目に見えぬものたちと生きる

日本列島におけるケアと共生の系譜

抄録

So, if this is the way things are, the task before us is not simply a matter of demanding conviviality and arguing for social care and its various methods. In a society in which resentment and ill-will between nations worsens on a person by person level, we need to ask ourselves what position conviviality and social care has held within the long history of mankind. This paper takes for perspective the changes in the interactions between people and deities on the Japanese archipelago, and brings out some of the problems particular to the modern period that stand in the way of social care and a caring society. These days, all over the world, people are calling for multicultural conviviality and arguing for the importance of care in society. Take a look at society as it actually is, however, and we see mass-murder committed for no better reason than differences in ideology, creed, language or ethnicity; and we see seething enmity between nations over the possession of uninhabited islands. There was once a time when people thought that all problems would naturally be solved with the progress of reason and the development of society. In the mature Japanese society of today, however, class and income gaps widen, and on the internet there is an epidemic of malicious slander and hate campaigning. We live in an age in which development only seems to worsen social problems.