Schools in the areas afflicted by an earthquake disaster of unprecedented scale, already faced with the challenge of simply carrying out regular school education, also struggled with the problem of how to ensure the necessary psychological care for the damaged children. With regard to this, I undertook school support based on the following policies: 1. to enrich class management so as to provide a "safe-feeling environment" through overall support of the class group; 2. to grasp the support level of individual students in the class through regular assessments including survey methods, and adjust the support level as needed. In classes in good condition, results showed a significant decrease in students' stress, and it was considered that an effect similar to the group approach took place through life and activity experiences in the Japanese class group.

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 Learning for disaster reconstruction carried out by teachers and children in schools faces the fundamental contradiction of how tragic memories leaving deep scars can be told and shared, and the attempts to deal with this problem. In this paper, in order to approach the issue of whether an educational practice which overcomes this contradiction is possible, I carried out case study analysis of learning and education from earthquake experiences, based on the framework of activity theory. As the result of the analysis, it became clear that through learning for disaster reconstruction in school, children encountered various "providers of learning" outside school, and according to the connections they made, came to possess the possibility of creating new, mutually supportive cultures and lives.

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 There has been no shortage in calls for interdisciplinary enquiry. Yet it is often difficult to know exactly what is intended by this in the fullest sense. What is interdisciplinary enquiry in its totality? If we do not know precisely what it is, how do we bring this kind of enterprise to fruition?
 The study of education, while being already interdisciplinary in some sense, is far from ideal. Whereas the sociology of education and educational psychology that are somehow "scientific" in character have retained widespread appeal, the history and philosophy of education, which are not necessarily scientific, have lost much of their appeal. This indicates that something has been left out of the development and expansion of the study of education. What has been left out, this paper asserts, is a broader reconsideration of the normative character of our knowing something in particular and of our lives in general.
 This paper draws on the combined conceptions of "the space of reasons" and "second nature" to fully acknowledge the need for an interdisciplinary perspective on the study of education and on the role of education itself in a broader context of human living. To develop an appreciation of these notions suggests that philosophical thinking should be open to, rather than proffered in intrinsic opposition to, empirical or "scientific" investigations. The happy consequence of such a position is that this would open up a far more inclusive terrain on which educational issues can be addressed.

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 The content of school education has always been at the center of modern school reforms. At the end of Edo period and during the early Meiji period, Fukui domain (han) and later Fukui prefecture took the initiative in modernizing their school system.
 The program of "futsu no gaku" ("general education" for the samurai class in Fukui domain) established at middle schools in the Fukui domain provided its students with basic learning that widely incorporated civilian and military knowledge and can be regarded as a program for the cultivation of a civil-military elite. While the initial intention was the creation of modern schools that combined civilian and military education, this later changed to creating "civilian" (bun) schools dedicated to the cultivation of a new "citizenry" (shimin) following the dissolution of the occupational monopoly held by the samurai class over administrative and military posts. In 1871, the Fukui domain opened its schools to the general public, and common people were allowed to enter elementary school alongside members of the former samurai class. Disciples of the reformer Yokoi Shonan had already implemented education that focused on public debate (koron) at the local schools (gogakusho). After the abolition of the domains and the establishment of prefectures, they promoted a process in which decisions were reached through public debate in the prefectural assembly. What set Fukui apart and ahead of the central government and other prefectures was that its "Regulations for Public Schools" provided severe penalties for those depriving others of their "right to attend school." This kind of education through regional reform seen in Fukui came under increasing government control after 1881 and was completely contained by 1886. As the country became more centralized, a shift from the regionalized cultivation of citizens to the creation of national subjects (kokumin) occurred in the education system.

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 Kariya (2009) proposes a concept of learning competencies to understand how social reproduction occurs in the current context of Japanese society; he argues that students' learning competencies are not equally distributed but shaped by their family background, a foundation of unequal socioeconomic inequality. While he contends that learning competencies are "the core engine that structures and runs the accumulation and distribution of this new form of human capital" (p.111), his study does not show if students differently engage in learning activities because of their level of learning competencies. Also, he does not address any relationship between school characteristics and learning competencies. Thus, this study is designed to investigate whether students' current learning competencies, under the influence of the school system, shape their attempts in improving academic and learning skills that likely lead to the accumulation of human capital, revealing how learning competencies function in action.
 By employing a nationally representative data called the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009, four multilevel logistic regression analyses were carried out to test how school and student-level variables are related to four types of students' learning activities: attending additional lessons in mathematics outside regular lessons for enrichment and remedial purposes, studying mathematics (as opposed to not studying at all), and studying for improving their academic skills. Findings of this study show that tenth grade students' learning competencies and school's ranking shape their engagement in the learning activities. As students from high socioeconomic families are more likely to have higher learning competencies and to attend competitive schools, the Japanese high school ranking system, known as school-based tracking, functions to differentiate students' degree of engagement in learning, contributing to the unequal distribution of learning opportunities.

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 There are two types of qualitative research that analyze a small number of cases or a single case: idiographic/differentiation and nomothetic/generalization. There are few case studies of generalization. This is because theoretical inclination is weak in the field of education, and the binary framework of quantitative versus qualitative research is strong. Thus, individual case studies are not linked to systematic theory construction. In the present paper, from the findings of social science methodology, a methodology of case studies that goes back to the basics of rotation of abstract (theory) and specific (experience) is presented.

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