「過去生の記憶」を持つ子供について : 日本人児童の事例

抄録

In his extensive research of over 40 years concerning children who claim to have "past-life memories," the late Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia collected more than 2,500 cases from all over the world including India, Thai, Burma, Lebanon, Turkey, Sri Lanka, the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Hungary, Island, Finland, Canada, and the US. Inspired by his work, a number of researchers have been working on similar cases worldwide. However, no case has been reported from Japan so far, which is regrettable in view of the fact that the case of Katsugoro, a boy from the early 19th century Japan was one of the strong cases that inspired Ian Stevenson to work on the phenomena. In this paper I will report a case of a Japanese child with "past-life memories" as a boy who lived in Edinburgh, Scotland. His remarks are basically compatible with a possible life in Edinburgh, and some of them are quite striking. Since the "past-life personalities" has not been successfully identified, the present case is regarded as unsolved. However, the present paper shows the existence of a clear Case of Reincarnation Type (CORT) in Japan and suggests the necessity of looking at a certain type of children from a different angle than traditional ones with the diagnosis as autism spectrum disorders.