The core problems of my work emerged in my second year of junior high school and third year of high school

The origins of my research date back to my second year of secondary school and my third year of high school. I think everyone has what can be called ‘core problems’ that serve as the starting point of his or her intellectual explorations. I encountered my core problems during those two periods.

I grew up in a shopping area in Okayama City, where my parents ran a shop selling cosmetics, stationery, and a few clothes. When I was in primary school I spent most of my time playing and watching my mother and grandmother being particularly busy. However, when I entered junior high school I first encountered the words ‘grades’, ‘rankings’, and ‘deviation scores’, which made me think a lot. At the time, I felt that this situation was like being put on an unfamiliar and constantly rising escalator and I felt a strong sense of discomfort. What is more, the whole of Japanese society, including my parents, seemed to rush up a hill, but was there really happiness waiting at the end of it? What was at the end of the escalator and what was everyone aiming for? I did not know. This was the first major question for me as an adolescent, similar to what is generally referred to as ‘eighth grade sickness.’ I carried this issue with me into my senior year of high school, and now faced my university entrance exams. I began to wonder whether I should just ride the rails of this escalator and follow the path laid out for me. As I thought further, I began to worry where to look for the standards of right and wrong when I was unsure of my decisions and choices. When I delved into these questions, I also started to question what it meant for me to live and perceive the world in this way in the first place. My interest gradually shifted towards more fundamental themes than when I was in my second year of junior high school, and I began to think about issues like ‘value’ and ‘recognition’. I entered university without having reached a clear conclusion, and so I decided to explore these questions during my time there. At first, I enrolled in a preparatory course in Law, but because I was thinking only about these rather philosophical topics I eventually switched to the field of ‘History and Philosophy of Science’ in my third year. I was also active in a small student club called the ‘Philosophy Research Group’, and as a result, during spring break at the end of my third year, I was able to put together my own modest ‘theory of time’ and so reach a temporary conclusion about the fundamental questions I needed to clarify for myself.

Now I just had to face the question of how I would live my life in the real world. However, as I had not yet reached a conclusion about what kind of work I wanted to do, I decided to go on to a postgraduate master’s program for the time being.

At the time, there was a student group called ‘Settlement’ at the university, which had its origins in England and carried out a broad variety of welfare activities, and I participated in it. Working in its casework department, I had the opportunity to work closely with families living on welfare, among other things. During this work, I came to realize that while this kind of microscopic individual support is important, the underlying, fundamental problems cannot be solved unless we change the way society as a whole works on a larger scale. After completing my master’s degree, I worked for the Ministry of Health and Welfare (now the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare) for 10 years, where I was involved in work related to healthcare, welfare, and social security policy.

Although I found these jobs rewarding, I still wanted to delve deeper into the fundamental themes related to human beings and society, and so I ended up leading a ‘double life’ for a while, writing books and articles while also working at the government office. After studying in the United States for two years through a system offered by the National Personnel Authority, during which I published books on health policy and science and technology such as ‘American Medical Policy and Japan: The Interface of Science, Culture, and Economics’ (Amerika no iryō seisaku to Nihon : kagaku, bunka, keizai no intāfeisu, Keisō Shobo), I eventually received an offer from Chiba University and decided to move to the university without hesitation. I was fortunate to be able to pursue research and activities on topics that interested me, and in 2016, through another fortunate connection, I joined the Kokoro Research Center at Kyoto University, leading to my current research activities at the Institute for the Future of Human Society.

Sustainable Welfare Society’, ‘Views on Life and Death’ and ‘Community

My basic interest lies in bridging two different questions: the ‘study of human nature’ – what kind of beings humans are in the first place – and the ‘vision of future society’ – what kind of society we want to live in. The source of these interests stems from the questions that I had as an adolescent, which became the starting point and guiding thread for everything I do. As my research progressed, the pillars of my theme became centered on the vision of the a ‘steady-state society’ or ‘sustainable welfare society’, and the values and views of life and death in such a society.

I fundamentally believe that a society with a good balance between the environment, welfare, and the economy is desirable. The United States as well as Japan, which has been strongly influenced by the United States, both seem to be somewhat overly focused on the economy, but I believe that the economy can only run well if more consideration is given to the environment and welfare. In other words, this means aiming for a ‘sustainable welfare society.’ Fortunately, with the recent emphasis on the SDGs, the interest in this direction is growing and I feel that the tides of the times are changing significantly. Sustainability is a so-called ‘environmental issue,’ which means that we have to consider whether the total volume of human economic activity is sustainable in relation to the finite nature of resources and the environment.

On the other hand, sustainability does not solve everything. Alongside environmental issues, it is necessary to consider the fairness and equality in the distribution of wealth, which means that welfare issues are equally important. The concept of a ‘sustainable welfare society’ emerged from the idea of integrating both of these considerations. In 2001, I published a book titled ‘A Steady-State Society: A New Vision of Wealth’ (Teijōgata syakai: atarashii ‘Yutakasa’ no kōsō, Iwanami Shinsho) in which I summarized some of the theoretical foundations of this concept. In the same year I also published ‘Rethinking Our View on Life and Death’ (Shiseikan wo

toinaosu, Chikuma Shinsho), where I explored how we should view death, particularly in the context of an ageing society. What is the position of humans and human life in the flow of the universe, and what meaning does it have for us to live and die? I also examined how our conception of death relates to individual happiness, as an extension of the ‘theory of time’ from my university days. Through my research on these fundamental themes, my interest has shifted towards reconsidering the meaning of sustainability on a larger scale, such as human history, while simultaneously expanding it to more specific topics such as community and regional revitalization.

For example, compare the United States, where road development is centered around cars and large shopping malls are the mainstay of life, with Europe, where even in small cities city centers are pedestrian-oriented and bustling with small shops, and shopping streets are sustainable. I have come to believe that these differences, which I became acutely aware of during my visits to each of these places, are important when considering new community models for building a sustainable society. Following this line of thought, I have recently begun to focus on shopping streets (‘Shotengai’ in Japanese), which hold nostalgic value for me, as a research theme, and summarized the new possibilities of the shopping street in a co-authored book titled ‘The Revitalization of Shopping Streets: A Walkable Community Space’ (Chikuma Shinsho), which was published in February this year.

Another example of a community that I am studying is the ‘Chinju-no-mori’ (or ‘guardian forest’). Chinju-no-mori are forests associated with shrines in Japan and at the beginning of the Meiji period (1868–1912) there were as many as 200,000 of them, roughly corresponding to the number of local communities at that time. Even today, there are still about 80,000 Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan, more than the total number of convenience stores (about 60,000). By studying these guardian forests, which have been cherished since ancient times, we discover that they are places where local communities, nature, and faith have come together. I believe that rediscovering and re-evaluating their significance could lead to solutions to various problems in modern society, such as natural energy, community regeneration, and mental and physical healing, and to the creation of new things while remaining rooted in tradition. These goals are being promoted in the form of the ‘Chinju-no-mori Community Project.’ If you are interested in learning more, please visit the homepage of the Chinju-no-mori Community Research Institute( c-chinju.org ).

Towards a Future Where Young People Have Hope

During the Showa period (1926–1989), the Japanese economy grew so rapidly that it was known as ‘Japan as No.1’. At that time, there were many material shortages, so increasing GDP directly led to improvements in people’s happiness. However, now that society has matured, it is necessary to look at our future society from a multidimensional perspective based on a diversity of values, not just the economy. We must not continue to hold on to Showa-period styles of thinking and believe that economic growth will solve all our problems.

The concept of sustainability was raised explicitly for the first time in a report by Gro Harlem Brundtland, who served as Prime Minister of Norway at the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission). In her report, Our Common Future (1987), she asserts that the most basic meaning of the word ‘sustainability’ is to think about future generations.

Currently, in Japan, a burden of over 1,000 trillion yen in government debt is being passed on to future and younger generations. In addition, due to an ageing population, the annual cost of social security, including medical care, long-term care, and pensions, is approximately 140 trillion yen. When we talk about the taxes and social insurance contributions required to cover these costs, many people object, and as a result the bill is being passed on to future generations. In international surveys conducted with younger generations, Japan stands out as having the highest number of young people who say they have no hope for the future of their country and society. In addition, there is a growing sense among the younger generation that their lives are determined by the environment in which they were born into, as evidenced by the spread of terms such as ‘parent lottery’ (‘Oya-gacha’ in Japanese). This indicates that Japan is in a critical situation when it comes to envisioning a sustainable welfare society.

The Institute for the Future of Human Society is based on the concept of ‘well-being for people, society and the planet.’ I believe proposing and implementing policies for the vision of a sustainable welfare society, as I have discussed here, is an extremely important for the mission of the Institute for the Future of Human Society.