Abstract
This paper aims to clarify the concept of G. H. Mead's "Play". Mead (1863-1931) was one of the famous American Pragmatists and referred to Progressive Education from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. He was anxious about the separate situation of educational contents and methods between kindergarten and elementary school and claimed to solve that problem by reconsidering the whole school system from the perspective of play. Play includes an aesthetic phase and for Mead, this "aesthetic" meant "to catch the enjoyment that belongs to consummation" and "to compose it into something of the joy and satisfaction that suffuse its successful accomplishment". Children play at painting, dramatizing and storytelling of their own accord in kindergarten. They experience the whole cosmology of that play, and play includes the aesthetic, concrete, and familiar social phase to children. Mead pointed out that play also occupied an important position in children's self genesis. This aesthetic phase of play had not been pointed out previously, but it is of equivalent importance to the placement of self genesis. Moreover, his indication of play is useful for the modern Japanese kindergarten and elementary educational circumstances.
