Today, discussion of the ecological theory of money, especially in relation to the degrowth theory of money, is no longer a peripheral concern. Frederick Soddy is often cited as the founder of this school of thought, yet his theory of money, as a core part of the history of economics, still remains complicated and difficult to characterize.

Generally considered to be part of the post-Keynesian (PK) approach to monetary theory, Soddy's approach can be differentiated from the way in which both mainstream economics and Marxian economics deal with money.
However, PK monetary theory is often criticized for not being able to adequately account for the "limitation of the growth of debts." This paper argues that this problem can be addressed by referring to Marx's idea that the value of debts is tied to the value of commodities. In the 21st century, the largest part of money issuance is backed by government bonds. The bonds can be sold and have economic value because they beget interest. When interest payments are financed by income taxation which falls disproportionately on the working class, as the owners of labor power commodities, this relationship can be described as the "securitization of labor power."
Under such circumstances, the increased issuance of government bonds can therefore be interpreted as drawing upon labor power in the pursuit of economic growth. If economic growth faces environmental constraints, the limitation of government bond issuance must be supported by labor from the viewpoint of the ecological theory of money. Prescriptively, a government's debt management policy, controlled with regard to environmental constraints, would be a way to realize the degrowth theory of money.

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Technological advances have impacted musical practices since the emergence of mechanical sound technologies, which constitute the focus of sound technology studies. By analyzing a specific type of early digital synthesizers as a typical case of sound technology studies, the present study aims to reveal the acceptance and "domestication" process of the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument (CMI) synthesizer in Japan as well as its influence on the Japanese music scene in the 1980s. Although its designers originally expected the Fairlight CMI to become a powerful digital synthesizer, sampling and sequencing are two features that its users are particularly interested in, reflecting its "interpretative flexibility" and users' agency in the social construction of the Fairlight CMI, as observed in UK by Harkins (2015, 2016). However, the story of the Fairlight CMI is far from simple, as users' motivation, usage, and perceptions vary significantly when employing the Fairlight CMI. This study explored the motivations and usage patterns of purchasers of the Fairlight CMI in Japan. Four well-known Japanese musicians and arrangers were taken as examples to explain how the Fairlight CMI has been used and viewed among users and how such usage patterns and perceptions have diverged from the original intention of its designers. The introduction of the Fairlight CMI into music culture also caused its users and audience to debate, rethink, and even redefine the aesthetics and traditions recognized as default in music of that era, which ultimately led to the reconstruction of music practices. As the Fairlight CMI was utilized in novel ways by its users, this influenced and reshaped music culture, especially in terms of the Fairlight CMI's sampling and sequencing functions.

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In recent years, criticism of meat, fur, and other industries that involve the killing of animals has emerged internationally, leading to a reconsideration of the human-animal relationship. Cultural anthropology has been drawing attention to "multispecies ethnography," which captures not only the relationships between humans and animals, but also those among other species. Moreover, as an analytical framework that transcends anthropocentrism, a new trend in cultural anthropology aims to determine mutual relationships among various species, rather than just dichotomous relationships. On the other hand, since there has also been criticism of anthropocentrism itself, which was developed based on the existence of humans, cultural anthropology should investigate in detail through fieldwork how humans view other species.
This research focuses on sericulture, which for thousands of years has raised silkworms and their cocoons for producing raw silk, and the mourning spirits called Kuyō of sericulture farmers. In addition, it investigates the relationship between humans and silkworms, and how humans perceive them. Specifically, this paper describes in detail the sericulture process, its history, and the Kuyō beliefs among sericulture farmers in Japan. Then, it analyzes the current state of the spirit of Kuyō and the relationship between humans and silkworms based on the results of interviews with sericulture farmers. Finally, in the conclusion, the research is summarized, including prospects for future research.

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This study elucidates how the body works in tandem with the feeling of empathy by considering the relationship between dancer and spectator in the works of Yvonne Rainer, a key figure in postmodern dance that emerged in the United States in the 1960s.
Postmodern dancers/choreographers are known for introducing everyday movement and improvisation to dance to rebel against the conventional styles, which gave weight to stories and expression of feelings. Among them, Rainer, in particular, was consciously focused on the relationship between the dancers, who were being watched, and the spectators, who were watching them. This study considers the works of Rainer to be against the passive spectatorship assumed by current discussions on empathy and the history of dance. Furthermore, it defines the types of empathy, such as physical empathy, which was extracted by discovering differences between the self and others.
At a time when media gave the Vietnam War massive coverage, seeing the bodies of others became an ethical issue. Rainer considered seeing oneself as the activeness of spectators and explored the distance between them and dancers by exposing their voyeuristic desires or imposing physical loads on them. This practice demonstrates a moment for arousing physical empathy, which brings back the body into a relationship with others.

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Cannabis sativa L.is a plant which has been utilized for various purposes since ancient times. In the twentieth century however, this convenient plant has abruptly come to be an illegal substance in many countries because of its neurotrophic characteristics.
Recently, the international situation has been dramatically changing. Research results of the WHO show lower risk of cannabis use in human health than previously believed. Now an increasing number of governments have been pushing for the deregulation of both medical and private cannabis use.
This global wave finally made Japanese government to begin to deliberate on part legalization of cannabis in 2021. But the conventional Japanese policy on cannabis, which is referred as the ‘no-tolerance policy’, has still many problems. The relative ministries in Japan have been publishing inaccurate information of cannabis which lacks in objectivity.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the actual situation among Japanese cannabis users. In Chapter 1, the basic information on cannabis is introduced. In Chapter 2, the interview survey conducted by the author which targeted 18 cannabis users on the streets is explained and analyzed. In Chapter 3, the concept of a drug itself is examined with reference to existing studies in sociology and anthropology. Furthermore, representation of ‘drug’ as politically constructed by bio-power(M・Foucault)and the common category shown as cannabis for ‘the medical / the pleasure’ are inspected. It is hoped that this paper will be a beneficial material for future debates on Japanese policies on cannabis use.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine how the living (bereaved family) recognizes the dead through two dolls "Iningyo" and "Omokage dolls" that imitate the deceased. As a framework to grasp the relationship between the dead and the non-living, the non-human and the living, Keiji Iwata's animism theory and actor-network theory were used as auxiliary lines.
In analyzing the interviews, the narratives were divided into three themes: (1) the healing structure of the doll, (2) the difference between the physicality and the remains of the doll, and (3) the "space" of the doll and the deceased AI.
In the discussion, how the dead appear in the "space" of the dolls in the 3rd analysis theme was discussed by referring to the method of object recognition called "manifestation" from the theory of Nagatani (2009), which discussed two animism theories of Tyler and Iwata.
In addition, as a future issue, we referred to Okada (2012)'s concept of "weak robots" as a clue to consider what kind of approach is effective in realizing the composition of "manifestation" using state-of-the-art technologies such as VR and AI, and focused on the common point of "subtraction design" of weak robots and dolls imitating the deceased, and considered the representation of the future dead.

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