more important in Japan, and we need to reexamine subcultural theory through sharing hobbies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined ethnic identity in a cross-cultural environment with reference to the relationship between group identity and ego identity (cf. Erikson, 1959). The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (Phinney, 1992) for Japanese adolescents was administered to 335 students in Japan and 122 Japanese students abroad. Factor analysis yielded two factors ("Exploration", "Affirmation/Belonging"). ANOVA showed that these factor scores were significantly higher for Japanese students abroad than for the students in Japan. A second analysis examined the effects of ethnic identity on ego identity and also cultural adjustment for the Japanese students abroad. The results of structural equation model analysis indicated that "Exploration" played an important role for ego identity and cultural adjustment with the intervening variable of ego identity. On the other hand, "Affirmation/Belonging" had a negative effect on ego identity and cultural adjustment by itself, even though it had a positive effect on ego identity with the intervening factor of "Exploration." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuming that ICT ethics are influenced by both moral and circumstantial factors, the study investigates Japanese college students’ ethical judgments and behavioral intentions in three scenarios involving ICT-related ethical problems and explores why they make such decisions, relying on five moral philosophies: moral equity, relativism, contractualism, egoism, and utilitarianism. The findings reveal that except for egoism, four moral dimensions affect ethical decisions of Japanese college students, each having different effects according to the particular ethical situation presented. Overall, the concepts of justice, fairness and moral rightness were found to influence these students’ ethical judgments in all ICT-related ethical dilemmas; legal obligations and benefits to society were found to have a weaker impact. It was also found that the students may behave unethically in ICT-related matters if these behaviors are perceived as culturally or traditionally acceptable or not perceived to be morally wrong. In conclusion, further research is suggested to analyze various scenario effects on students’ ICT-related ethical decisions and to investigate how cultural, professional and other environmental factors affect ethical decision-making. The establishment of a coherent ICT ethics policy in colleges is also proposed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Voter turnout has decreased in advanced democratic societies. It might be considered a crisis of democracy, but the crisis depends on social conditions. This article investigated a causal model regarding the attitude of voters and found that there were three influential factors, (1) socio-economic background, (2) democratic consciousness, and (3) the socio-political macro situation. To evaluate the sample selection bias, this causal model was analyzed using the Heckman estimation method of the Tobit model. The following results were obtained. (1) Academic background and cultural capital encourage anti-authoritarianism and pluralism, but these two social consciousnesses do not have direct effects on voting attitude. (2) High economic growth experienced in a younger period promotes non-egocentric social participation that has positive effects on voting attitude. (3) Economic growth in a younger period enhances utilitarianism, but the utilitarianism does not have a direct effect on voting attitude. (4) Social stratification has a direct positive influence on voting attitude. In Japan, while neither anti-authoritarianism nor pluralism is related to the voting attitude directly, stable growth leads a passive voting attitude through egocentrism or ill-attended social participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the effects of Japanese and U.S national cultures on ethical climates within accounting organizations. We hypothesized that national cultural differences would lead to the observation of different ethical climates. Results support the national culture hypothesis for the principled climates. However, contrary to expectations based on national culture arguments for egoism and benevolence, our findings suggest that key institutional factors, specifically the accounting institutional rules and regulations, lead to differences in ethical climates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have hypothesized that narcissists mask their implicit sense of self-dislike by constructing a grandiose self-representation. Several studies have tested this "mask model" using measures of implicit self-esteem, but no study has been done with a Japanese sample. In this study, the Implicit Association Test (Study 1; n=62) and a name letter task (Study 2; n=102) were administrated to measure the implicit self-esteem of Japanese undergraduates. The relationship between implicit self-esteem and narcissism was examined, and the results did not support the mask model. This result is similar to recent findings from a meta-analysis of the mask model of narcissism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]