Based on interviews with Chiba Artisan Tools' artisans in Tateyama City and Kashiwa City, their techniques for making the tools that are in a crisis of disappearing and need to be recorded are summarized as follows.
Boshu-Gama sickle: (1) Forge and weld soft iron and steel, (2) Form the shape of a sickle, (3) Gain strength of blade by making “koba,” (4) Quench and temper with water. Formwork crowbar: (1) Forge and weld square and octagonal steel prisms. (2) Bend the head at a right angle (3) Form the claw at an angle and split the tip (4) Form the tail in the same way. The tail should be angled at approximately 25 degrees. (5) Quench and temper its head and tail with oil and water.
Both work by hand at the delicate processes at critical points, fully using their five senses. However, they use machines for simple but powerful processes. That enabled them to continue even at an advanced age.

This paper is the second in a series of papers on the sustainment, succession, and development of the blacksmith culture in Chiba Prefecture.
Blacksmiths take pride in being able to make everything except for the bellows. Their ability to observe and understand the essence of things, plan how to make them, and execute the plan are fundamental to creating tools for daily life. Village smithies also need the skill to make various tools according to the community's demands. Mr. Takanashi learned blacksmithing by training with his master and “stealing with his eyes,” then acquiring practical skills through imitation. This is known as “Making things as culture,” where one gets technical abilities and the way of life as a blacksmith by living in the community. The blacksmithing ability Mr. Takanashi acquired is not just a technical skill but a reflection of the daily life and profession that are integrated as one.

This paper clarifies the theoretical characteristics of industrial design in Japan. It mainly refers to JIDA journals around 1970 to focus on discussions on “tools.” These discussions show at least the following four theoretical sections: (1) They reflected on the current situation in Japan to introduce its spatial and temporal changes to the theory of industrial design. (2) As a demonstration of above (1), they focused on component furniture and unit housing and concepts such as “complex functions” and “systems of functions” were proposed. (3) In order to deepen the above (2), they faced to the creativity of consumers to highlight the collective consciousness of designers and users. (4) In order to generalize the above (3), they sought knowledge from people outside designersʼ community and acquired a bird's-eye view of animals, plants and artifacts. These developments gave the conventional universal industrial design theory a Japanese character.

Information design is being emphasized as a socially necessary communication skill. The knowledge and skills required for information design have been defined, and a system for evaluating proficiency in information design concepts and knowledge has been established. On the other hand, there are no clearly defined uniform evaluation standards for the work expressed based on this thinking and knowledge, and this has not led to appropriate feedback, which is an issue that needs to be addressed. In this study, we designed an information structuring task to improve expressive ability, extracted evaluation elements, and designed a rubric to construct an ability evaluation axis with experts in information education. Furthermore, we incorporated the designed rubric into our classes and identified issues that need to be improved and points to keep in mind. As a result, a number of students with low evaluations by raters were found to have low consistency between self-evaluation and rater evaluation, and were unable to judge the difference in level in some evaluation items.

Foresight involves rational anticipation of the future based on available information and knowledge, leading to the creation of medium- to long-term visions through participatory approaches. This study analyzed 2,586 papers from the Web of Science, providing an overview of academic research. Foresight gained traction in the 1990s through technology policies, while reports from organizations like the United Nations in the 2000s established its fundamentals. Since the 2010s, the focus has shifted towards exploring strategic options beyond business plans to foster innovation and studying long-term themes such as environmental issues. A recent paper highlights the importance of developing flexible strategies and capturing organizational change through rapid decision-making in coordination with foresight activities. Foresight activities are crucial for design organizations as well, where strategic options are proposed while presenting a comprehensive picture of the future society. To effectively respond to rapid societal changes, an agile organizational structure and facilitation skills to lead projects with stakeholders are essential.

We devised a “Facial Rock-paper-scissors” program that incorporates facial expressions and vocalizations of swallowing training into facial rock-paper-scissors using orofacial exercises. The program can be used on a tablet or PC, making it easy to perform rehabilitation to maintain and improve swallowing and cognitive functions. In addition, to develop a program that has psychological effects of improving mood, we investigated psychological evaluations of programs with different facial expressions. As a result of psychological evaluations using the POMS shortened version and TDMS-ST, we confirmed the psychological effects of performing the “Facial Rock-paper-scissors” program. Furthermore, it was confirmed that a program that stretches the mouth to the left and right, and which raises the corners of the mouth to make a smiling face with a “scissors” expression, is more suitable as the “Facial rock-paper-scissors” program than the tongue-outing facial expression program.