Policy and Practice Studies
Online ISSN : 2189-1125
Print ISSN : 2189-2946
Volume 9, Issue 1
Displaying 1-11 of 11 articles from this issue
  • Fang Liu, Kazuhisa Takemura
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 5-13
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This study examined whether the Japanese media provided the public with directional information when reporting the COVID-19 outbreak. Article headlines on COVID-19 from January 15, 2020, to October 4, 2021, were collected from five media sources. The results showed that the media were inconsistent in their aggregation methods and comparison criteria between increasing and decreasing periods and framed the spread of COVID-19 with a bias toward the increasing period. In addition, media reports on infectious disease patients were more likely to be subject to frame manipulation than media reports on severe cases or deaths. Previous research on the framing effect on decision-making suggested that this news coverage trend may guide public decision-making in a particular direction.
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  • Takaaki Tsujibe, Haruna Suzuki
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 15-25
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    We investigated factors that influenced the continuation and discontinuation of discussions regarding the introduction of a new transit system in Takaoka City, Toyama, and Ube City, Yamaguchi, respectively. We found that acceptance of the compact city policy and location optimization plan for residential areas influenced the continuation of discussions. In particular, Takaoka citizens had a high level of awareness regarding the location optimization plan and acceptance of the new transportation system. In Ube City, acceptance of the new transportation system and perceptions of the importance of public transportation showed a significant negative correlation, suggesting that the new transportation system was perceived as conflicting with future enhancement of the public transportation network.
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  • Suguru Horikoshi, Naoto Ichii, Akihiro Komata, Daisuke Shimotsu, Yoshi ...
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 27-35
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Hospital management in local areas is becoming more important due to the aging of the population and the spread of COVID-19. However, it is difficult to construct new hospitals in such areas because of the low utilization of high-cost medical equipment, an uneven distribution of doctors, and a restricted number of beds. In the future, however, medical services will improve if transportation policies and wide-area cooperation are strengthened, connecting the demand side, namely patients, and the supply side, namely hospitals. So far, the criteria such as the number of hospitals and the number of doctors has been used to evaluate regional medical services. However, in order to efficiently use limited medical resources, it is essential to have a bird’s-eye viewpoint, which cannot be evaluated by existing criteria. Instead of such criteria, new criteria to evaluate the accessibility of the patients who may cross municipal borders are proposed. As new criteria, we focus on accessibility to hospitals, using data on hospital locations and municipal boundaries for 44 municipalities in Ibaraki Prefecture. We analyze the reachable area considering crossing municipalities using ArcGIS Network Analyst. We also evaluate regional medical services by considering the area coverage and population coverage as the accessibility to hospitals. In addition, the existing criteria and the new indicators are compared in view of the continuity and the consistency of supply and demand times, and the correlation of the criteria with each other show that it is difficult for the existing criteria to replace the new criteria, and the new criteria is better than the existing criteria. Medical services are widely related to urban planning issues, including elderly care, welfare, and prevention of disasters. It is therefore essential to support medical services over a wide area.
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  • Dai Nakagawa, Masashi Mori, Satoshi Fujii
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 37-52
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In July 2022, a study group of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism announced a proposal regarding JR’s local lines, and the earnings and expenditures of JR companies by route were also announced. This research aims to analyze the issues affecting local railway lines by collecting data on factors such as convenience, management balance, and changes in the number of users for local railway lines nationwide. The findings demonstrate that JR lines face distinct challenges, differing from those of local private railways and third-sector railways. Additionally, it is observed that local railways, which have collaborated with local governments, exhibit higher levels of service and better business conditions than JR. Lastly, based on the above, this study provide concrete evidence that the involvement of local governments in JR’s local lines can enhance service levels and financial performance, and that a mutually beneficial revitalization approach for both JR and local governments is achievable.
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  • From a consideration of consensus-building viewpoints
    Kumiko Yoshitake, Hiroko Senoo
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 53-63
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Many treatment methods, care, and discharge are decided by many meetings in clinical settings. Though decision-making support for respect of patients’ intentions is important, resident nurses’ roles at meetings querying consensus building are not revealed. Especially, decision-making support in the psychiatric field is difficult because there are large individual differences in patients’ cognitions, comprehension, and expression of intention. The purpose of this paper is to consider resident nurses’ roles from consensus-building viewpoints after grasping current decision-making support of the difficult situation. The main outcome is that (1) in the psychiatric hospital environment, there is no basic decision-making concerning patient intention, recently it’s a requirement to respect patients’ intentions, (2) there are large different communication skills by individuals and changes of one patient’s symptoms, (3) psychiatric nurses’ differences of cognition and recovery intentionality affect to the setting of meeting for decision-making support. The conclusion is that Psychiatric nurses’ roles in consensus building are three; (1) facilitation for understanding and sharing, (2) navigation trailed to patients and their families, and (3) arrangement for sustainable methods. The role of navigation is suggested that sharing value and creating value are connecting a practice of creative resolution of consensus building.
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  • Atsushi Kato
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 65-69
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Behind the decline of business ethics in our country are the increased pursuit of short-time profits, changes in Japanese management, the existence of closed society within companies, the decline in the monitoring function of main bank, and the misunderstanding of corporate social responsibility is pointed out. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a mechanism to maintain the trust of society throughout the company, and one of the measures is the institutionalization of business ethics. In this paper, I will review the literature based on the summary of issues in previous research on business ethics, focusing on corporate scandals in our country. As a result, I would like to present trends and issues concerning the business ethics in our country. In particular, in order to establish business ethics, it is important not only to establish a system within the organization, but also to create an ethical climate in the organization that allows the system to function effectively. In other words, it overlaps with the formation of ethical organizational culture and ethical organizational climate. From the above, in order to realize the establishment of business ethics, it is necessary to make the business ethics system practically function within the organization and to incorporate it into the organizational culture and ethical climate.
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  • Kazuhiro Sasao, Tetsuharu Oba
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 71-81
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    To increase the diversity of user activities in public spaces, the expandability of daily personal uses is important. This paper’s purposes are to identify the theoretical issue of placemaking by checking placemaking against value co-creation theories in service research, and to prospect the way public space management ought to be to expand daily personal uses. By analyzing the theoretical system of placemaking and the perceptions of users of public space from the literature review, the two points have been clarified. First, It has not been confirmed that Service Logic is true of placemaking. This is found that the current theories of placemaking stand on Service-Dominant Logic, and there is no relation with Service Logic. Second, it can be contributive to the expandability of daily personal uses, even if the public space management never demonstrates to the users what they can do there directly and obviously. Both the idea of service as a struggle and attention to the direct interaction between users are helpful for such management.
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  • Suggestion for communication support tools by finger pointing
    Asami Ogura, Maho Tamura, Yusuke Kanda, Minako Yashima
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 83-100
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    To clarify the information necessary for accepting a child with foreign roots in nursery schools, we conducted a questionnaire survey of nursery schools that accept children with foreign roots and their parents in Higashi-Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, where there are many international students, and in Kure City, where there are many foreign technical intern trainees. As a result, it became clear that both cities do not know the overall number of children with foreign roots or enrollment information for each nursery and that nursery schools are concerned about the fear of accidents due to language barriers, lack of understanding of culture and food, and difficulties communicating with parents. Therefore, there are requests for materials introducing the culture of the child’s parents’ country, prior understanding of nationality, language ability, and dietary considerations at the time of acceptance, provision of information on the city’s support system, and assignment of additional nursery school staff. On the other hand, parents of children with roots in foreign countries had more difficulties with the childcare staff than those with lower Japanese language skills in communicating with their children, and they requested the need for documents and postings in English, interpretation and communication support tools, materials introducing their own culture, and halal food. Responding to such requests as soon as possible is necessary, but budgets are limited. The authors created and distributed a tool for communication by finger pointing, consisting of “simple Japanese,” English, and illustrations, which the nursery schools highly appreciated.
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  • Focusing on architectural ingenuities and consideration flow of projects in Yaizu City and Shimizu Ward, Shizuoka City
    Momoka Murata, Shunsuke Isoishi, Naotaka Ota
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 101-111
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the Great East Japan Earthquake, there were some municipalities that had difficulty in responding to the disaster because their city halls were damaged by the tsunami. In response to this situation, the national government issued a guideline to consider the safety of the location when constructing city halls. However, there are few city halls that have been relocated to high ground or outside of flood risk areas. In addition, it has been pointed out that there are high hurdles to relocating city halls in terms of economic efficiency and agreement. Therefore, in order to grasp the method of realizing government buildings that can continue to function as the center of the city both in normal times and in the event of a disaster, we investigated city hall reconstruction projects in Yaizu City and Shimizu Ward, Shizuoka City. As a result, it was found that these two cities secured evacuation sites within the expected tsunami flooding areas by reconstructing city halls. And, we grasped ingenuities to prevent stopping the function of city halls when the buildings are damaged. Moreover, we grasped that by promoting the participation of the residents when considering the location and concept of the building, the municipalities could obtain the consent of the residents smoothly. Since these ingenuities are highly versatile, part of the effective method for tsunami countermeasures has been clarified from the results of this study.
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  • Masato Nakane, Mihoko Matsuyuki
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 113-121
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Japan faces challenges such as increased underutilized land due to population decline and increased flood risk due to climate change. Green infrastructure initiatives have been promoted in recent years to address these challenges. One of the objectives of green infrastructure is “appropriate management of underutilized land,” but it is still unclear how to promote the introduction of green infrastructure to underutilized land. Therefore, this study quantitatively evaluated the effect of converting future low-underutilized land, especially vacant houses, to green infrastructure, focusing on the amount of stormwater runoff. In the target area, the Jijugawa River watershed in Yokohama, the number of vacant houses in 2040 was projected. It was found that if 75 % of empty houses were converted to green infrastructure, stormwater runoff would be reduced by 6.6 % compared to the 2020 level. The cost-benefit ratio of converting 75 % of vacant houses to GI in 2040 was 18.1 %. In this cost-benefit analysis, only stormwater runoff decrease was considered as a benefit. This result leaves the possibility that the benefits may exceed the costs by accumulating other benefits of the green infrastructure.
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  • A qualitative research study of initiatives by a Faith-Based Organization
    Misako Fukushima
    2023 Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 123-133
    Published: 2023
    Released on J-STAGE: January 12, 2025
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    It is widely acknowledged that the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the marginalization of the more vulnerable within society by excluding them from the existing safety net. What kinds of stigma did immigrant and refugee women who experienced domestic violence face? How can Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) give assistance to these women? This study analyzed and discussed the situation using a Christian organization as a case. Consequently, immigrant and refugee women who have experienced societal stigma due to sexual exploitation and domestic violence in Japanese society face additional challenges which were more complicated than originally thought. These difficulties arise from obstacles in returning to their home countries, disconnection from support networks, and alienation from the administrative framework. The FBO in this case demonstrated empathy and a strong sense of mission based on its member advocate’s own experience of pain as a woman and contributed to the restoration of the dignity of the stigmatized women by allowing them to continue the same support as before the pandemic, backed by stable finances.
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