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Stratified societies in the form of chiefdoms emerged during the Gusuku Period (ca. late eleventh–fifteenth centuries) in the Central Ryukyus (Amami and Okinawa Archipelagos), Japan. They competed among themselves, and by the fifteenth century, the Ryukyu Kingdom had been established. In contrast, the social organization of the Shellmidden Period (ca. 7,000–1,000 BP), comprising hunter-gatherer-fishers (HGF), has been considered primarily egalitarian. Here we examine the development of social organizations during the Shellmidden Period finding that for the first several thousand years, populations were both mobile and egalitarian. However, more complex societies evolved during the Early 5 phase of the Early Shellmidden Period. The social organizations that developed between Early 5 and the end of the Shellmidden Period explicitly illustrate the cyclical nature or sawtooth-like pattern of social evolution, as we note repeated alternations between egalitarian and more complex societal forms, not all of which evolved into chiefdoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The endpoint and hallmark of the success of intercultural teaching is often seen as the attainment of intercultural competence. Yet, there is a need for a detailed examination of some of the enduring personal and professional identity and culture aspects of cross-cultural teaching. In this chapter, I deliberate over the application of narrative inquiry tools for unpacking teachers' experiences of immersion in a foreign country and culture of schooling. I reflect on my own experiences as a teacher in Japan and draw on an inquiry into the experiences of novice Canadian teachers in Hong Kong or Japan to shed light on fluid conceptions of culture shock and reverse culture shock in terms of cultural identity transformations. I also raise to the forefront inquiry puzzles about the phenomenon of intercultural competence acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's short story Konjiki no shi ('A golden death,' 1914) tells the weird tale of a friendship between two young aspiring artists in early twentieth-century Japan. Watashi, the narrator, is a diligent student, has conventional ideas, and becomes a conventional writer, while his friend Okamura, who is extremely wealthy and free to pursue his wildest ideas, develops to the most bizarre consequences his own original aesthetics based on the senses and the beauty of the human body. This story can be read by adopting a perspective that brings out its implicit sociology. Konjiki no shi describes the social trajectories of the two protagonists by tapping into Tanizaki's "sense of the social." By resorting to some sociocritical tools and to Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory, I will investigate how this story constructs and narrates the relationship between the two main characters and its evolution. Secondly, I will show how aesthetics, as understood as a set of historically situated practices and discourses dispersed in the story, constitutes a significant aspect of the differential characterization of the two protagonists and an important element to interpret their conducts. Tanizaki succeeds in summoning before the readers' eyes the intersection of two social and aesthetic trajectories that do not appear to be governed by chance or the whim of invention, but respond to his awareness of their social matrices and evolutions, their stakes and costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to outline an innovative multilevel conceptual model capable of explaining "karoshi" (death from overwork) and its relationship to molecular-, micro-, meso- and macro-competitive productivity (CP). Design/methodology/approach: A theoretical model, grounded in the evolutionary biological, psychological, organizational and sociological literatures, is provided. Findings: Karoshi is a function of molecular (genetic), micro (individual), meso (organizational) and macro (cultural) evolutionary forces. It is also demonstrated to be a function of time, geography, agri-climate and cultural and ethnic homogeneity. Research limitations/implications: The analysis is purely theoretical and its theoretically informed hypotheses are not tested empirically. As such, further data-driven research is indicated. Additional analyses are also needed to further unpack the recursive nature of the relationship between karoshi and CP and the subtle differences between genetic evolution and cultural and organizational evolution. Practical implications: Karoshi-related deaths are a public health epidemic and increasingly a major obstacle to sustainable CP. As such, organizations can leverage these analyses to help them implement interventions aimed at reducing incidents of work-related deaths, not only in Japan, but across the world. Originality/value: This multilevel conceptual framework makes a unique contribution to the cross-cultural and strategic management literatures. More specifically, it constitutes a new and innovative contribution to one's current understanding of CP by uniquely integrating biology, psychology, organization studies and cultural studies into one overarching model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human rituals exhibit bewildering diversity, from the Mauritian Kavadi to Catholic communion. Is this diversity infinitely plastic or are there some general dimensions along which ritual features vary? We analyse two crosscultural datasets: one drawn from the anthropological record and another novel contemporary dataset, to examine whether a consistent underlying set of latent dimensions in ritual structure and experiences can be detected. First, we conduct a factor analysis on 651 rituals from 74 cultural groups, in which 102 binary variables are coded. We find a reliable set of dimensions emerged, which provide potential candidates for foundational elements of ritual form. Notably, we find that the expression of features associated with dysphoric and euphoric experiences in rituals appears to be largely orthogonal. Second, we follow-up with a pre-registered factor analysis examining contemporary ritual experiences of 779 individuals from Japan, India and the US. We find supporting evidence that ritual experiences are clustered in relatively orthogonal euphoric, dysphoric, frequency and cognitive dimensions. Our findings suggest that there are important regularities in the diversity of ritual expression and experience observed across both time and culture. We discuss the implications of these findings for cognitive theories of ritual and cultural evolution. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a recent acquisition and integration of Alico, one of the strongest non-Japanese insurers operating in the Japanese market, MetLife announced in 2014 that it would change its corporate name from MetLife Alico to MetLife Japan. The rebranding exercise would mean much more than a simple change of names - it led to infer an implicit change of culture, work style and user interactions. While this change did not seem to mean much to policy holders in Japan, whose premiums were well secured by legal bindings, it meant a lot to employees - especially ex-Alico employees, who were starting to feel somewhat left out by the rebranding initiative. This paper monitors the cultural transformation process which occurred at MetLife Japan between 2014 and 2015 and focuses on the internal communications process, in order to illustrate the various phases of change and the impact of corporate actions on employee engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various attempts have been made to systematize fundamental patterns of temporal organization and to establish links between these patterns and natural and cultural evolution. This paper compares three pertinent theories of time in the light of evidence from Japanese cultural history: the hierarchical theory of time by J. T. Fraser, the fourfold paradigm of time imageries by Y. Maki, and the social learning theory of time by G. Dux. It demonstrates that the "canonical forms of time" established by these authors can be brought into meaningful conversation with each other and that they suggest helpful methodologies for the analysis of temporal perspectives in Japanese history. At the same time, comparative analysis reveals reasons for caution against simplified evolutionary accounts of cultural history. From very early on, Japanese literary sources evince an acute consciousness of conflicting temporalities. At the same time, there is no unified "Japanese concept of time"--neither trans-historically nor at any given period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the production of a eulogy known as Hōon kōshiki and illustrated biographies known as the Shinran den'e, Kakunyo re-envisioned Shinran as the founder of a distinct religious community that would come to be called Jōdo Shinshū and redefined Shin Buddhist piety as gratitude toward Amida Buddha. This article examines the close organic relation between the Hōon kōshiki and Shinran den'e, reading the two texts side by side with attention to their performative dimensions and demonstrating how they transformed the memorial services for Shinran into an opportunity to recognize him as the founder and "see" him as Amida Buddha. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents translation of the Anan kōshiki, a Japanese printing in 1829 that was sponsored by the Sōtō nun Kankō. Information about the attribution of the medieval cleric Myōe that was reproduced in full in Kawaguchi, is provided. Also highlighted is the hymns and sermons performed by the assembly with stage directions and comments.

This article examines the authorship and dating of a Fugen kōshiki that is found in a mid-Kamakura-era manuscript transcribed by the Tōdaiji prelate Sōshō. It locates this kōshiki in its historical context through a comparison with related works and particularly Chōken's Waka mandokoro hyōbyaku. The article concludes that Chōken was likely the author of the kōshiki as well. The kōshiki, which has not been published nor received scholarly attention in either Japan or the West, contains a clear defense of the act of composing poetry in opposition to Buddhist critiques of the practice. It makes an unprecedented argument linking repentance before Fugen to an affirmation of poetry that goes beyond the kyōgen kigō ideology, which sought the transformation of profane verse into praise for and propagation of Buddhism, and claims that practicing the "way of poetry" will itself become the "Buddhist Path." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates the significance of the Mañjuśrī cult during Jōkei's (1155-1213) Kasagi years and his innovative synthesis of material, textual, and ritual culture. The study of such medieval Nara scholar-monks as Jōkei suffers from lingering biases that privilege the Buddhist schools strongest now over the many other movements thriving in medieval Japan. Their activities are typically cast as reactionary responses to popularizing tendencies championed elsewhere rather than as creative transformations of Buddhist teachings and practices in their own right. Even amid revisionist studies, the textual concerns of scholar-monks are often contrasted with the "lived religion" in such practices as icon veneration, pilgrimage, and simplified chanting rituals. However, this article uses Jōkei's involvement in the Kasagidera restoration and the Mañjuśrī cult, including his composition of a kōshiki devoted to Mañjuśrī (Jp. Monju), to show how these same practices were integral to the concerns of Nara scholar-monks. The online supplement includes a complete annotated translation of Jōkei's Monju kōshiki. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of Neolithization has been used to examine a wide range of human relationships to the post-glacial environment, including the rise of farming and the invention of new adaptive technologies, like pottery. This paper focuses on understanding the establishment of sedentary life-ways by Jomon hunter-fisher-gatherers living around Lake Biwa, Central Japan, as a key aspect of Neolithization processes. Natural landscapes in this area presented different opportunities for human subsistence and settlement. Focusing on the characteristics and distribution of key aquatic and terrestrial resources, it is clear that two settlement strategies could have been sustained by local hunter-fisher-gatherer populations. The first involved targeting settlement in areas with complementary resources to avoid the risk of seasonal shortfalls; these areas are, however, limited geographically and would have filled up quickly. The second strategy involved a more elaborate approach to the logistics of mobility and food storage to secure the resources to sustain a settled life; this strategy opened up much larger areas for colonization. This analysis demonstrates that early populations initially favored the first strategy, but then shifted to the second, as population pressures generated major landscape shifts toward the end of the Middle Jomon period (4000 cal BP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay shows how a new understanding of the animal – and thus the human – developed in Japan over the course of the nineteenth century. Inspired by Linnaean nomenclature, the delineation of a new ‘animal kingdom’(dōbutsukai) in Japan led to a radical rethinking of the human place in the natural world. Given early form by the natural historian Udagawa Yōan (1798–1846) in his 1822 Botany Sutra (Botanika kyō), that vision – in which people became ‘animals who can reason’ – carried ramifications for the emergence of the modern sciences in Japan, most notably biology and zoology (dōbutsugaku). By the close of the century, the once-foreign kingdoms of Animalia and Plantae were fully naturalized, and they were quickly put to political use. Fueled by the emerging debate over social evolution, the new natural history gathered a diverse assemblage of living creatures together into a single classificatory kingdom, elevating nomenclature to the level of a natural order that seemed to transcend concerns of individual people even as it gave structure and meaning to their lives. The imagination of the modern ‘civilized’ human being, then, was impossible without the definition of a new animal world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: We develop a simple cultural dynamics model to dicuss the spread of the hinoeuma superstition in Japan. A large drop in the number of newborn babies observed in 1966 was attributed mainly to parents'' avoiding having a child born in a hinoeuma year. Presumably, Japanese parents were afraid that a daughter born in 1966 (a hinoeuma year) might later have difficulty finding a mate. We construct mathematical models to examine whether the hinoeuma superstition would likely become extinct or be stably maintained in the population. We classify members of a population according to whether they believed the hinoeuma superstition (believer or nonbeliever), their gender (male or female), and their year of birth (born in a hinoeuma year or not). We compare several cases that differ according to (1) whether the belief in the superstition was transmitted to children by matrilineal, patrilineal, or Mendelian inheritance; (2) which parent controlled the timing of pregnancy and childbirth (maternal or paternal birth control); and (3) the probability of birth control failure. Our results show that the hinoeuma superstition is likely to spread if the mother has a strong influence on birth control and on the belief of their children. In contrast, if birth control is paternal and the belief is passed down from father to child, the hinoeuma superstition is likely to become extinct. In between these extremes, whether the superstition becomes extinct or fixed in the population depends on the initial frequency of believers in the population. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the past 30 years, play (asobi) has become the subject of a heated ideological debate in urban Japan, reflecting processes of cultural transformation. During these years, a late consumer culture characterized by an incessant pursuit of playlike hedonistic pleasures has reached its apotheosis within a conservative social context that maintains high levels of conformity and prioritizes production. It is against the background of these sociocultural dynamics that the cultural conceptualization and appreciation of play have been negotiated between play as a subsidiary activity complementary to work life, confined within boundaries, and play as a phenomenon of greatest personal significance, hardly constrained by time or space. These dialectics have influenced collective imaginaries, transforming play into a symbolic activity through which people can experience and reproduce cultural rhetoric about social distinctions, values and priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Lost Decade" of the 1990s, extending into the early 2000s, was a particularly crucial period in Japan's recent history. On the one hand, these years were characterized by significant economic and social upheaval. At the same time, these years were witness to increasing challenges in the public sphere to societally dominant discourses, including those relating to gender, and in particular, masculinity. This paper provides an overview of the shifts in discourses of masculinity over these years. It contends that an understanding of the changes that occurred during the "Lost Decade" is necessary in order to appreciate the dynamics of men's lives in Japan today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the population structure of social microorganisms, yet such studies are particularly interesting for the ways that genetic variation impacts their social evolution. Dictyostelium, a eukaryotic microbe widely used as a developmental model, has a social fruiting stage in which some formerly independent individuals die to help others. To assess genetic variation within the social amoeba Dictyostelium purpureum, we sequenced ∼4000 base pairs of ribosomal DNA (rDNA) from 37 isolates collected in Texas, Virginia, and Japan. Our analysis showed extensive genetic variation between populations and clear evidence of phylogenetic structure. We identified three major phylogenetic groups that were more different than other accepted species pairs. Tests using pairs of clones showed that both sexual macrocyst and asexual fruiting body formation were influenced by genetic divergence. Macrocysts were less likely to form between pairs of clones from different groups than from the same group. There was also a correlation between the genetic divergence of a pair of clones and their degree of mixing within fruiting bodies. These observations suggest that cryptic species might occur within D. purpureum and, more importantly, reveal how genetic variation impacts social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I introduce and compare Russian and Japanese notions of community and space. Some characteristic strains of thought that exist in both countries had similar points of departure, overcame similar problems and arrived at similar results. In general, in Japan and Russia, the nostalgia for the community has been strong because one felt that in society through modernization something of the particularity of one's culture had been lost. As a consequence, both in Japan and in Russia allusions to the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies' book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft are frequent. In the end I associate the Japanese as well as the Russian ideas with neo-Darwinian versions of the theme of evolution as it has been developed by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences between North American and East Asian cultures were examined in terms of the valence of psychological constructs. Americans were more likely than Japanese to focus on positive things. In contrast, Japanese ( vs Americans) were more likely to attend to negative information of the self, but not more or less likely to focus on negative things about others. Based on within-culture analyses, the Americans' data were better described by their tendency to focus on positive things over negative things than by their tendency for self-enhancement. In contrast, the Japanese data were better described by their self-critical tendency. This result was replicated in a second study. In addition, correlations between constructs with opposite valences were negative in the USA, but positive or absent in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis on Japan's trajectory under globalization using the world-system perspective and the methodology of historical sociology. The Japanese success in the postwar period was a result of interplay between world-systemic opportunities and internal and regional transformation. It presents Japan in a larger context to incorporate the actions taken by non-Japanese agencies as part of the explanation of the Japanese experience from miracle to debacle and to analyze if such experience was shared by other countries. It also examines the possible strategies of Japan in the short, medium, and long term after characterizing the changes in the regime of accumulation under globalization.

In 1953, Ōoka Shōhei (1909-88) published 'Nobi no ito', an essay in which he problematizes his powerful 1951 novel Fires on the Plain, a work whose central theme of cannibalism has received relatively muted treatment in the critical literature. 'Nobi no ito' functions as what Gerard Genette terms a paratext, but in so doing serves a crucial function in explicating the critical treatment of cannibal- ism in Fires on the Plain. This treatment illuminates the trajectory of two competing ideologies operative in the immediate post-war period: those of national guilt and of national victimhood. As the latter came to assume an increasingly hegemonic place in the discourse of war responsibility, the discussion of cannibalism in Fires on the Plain underwent a transformation that was visible, not only in the critical writings about the novel, but in further presentation of it, such as Ichikawa Kon's 1959 adaptation of the novel for film. This article suggests one way we might conceptualize this process as part of a larger discourse on Japan's self-defined position in the post-war era as a unique victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comparative and analytical dimensions of Japan's historical experience in sociological theory. It exhibits a rather unusual combination of, on the one hand, structural similarities with others, especially Western European societies with, on the other hand, some very important differences in their respective institutional dynamics. By virtue of this combination, the analysis of Japanese historical experience provides also a very good case for examining some of the most important theoretical issues in sociological theory above all-of the relations between social structure and culture. The starting point of such a comparative foray is the fact that the institutional history and dynamics of Japan have been, as Emile Durkheim already remarked at the beginning of this century, very similar to those of Western Europe. In Japan and in Western Europe alike there has developed a transition from semi-tribal monarchies through some type of feudalism to more centralized, seemingly absolutist states; a continuous economic development; the growth of cities and commerce; multiple peasant rebellions; and the establishment after a revolutionary event, the Meiji Ishin, of a modern nation state and processes of modernization and industrialization, as well as the generally very high level of continuous institutional changes.

Cooperation in biological, social, and economic groups is underpinned by public goods that are generated by group members at some personal cost. Theory predicts that public goods will be exploited by cheaters who benefit from the goods by not paying for them, thereby leading to the collapse of cooperation. This situation, described as the "public goods dilemma" in game theory, makes the ubiquity of cooperation a major evolutionary puzzle. Despite this generalization, the demonstration of genetic background and fitness effects of the public goods dilemma has been limited to interactions between viruses and between cells, and thus its relevance at higher levels of organismal complexity is still largely unexplored. Here we provide experimental evidence for the public goods dilemma in a social insect, the ant Pristomyrmex punctatus. In this species, all workers are involved in both asexual reproduction and cooperative tasks. Genetic cheaters infiltrate field colonies, reproducing more than the workers but shunning cooperative tasks. In laboratory experiments, cheaters outcompeted coexisting workers in both survival and reproduction, although a group composed only of cheaters failed to produce offspring. The operations of the public goods dilemma in P. punctatus showed a remarkable convergence with those in microbial societies, not only in fitness consequences but also in behavioral mechanisms. Our study reinforces the evolutionary impact of cheaters on diverse cooperative systems in the laboratory and in the field.