What is safety culture? Many researchers use the same terminology about the argument of safety culture, but the contents which make the sense are different. The target with which many researchers are dealing is culture, so that does not become clear. In 1999, there was a medical accident in our country; and following this we paid attention to medical safety. However, how can safety culture in the healthcare system be produced? Many researchers are trying to answer this question. However, a reply to this question is difficult for many researchers and a decisive way has not been found. A relation between flexible culture in safety culture and resilience was considered in this paper. It considers about a relation between these concepts and the loose coupling. And a structure of new knowledge which becomes the clue to produce safety culture of the healthcare system is offered.

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A trend away from rivers, in which people have lost interest in rivers and the relationships between human and river, is a negative phenomenon on the process of modern river improvement projects. Especially, the negative phenomena in urban areas has become more severe than other rivers in rural/suburban areas, because most of rivers in urban areas have been changed into artificial or covered concrete channels due to a concentration of population and high land developments along the rivers. The trend away from rivers exists in the urban society as a barrier between practitioners of river restoration and general citizens who lack interest in river and water cycles. This study aimed to clarify the process and conditions of raising “awareness” as a solution to solve the trend away from rivers through a practice for river education in the Zenpukuji River basin, Tokyo. The results showed that the process on creation of awareness in the practice consists of seven stages and three forming conditions: “close communication with others”, “accessibility to river”, and “outsider”.

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Partly due to the rapid expansion of electronic commerce market, the number of parcels to be delivered has been increasing. This also increases redelivery of parcels and causes traffic and environmental problems as well as a lack of truck drivers. In about 40 % of all redelivery cases, receivers are absent from home when expecting a redelivery. This is despite, among these 40 %, not few have designated this time. Therefore, modification of consumers’ attitudes and behaviour towards redelivery would lead to a reduction in the number of redeliveries and alleviate the problems. This paper investigates the change in the attitude of consumers caused by the provision of negative factual information about redelivery. Data obtained through a questionnaire survey on consumers’ attitudes towards redelivery are used. The possibility that the modification of the attitude could bring about a change in their behaviour is explored as well as the characteristics of consumers who are likely to modify their attitude. Furthermore, the paper examines the factors that determine the consumers’ attitude of relying on others to reduce the number of redelivery. Results show that the factual information is effective for improving the attitude, which, in turn, could encourage them to take action to reduce redelivery needs. It is also found out that female consumers and those aged from 10 or less to 50 are very likely to be positively influenced by the information. The attitude of leaving the responsibility of suppressing the redelivery to others is found to be derived from a lack of “redelivery problem recognition” and “appropriate understanding of logistics” as well as from having “negative feeling against logistics”. In addition, it is found that “dependence on automobiles” can relate to “negative feeling against logistics”, and that an absence of “social-orientedness” is related to “appropriate understanding of logistics”.

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In Osaka city, a large city system suitable for Osaka has been debated since 2012, and in May 2015 a referendum was held on an Agreement to Establish Special Wards. “No” votes were in the majority and thus establishment of special wards was rejected, albeit by a narrow margin, but in December of that same year the debate on the large city system was resumed. From August 2016 to January 2017, meetings for Osaka citizens were held 24 times to solicit opinions and provide explanation on general wards and special wards (the new large city system). In this research, a text analysis was carried out on the content explained in these meetings, and it was verified whether or not the Osaka city side provided an appropriate explanation to the citizens. The results showed that the explanation by the secretariat was improved compared to the explanatory meetings for residents in 2015, but the mayor repeatedly gave inappropriate explanations, and thus there was almost no improvement in explanation content. Also, when an investigation was carried out of the similarity of five types of texts—explanation by the mayor, explanation by the secretariat, responses by the mayor and governor to the questions of citizens, and handout materials—there was found to be similarity between the explanation by the secretariat and the content of the handout materials, but there was no similarity between these and the explanation by the mayor, and the responses by the mayor and governor to questions. Furthermore, changes were evident across the 24 meetings in the explanation by the mayor and in the responses of the mayor and governor to questions, but it was also shown that those texts did not approach closer to the explanations by the secretariat and the content of the handout materials. In addition, when the specifics of the opinions of citizens at the meetings were investigated, it was confirmed that a considerable number of citizens said the issue of special wards had already been rejected, it is wrong to hold the referendum again, and the city is fine with the 24 administrative wards it has had thus far.

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In recent years, the second-phase Shinkansen construction projects of the Development Plan have progressed, and construction of the Basic Plan lines began to be attracted attention as next projects. However, construction of new line with full-standard can provide high functionality but its cost is too high. Other low-cost installation methods have problems that they can supply only low-quality services, therefore, those are hardly to say high speed railways. Under such surroundings, the single-track Shinkansen system is proposed as a low-cost approach for local Shinkansen with certain quality. First, based on the results of a series of researches, a preliminary analysis was made from the scheduled speed of conventional railway, the unit price of each construction method, and the scheduled speed of Shinkansen. As a result, it was found that the single-track Shinkansen system needs less passenger to establish the system than the Super-limited express method. And also it was found that when the scheduled speed of parallel conventional line is slower than 100km/h the new system tends to require fewer passenger than full-standard Shinkansen. The next, as a result of searching what kind of section the single-track Shinkansen system can be applied in the actual trunk line railway network of Japan with genetic algorithm, it was found that the single-track system is suitable not for long distance sections but for the short-distance branch lines with fewer passengers. The reason is that the new system inexpensive compared to the full-standard system but the scheduled speed is inferior to the old system.

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This paper focuses on a circumstance that enables to initiate consensus building process in an infrastructure project for environmental conservation, in a situation of serious social distrust among various stakeholders caused by past experiences. Firstly, this paper introduces the actual process of the circumstance building as the social basis of consensus building in the erosion control projects at Miyazaki coast, in which initiation of consensus building process was seemed to be difficult because of the serious distrust among local/central governments, residents and citizens with various interests. Especially, various actual distrust and its calming process are described in detail. Secondly, based on the analysis of the circumstance building process, this paper finds three key elements to introduce the social basis among various stakeholders to initiate consensus building, (a) recognition of others and their values, (b) understanding of administrative institutions, and (c) objective scientific attitude. Then, this paper shows the importance of understanding of that various stakeholders’ interests were generated in the identical background with certain space and history, and the range of space and history is determined by the nature of relevant infrastructure. This paper also shows the importance of stakeholders’ expectation and trust to project authority to shift to consensus building process. Thirdly, based of the above discussion, two conceptual structure models are presented, that is, for circumstance building process and for shifting to consensus building process, regarding infrastructure project for environmental conservation. The former model shows the process of sharing recognition of the three key elements. The latter shows the structure of consensus building process to be shown in advance, after circumstance building, which involves fair dialogue circle among stakeholders and chronological adaptive/amendment circle.

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People may refuse trade-offs between some things that they value and other things. However, the possibility that some values are protected against being trade-offs with other values can make an appropriate judgment regarding public policies impossible. This study was aimed to examine the effects of different methods for explaining public policy upon mitigation of protected values. Two methods examined in this study were; one-sided presentation in which policy manager explains only merits of the policy and two-sided presentation in which policy manager explains both of its merits and demerits. Focusing on the issue of re-operation of nuclear power plants, we conducted a scenario experiment (n = 120) and compared the effects of the two methods. The result showed that two-sided presentation tended more to mitigate protected values than one-sided presentation did. Furthermore, it was shown that the effect was accounted to respondents’ increased recognition that policy manager understands his or her own values and their trust in the manager. Finally, implications of the present results for consensus building around public policies were discussed.

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This paper aims to figure out the process of mature while maintaining and forming relationships with others based on Gilligan's care ethics, focusing on the role of mothers, the role of entrepreneurs, their own distinctions, by interviewing 20 entrepreneurs who are parenting mothers. In addition, the elements of ‘can’, ‘should’ and ‘will’ were applied to the maturation process to classify, and the each tendency was examined. In the formation of an asymmetric relationship with others through the role of entrepreneurs, they can find themselves as others of others. And they realize that respecting their feelings will have a positive impact on their family through their mother's role. Conflicts arise in the allocation of time to each role, but it seems that it is possible to seek out which choices can be satisfied and decide, while considering the magnitude of the influence on each, within the structure of complex influences. It can be called a ‘care-oriented entrepreneur’ who work on emphasizing asymmetric relationships with others, in a public domain. It is important to take care not to sacrifice the role of mothers, even while working on business as an entrepreneur. To that end, it is important to disseminate an understanding of the surrounding care-oriented entrepreneurship. In order to deal smoothly with changes such as changes in the environment and lowering motivation that occur while working on the project, the element of ‘should’ becomes important. Especially in the type that was started as a trigger by ‘can’, it is necessary to provide opportunities for small practice from the early stage of actually providing services to establish asymmetric relationship.

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The purpose of this paper is to set up a hypothesis on how to develop an ethnographic community. In this paper, the author reflects on his more than twenty years of experience of research on ethnographic as well as interactive community development, and he carries out abductive reasoning on its methods. In the process of examining his experiences of urban-ethnographic community development, of the Great Hanshin Earthquake Reconstruction and Town Planning, of resident-collaborative traffic community development, and of Osaka-city developments of the living-environment for children, the author once more recognizes that he sympathized with the activities of local residents, and reflects on ways of life and searches to find life values. Today, people’s lives and public concepts are important in ethnographic community development. Thus the following hypothesis is presented. The methods for ethnographic community development aim to share individual aspirations and the appreciation of lives, groups, and communities. Furthermore, through dialogue questions are found concerning sympathy and ways of life, local history, and life and public spirit. As a result, the lives of local people and their aspirations will be discovered and a very clear and understandable hypothesis will be presented. This paper will establish such an ethnographic community temporarily, and it will be called a community development of co-creation.

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The City of Sapporo has tried Mobility Management (MM) education at elementary schools in the city since 2011 on the basis of the idea that such education for children may increase their awareness to mobility management and it will be effective to realize an environmentally friendly community toward the future. A working team to promote this trial has been established. The team members consist of the teachers who are members of the Hokkaido Social Study Education Association, the Transport Department of the City of Sapporo and a consulting company. The latter two are sharing the work of the team’s secretariat. The efforts of the working team include: organizing workshops for teachers to study about MM, publishing sub-texts for children to understand MM, creating MM education guidelines for teachers and organizing a data base to be used in transport relevant classes at schools. Those efforts have continued for eight years and parties concerned intend to extend them, continually developing MM classes and encouraging as many elementary schools as possible to adopt such education. Through an actual case, this study examines vital factors that will be useful to continue and extend the elementary level MM education.

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There have been some reports that the problems in condominium management are becoming more and more serious recently in Japan. Whether a condominium can successfully solve the problems with its management or not depends much on whether the residential community has enough capability to build consensus smoothly. Condominium is a form of residence that a number of residents share a large structure, and it requires higher adjustment costs to make consensus than other forms of residence do. Considering this characteristic, some studies claim that condominium is a form of shared asset which has an intrinsic danger. Indeed the claim seems to be reasonable, but there have been a large number of condominiums provided already, therefore a negative opinion itself cannot be a solution. In this study, we tried to make a comprehensive understanding of ways to solve the problems in condominium management from two viewpoints: ‘increasing the capability of building consensus’ and ‘decreasing the difficulty of consensus building’. We reviewed previous studies on residential communities of condominiums, conducted interviews with two management office of condominium in Kyoto and Osaka city, which have been successful in smooth consensus building without depending on management companies, and organized information from these research into lists of problems and solutions.

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Free access to medical care plays an important role in supporting Japan’s medical security, along with universal health insurance system and the “benefits in kind” scheme. With talks about the tightening of the social security’s revenue sources being propagated in recent years, however, there now is endless pressure to drive this free access into abolition. Therefore, from the viewpoint of the likelihood of opportunity costs, we investigated the logic, ethical problems, and consensus status concerning free access being upheld by the government, Japanese public, and healthcare professionals. The results showed that arguments on restricting free medical access contained numerous erroneous determination of facts. Therefore, to appropriately judge the problem of distribution surrounding free medical access, the government and public must first recognize the facts correctly, and discuss whether free medical access should be abolished. Needless to say, the situation whereby medical and social security’s revenue sources have become tight should not be left unattended. However, we absolutely cannot justify the practice of carelessly accepting assumptions mixed with errors without recognizing accurate facts and evaluating the problem of distribution by rushing to the conclusion that free access should be substantially suppressed. If there is a possibility that healthcare may deteriorate by implementing policies that had been accepted with erroneous assumptions as the premise in a rush to solve the problem, we must stop such practices. Therefore, for the government and the general public to carry out appropriate policy discussions, there is room for re-examining the premises that are based on these erroneous assumptions.

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