This is a guide to National Geographic's Our World, the graded reader series of 54 books from Level 1 to Level 6. It seems that the first level is for small children just starting elementary school, but as the level goes up, the series books become more and more appropriate for foreign learners of English, especially junior high school or even high school students. Actually, Lee Wagner's Better Lives with Bionics from Level 6 is worth reading due to both the subjunctive mood and the theme of modern technology, like "Imagine if you lost a hand. Wouldn't you wish for an artificial hand that could hold, touch, and feel just like the hand you lost?"
As the famous publisher's well-chosen title Our World shows, this series is made up from the ideal viewpoint of world citizens, regardless of race, religion, or sex. If you missed seeing the publisher's name, you would not know in what country these books were published. In fact, despite the fact that the books were printed in the United States, people could believe that they came out in Japan because one of the authors is a Japanese woman named Yuko OKAMURA, and in the series there are pictures of a Japanese-style house, a Japanese traditional musical instrument shakuhachi, and a Japanese girl dancing the Bon festival dance.
The fact is, Our World series can be read with familiarity by any people all over the world just because these books mention your country and unique culture somewhere. Unlike the outdated 20th century English textbooks by pure white, English-speaking writers, this series is a work of worldwide collaboration for world citizens, focusing on a diversity of races and their cultures including white people in the United States and the United Kingdom instead of these native speakers of English and their Western civilization only.
Our World books consist mainly of old folktales and legends from around the world such as Hare Is Scared from Africa, Stone Soup from France, The Four Blind Men from India, Mouse Deer in the Rain Forest from Indonesia, The Mirror from Korea, The Empty Pot from China, Rhodopis from Egypt, The Green Rabbit from Mexico, How Tiger Got His Stripes from Vietnam, Two Brothers, Two Rewards from Japan, The Tailor and His Coat from Russia, and so forth. Compared with other publishers' series, these stories are freshly unknown to the average reader, so even adults will find them fascinating, impressed with their unique but understandable ways of thinking.
As supplements to the above-mentioned folk stories, modern-day, curious related facts are described with wonderful photographs at the last pages of each book. Whether young or old, you will realize that our world is quite interesting, surely wanting to know more about it through the international language, English.

View full abstract

Ken WAKASAKI (1947- ) is a Japanese novelist whose works are familiar to those who spent their youth in the late Showa era: 1978 to 1989. In fact, in those days, he was very popular among teenagers through his tireless novelization of all the Space Battleship Yamato series and other well-known anime and manga such as The Galaxy Express 999, Mu's White Whale, and Triton of the Sea. Although his fame appears to have been from these novelizations, he has written a large number of entertaining novels out of his own imagination.
This paper introduces Ken WAKASAKI's 51 original novels for young people published during the later years of the reign of Emperor Showa. Aside from his readable OKITA Souji, which deals with the historical figure, the best swordsman of the Shinsengumi police force in old Kyoto, and his best-seller Hakkyuu-wo-tatake! (Hit a Smash!), which describes how a female high school table tennis player with heart trouble wins championships, WAKASAKI's favorite genres were science fiction and mystery: above all, the Esper series, which consists of five novels about exciting battles between the high school students of various superhuman abilities and the wickedly powerful Satan people from outer space, is excellent. The mystery counterpart is the series of Akira SHIRATORI, the 14-year-old boy who is a Tokyo public prosecutor as well as a devout Mormon, the best of which is the first novel Kobaruto-buruu-yuukai-jiken (Cobalt Blue Kidnapping) with an unforgettably unexpected ending.

View full abstract

Ken WAKASAKI (1947- ) novelized as many as 27 titles of Japan's popular anime, manga, and TV dramas from 1978 to 1990. As a multi-talented novelist who graduated from Tokyo University, he was able to create unique books retaining the very essence of the original visual works by using his knowledge of not only science, but also human beings both male and female. So, it was quite natural that the intelligent author became very popular among young Japanese from junior high school to high school students as soon as his novel version of the epoch-making anime movie Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato came out in August, 1978.
Just after the success of this book, he was recognized as a master hand at novelization. His works include The Galaxy Express 999, Mu's White Whale, and Triton of the Sea, not to mention all the Space Battleship Yamato series. In addition to these major heroic fantasies, he also novelized the TV animations of King Arthur and Marco Polo, both of which are now almost completely forgotten in Japan. WAKASAKI's less known novelizations of manga and TV dramas dealing with everyday lives of junior high school baseball players, junior high school teachers, girl actresses, and high school baseball players with beautiful female students are respectively Akio CHIBA's Captain, Tokyo Broadcasting System Television's 1-B Class Teacher Shinpachi-sensei, Suzue MIUCHI's Glass Mask, and Mitsuru ADACHI's Nine, all of which are masterpieces as novels. Which means you can enjoy reading them without knowing the originals.
While Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs boasts of "Cool Japan" anime and manga, it ignores the important contribution of WAKASAKI's hard work. It is lamentable that his old books have become less and less accessible at online bookstores and even in public libraries. Now is the time when his novels are properly stored for future generations of those who love Japanese pop culture, regardless of nationalities.

View full abstract

In Gunma Prefecture after World War II, the revival of the silk industry progressed smoothly, but the revival of the sericulture industry, which produces the cocoons used as raw materials, was delayed. This is because farmers prioritized field farming over sericulture in the context of food shortages immediately after the end of the war. It was after 1949 that the production of cocoons began to increase. However, the growth rate of production after reconstruction was slower in sericulture than in the silk industry. The slow recovery of sericulture, which is agriculture, and the gap in productivity with the silk industry, which is industry, have resulted in a chronic shortage of cocoons. In addition, one of the important factors that promoted the revival of the silkworm industry in Gunma Prefecture after the war was the popularization of communal rearing of juvenile silkworms. Since sericulture is greatly influenced by rearing of young silkworms, various rearing methods have been devised. In the 1950s, the Gunma Sericulture Experiment Station developed the "Gunma-style simple co-raising method for juvenile silkworms," which rapidly spread within the prefecture. It contributed greatly to the reduction of various expenses such as utility bills.

View full abstract

Arithmetic subgroups of Isom(ℍ³) have hidden symmetries. Some non-arithmetic non-cocompact subgroups of Isom(ℍ³) are known. In this paper, we construct infinitely many non-arithmetic cocompact subgroups of Isom(ℍ³).

View full abstract

Bryophytes are plants that can grow in various environments on earth. Some bryophytes live in dry areas, while others live in areas with high concentrations of heavy metals. Bryophytes which are resistant to these environmental stresses should be studied in more detail, but detailed studies have not progressed. In order to study bryophytes in detail, sterile experimental materials are needed． This is because their growing environment can be artificially controlled. However, bryophytes living outdoors are contaminated with many microorganisms because they share the same growing environmental conditions. Therefore, we investigated how to obtain aseptic protonemata from field-grown bryophytes. Primary cultures of the copper-tolerant moss Scopelophila cataractae were attempted using a bactericides method and a filtration method. The important points in primary cultures are to eliminate contaminants such as microorganisms and obtain healthy protonemata. In this study, we found the suitable conditions for obtaining sterile protonemata from field-collected bryophytes.

View full abstract

Ikaho-Engi (伊香保縁起) is a story which narrates the legendary origin of Ikahojinjya (伊香保神社) shrine and Ikaho-Onsen(伊香 保温泉). Its’ contents relate closely to Ikahodaimyōjinnokoto(伊香保大明神の事) in Shitōsyū (神道集). It has been confirmed that there are the following three manuscripts of the story.
Manuscript 1 (M1) Untitled manuscript Possessor: Mr. Kazuo TOKUDA
A manuscript book copied by hand in 1740
Manuscript 2 (M2) Title: Ikahoengi Former possessor＊: Mr.Rinpei KIMURA
A manuscript book copied by hand in 1742
＊The whereabouts of original is unknown, and an electronic copy of it has survived.
Manuscript 3 (M3) Title: Ikahoengi Possessor: Tokutomi Roka Kinen Bungakukan(徳冨蘆花記念文学館)
A manuscript book copied by hand in 1769
M1 was introduced and reprinted by Yukio OSHIMA in Denshōbungakukenkyū(伝承文学研究) vol.71 in 2022. M2 was introduced by Yuko AOKI in Denshōbungakukenkyū vol.67 in 2018. In this paper, I have reprinted the text of M3 and given a bibliographical introduction to it.

View full abstract

This book is about the death of emperor Horikawa(1079-1107). Since "the death of the emperor" is something that ordinary people cannot know, many people pay attention to it. As a result, the feature of this book is defined as "writing the death of the emperor". And the author who wrote it is recognized as "a person who ignores taboos. "
There were various taboos in the Heian period, and people paid close attention to them. Various taboos are also mentioned in this work. Therefore, if we look at them in detail, we recognize the author was a person of common sense.
This paper considers the author's motives for writing this work and why the taboo had to be broken.

View full abstract