KITASATO REVIEW Annual Report of Studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences
Online ISSN : 2424-0125
Print ISSN : 1345-0166
ISSN-L : 1345-0166
Current issue
Displaying 1-10 of 10 articles from this issue
Research Articles
  • Toshihiro OHISHI
    Article type: Research Articles
    2023 Volume 28 Pages 1-26
    Published: March 30, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2023
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     Skepticism about the external world is generally explained through the following sequence of arguments: (1) I know that I have hands only if I know that I am not a brain in a vat, (2) I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat, and (3) Therefore, I do not know that I have hands. This skeptical argument applies to all kinds of knowledge, and mostly, we lose to it. On the contrary, epistemic contextualism seeks to justify knowledge by avoiding skepticism, but does not quite succeed. This paper reveals that the actual problem with skepticism is hidden behind discussions about skeptical problems within the epistemological framework. I proceed as follows. In Section 1, I present the possibility that the epistemological debate over skepticism could form an endless chain. In Section 2, I point out that justification theories of knowledge may not converge. Both these problems suggest that an epistemological discussion about the skeptical problem is headed in the wrong direction. In Section 3, I argue that the matter of skepticism itself should be viewed from an ontological, instead of an epistemological, perspective. Finally, in Section 4, I clarify two points. First, skepticism presents an ontological doubt about the external worldʼs existence, when seen from the perspective of the "ineffable," that transcends the everyday world by extending thought. Second, skepticism is not a metaphysical theory that posits transcendent substance,but rather, it doubts our everyday "realistic belief" about: a) the external world existing independently of us, and b) our judgments and claims being true only when they are consistent with objective facts about that external world.
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  • Hiroshi FUKUDA
    Article type: Research Articles
    2023 Volume 28 Pages 27-43
    Published: March 30, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2023
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     This paper reports on our recent development of the programmable fill-in-the blank learning tool, which can be readily used on any web pages. Here, "programmable" means that the correct answers can be programmed in JavaScript or in regular expressions. This makes it is possible to check the answers not simply as a string of characters but as programming codes or as mathematical expressions. Students can arrive at the right codes or expressions by themselves through trial and error with this learning tool. Majority of students rated this tool as effective in a post-intervention survey.
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  • Takashi MAEDA
    Article type: Research Articles
    2023 Volume 28 Pages 45-60
    Published: March 30, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2023
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     There are a lot of earlier study about cultivation, Kyoyo-syugi(self-cultivationism), Liberal Arts, liberal education and general education. However, there are no earlier study which construct the concept of liberal education from the perspective of social model of ability.
     The purpose of this paper is to construct the new concept of liberal education overcoming neoliberalism and meritocracy.
     It was overviewed that the history and present situation of general education and liberal education in Japanese higher education. This paper pointed out the problems of neoliberal reform of higher education and rise of meritocracy and new ability, tried to construct the new concept of liberal education based on universal values like diversity, inclusion, human rights, the concept of global citizenship education, and the discussion of social model of ability.
     The conclusion of this paper is that the direction of new liberal education is the shift from individual model to social model. The new concept of liberal education is ‘LIPE’ ; ‘Liberal Inter-personal Education’. This new direction will liberate societies from the neoliberal directions which fragment a society.
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  • Ayaka UEDA, Keisuke INOHARA
    Article type: Research Articles
    2023 Volume 28 Pages 61-77
    Published: March 30, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2023
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     In Japan, the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the nationwide achievement assessment have indicated that improving children's writing skills is an important issue. However, there is a lack of research on childhood writing skills in Japan.
     The purpose of this study was the development of a writing task suitable for use in longitudinal studies of Japanese children. We developed two types of writing tasks: expository and narrative. Participants were second, third, and fifth graders. In addition, this study developed a qualitative assessment method of writing with reference to the "6+1 Trait" writing system (Education Northwest, 2018) for Japanese children. And, a quantitative assessment of composition writing was developed using the following indices: terminal position, number of phrases, number of sentences, and number of kanji.
     As a result, both qualitative and quantitative assessments showed grade level effects, suggesting that each indicator was effective. In terms of task types, narrative writing scored higher than expository writing on the organization and word choice items in the qualitative evaluation, and narrative writing scored higher than expository writing on all items except kanji in the quantitative evaluation. Therefore, it can be assumed that the expository writing task was more difficult than the narrative writing task. Finally, the limitations of this study are noted, and future issues are discussed.
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  • Ezra Pound's ‘Metro Hokku’ and Senryu Aota's ‘Metro Senryu’
    Tatsuhiko TAIRA
    Article type: Research Articles
    2023 Volume 28 Pages 79-100
    Published: March 30, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2023
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     The purpose of this study is to consider the issues regarding imagist short poems of Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in Japan from the perspective of comparative poetics.
     Japanese poetry has been shaped by the influences of English Romanticism and French Symbolism. A decisive change occurred in the 1920's when Junzaburo Nishiwaki (1894-1982) went to England where he was caught up in the modernist poetry of Ezra Pound.
     Thus Nishiwaki was absorbed in reading the imagist short poems in Blast. Upon his return home, he started to publish a series of imagist short poems. Ambarvalia, his first book of poems in Japanese, adopted the parallel structure of the ancient world and the modern world. ‘Rain’ is a imagist short poem which was strong inspired by imagist H. D.
     I explore the ‘Metro senryu’ by the sixteenth Senryu, Senryu Aota (1928-2018) because Aota was strongly inspired by Pound's ‘In a Station of the Metro’ and wrote his ‘Metro senryu’ in response.

     女棲む胸に地下鉄ぶらさげて
     (in a heart filled with women a metro line dangles)
     [trans: Andrew Houwen]

     This contemporary senryu was first presented as an experimental work at Tokyo Senryu Association in April 1995. This ‘Metro senryu’ has received a lot of attention for its similarity to Ezra Pound's imagist short poems.
     Together with the cows ‘mandolins’ poem, this contemporary senryu is considered one of Aota's best.
     The cows‘ mandolins’ poem was presented in 1958, but in October 1956, Iwasaki Ryozo's translation of a selection of Pound's poetry was published by Arechi. One of Iwasaki's translations was one of ‘In a Station of the Metro’.
     This ‘metro hokku’ was written in two lines with Pound's technique of ‘super-position’;in Aota's ‘metro senryu’, he tries to employ this ‘super-position’ in one line.
     In Aota's poem, two images are arranged next to each other, the ‘heart filled with women’ and the ‘metro line dangling’, employing an imagist ‘super-position’. The ‘metro’ in particular recalls that of Pound's ‘metro hokku’, ‘In a Station of the Metro’. The faces of various women of the past reside in Aota's heart.
     In Aota's ‘metro senryu’, both Pound's ‘super-position’ and Aota's ‘senryu vectorism’ appear. In the senryu, the horizontal vector of the metro and the vertical vector of the ‘dangling’ cross over. In the ‘heart’ where they cross over, the unforgettable ‘women’ always remain. The various faces of these ‘women’ momentarily appear, then disappear. Aota's heart is disturbed and shaken by their appearance; Aota expresses this inner state through the metaphor of the metro line ‘dangling’, thus depicting his ‘inner landscape’.
     Aota was strongly inspired by Pound's ‘In a Station of the Metro’ and wrote his ‘metro senryu’ in response.
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Case Reports
  • Hideaki HIRO-OKA
    Article type: Case Reports
    2023 Volume 28 Pages 101-121
    Published: March 30, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2023
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     In order to put the brakes on the declining learning time of students and to secure the time for study on physics for which many students have strong sense of avoidance, we have developed the learning system that applies gamification, which is used in the field of marketing. We designed it to be the integrated learning platform that is seamlessly accessible for student so that it can be used in the class not only for self-study. Employing this platform for about 300 students of the Faculty of Pharmacy in and outside of lecture, and compared to the previous system introduced as a pilot program, we report the effectiveness and issues of this system based on the operation records.
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  • Exploration for the Apt Method by Numerical Simulation
    Yukiko TADA, Tsuyoshi SAKATA, Shingo ITO
    Article type: Case Reports
    2023 Volume 28 Pages 123-149
    Published: March 30, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2023
    RESEARCH REPORT / TECHNICAL REPORT FREE ACCESS
     Course lotteries have been a problem for college students due to its low acceptance rates albeit its risk of failing to fulfil graduation requirements. The college of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Kitasato University will introduce a new lottery system to cope with this matter, by expanding the number of electives to choose from, and maximizing the opportunities for students to be registered for the required number of electives.
     Prior to the implementation of the new lottery system, numerical simulation was carried out to seek the ideal number of electives each student should apply for, and the ideal number of lotteries that each student should win, considering the selection of subjects desired by students and subjects necessary for graduation requirements. In order to maximize the possibility to fulfill the graduation requirements in all 21 academic programs at Kitasato, we sought the best number of lottery applications, and the maximum lottery winning numbers per student. The results showed that on the lottery system we need to set the maximum number of winning credits to 1.5 times more than the graduation requirements, and that students should apply for 3 times more credits than required for graduation.
     This paper showcased numerical simulation can suggest practical numbers to set in lottery implementation, in order to maximize opportunities for students to fulfil the graduation requirements. Its use and validity are yet to prove in the actual numbers in the future. However, the methods and considerations given here can be applied to the development of many other course registration systems, suggesting possibilities for future university management.
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Action Research
  • Takahiro NOBORIMICHI
    Article type: Action Research
    2023 Volume 28 Pages 151-162
    Published: March 30, 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2023
    RESEARCH REPORT / TECHNICAL REPORT FREE ACCESS
     The aim of this study is to show the factors affecting second language acquisition by analysing the errors made by university students, mainly when learning English, and to apply the results to the future classes and the instruction of students. The data consist of the sentences extracted from the manuscripts of ‘self-introduction speeches’ and ‘presentations’ given in the classes of 63 first-year medical students of a university in Tokyo, Japan, in the academic year 2022. The results show that all learners, regardless of their ability or skills, are likely to make both global and local errors. It is also found out that when comparing the total number of errors, it can be said that learners are more likely to make errors in writing than in speaking.
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