The purpose of this study was to make sense of the Japanese view of spirituality through a study of the literary works of Michio Hoshino. Passages thought to be concerned with spirituality were selected from his writings with the KJ method employed to extract six elements of structural spirituality. This approach was considered to contribute to find out the variety of spirituality. The six extracted elements were: oneness , harmony with nature , inheriting wisdom from the past , transmigration , respect for the elderly, and the value of invisible existence. The results suggested that those elements might be one of the key to understand what Japanese people hope to find in spirituality.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between spirituality as the ability to consider “big questions” and voluntary activities (VA) of university students. Semistructured interviews were administered for five university students engaging in VA. The results showed that big question might become a catalyst to start VA. It was also found that seven categories were extracted as occasions to consider the big question through VA: the entire VA, support activities for children or people with disabilities, environmental beautification activities, conflicts of staff’s views, dialogue with friends or adults, contacts with other voluntary organizations, and daily situations outside of VA. These results indicated that “an expansion of perspective through encountering others” contribute to cultivate university students’ spirituality. Suggestions for future research to examine the relationship among spirituality, VA, and learning activities of university students or adults were discussed.

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