The objective of the present study is to elucidate the causal relationship between information sharing among workers in care facilities for the elderly and perceived quality of care. Information sharing in work teams/groups was reported to be an antecedent of (perceived) quality of work (i.e., perceived quality of care in the present study) in previous studies. However, the opposite causal relationship is also possible since workers’ perception that they are able to practice and offer high-quality care in daily work could lead to a close cooperation and nurture trust and cohesive relationships among them, which then motivates them to be willing to share information in work teams/groups. Thus, although the possibility of the bidirectional causal relationship between information sharing and perceived quality of care cannot be eliminated, it has not been probed. For clarifying the causal relationship, panel research should be conducted, and for the present study, the data collected through two-wave panel research are analyzed using cross-lagged effects models. 850 questionnaires were distributed to workers in 22 care facilities from June to August 2014 as the first wave of the panel research, and a total of 356 completed questionnaires were returned directly to the researcher (for a response rate of 41.9%). Then, 719 questionnaires were distributed to workers in 21 care facilities from February to March 2015 as the second wave of the panel research, and a total of 389 completed questionnaires were returned (for a response rate of 53.69%). For the present study, the data of the respondents who participated in both of the two-wave research were analyzed. Of 249 respondents, the data of three who did not answer the questions related to the present study were excluded. As a result of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for cross-lagged effects models using Mplus, there were bidirectional relationships between the accuracy of information sharing and perceived quality of care, and the appropriate timing of informational sharing caused perceived quality of care while the opposite direction was not found. Based on those findings, academic and practical implications are discussed.

The NHK TV program Baribara, which is concerned with the welfare of disabled people, has been broadcast since 2012. This program is significant in that it is critical of social stereotypes of the disabled and their general representation in the media. More importantly, this program uses the form of the “variety show,” supported by elements of laughter, to express this critical stance. In particular, there is the “SHOW-1 Grand Prix,” a comedy performance featuring disability and impairment played by disabled people, which is provocative because the performance includes two aspects of “laughter” and “performing,” raising the issue of the social position of the body of disabled people from a different angle. The purpose of this paper is to clarify how the framework of fiction/real defines both the body and disability by analyzing the performance from the viewpoint of fictionality.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the 17th century imagination of Baroque as a conceptualization of generative subject against the backdrop of the Foucauldian episteme of the Classical. The essay reads a potential of Descartes’ texts of Rules for Spiritual Direction and The Passions of the Soul in the reference of Foucault’s argument regarding 17th century imagination of the classical age. The essay attempts to locate the imagination in the Cartesian text as the locus of in-between spirit and body that deconstructs its dualism, the space of “res extensa” where subjects are rhetorically composed within on-going differences and continual movements. As the point of departure for this argument, this essay critically demonstrates a failure of Bradford Vivian (2000) who tried to explore the power of rhetorical forms in the process of composing the self as a subject in the modern West by adopting the “philosophy of becoming” by Gilles Deleuze and the “technologies of the self” by Michel Foucault. The essay points out the failure of Vivian’s argument on the reiteration of Cartesian subject in the modern episteme after the 19th century based on his misrecognition that not only misses the historical rupture of epistemes between the Classical and the modern but also misunderstands the location of subject in Deleuzian philosophy of becoming and fold. With critical reading of Descartes’ texts, the essay analyzes Rembrandt’s Philosopher in Meditation that metaphorically presents the space of 17th century imagination wherein intellect is composed as folds and well contemplated by the eye of spirit.