This article defines the problem over Fukushima Reconstruction and the 1F Decommissioning as Post-Trans-Scientific Questions and examines the difficulty of brewing of social understanding for the marine release of the ALPS processing water, as well as the difficulty of brewing of social acceptance for Fukushima Innovation Coast Program and International Institute for Education and Research Project.

The examination process over the disposal method of the ALPS processing water and strong path dependence only for experts who is the member of “the place” will be understood as a process of legitimacy. However, even if it is explained the choice that was finally squeezed by the experts and opinions expression by the local people is demanded by the government, it is not for local people to brew social understanding, and it is not for local people to guarantee legitimacy of the decision.

Both Fukushima Innovation Coast Program and International Institute for Education and Research Project are low in the recognition and expectation degree of Fukushima people, and it cannot be said that social acceptance as the Fukushima Reconstruction Policy is brewed. The influence of Akaba Research Group which is the origin having been based on top-down approach is strong in the Fukushima Reconstruction Policy. A design was realized on the course where Akaba Research Group spread both later fortune Fukushima Innovation Coast Program and International Institute for Education and Research Project basically, and a project has been carried out. If approach to Post-Trans-Scientific Questions is developed during seven years after Report of Akaba Research Group of June, 2014, it is thought that it was to make a thing different in the recognition and the expectation of Fukushima people to fortune Fukushima Innovation Coast Program and International Institute for Education and Research Project.

A very strong thing has the path dependence of Fukushima Reconstruction Policy and the 1F Decommissioning Policy, and it is difficult at all to cancel the lock-in to the existing path dependency. However, creation of the social innovation by the formation of “the place (Ba) of discussion” by residential people is essential to form a policy to enable “coexistence of reconstruction and the decommissioning” as Post-Trans-Scientific Questions, and to brew social understanding and social acceptance to Fukushima Reconstruction Policy.

Khruba Srivichai (11 June 1878–21 February 1939) was a legendary monk in Lanna Thai. Both Thai and foreign scholars have studied his life. Among them, the works of Katherine A. Bowie are most numerous.

In most of her works on Khruba Srivichai, she has relied only on articles from one English-language newspaper, the Bangkok Times, as her main sources. She connects directly such general information in those articles with the particular and individual events of Srivichai. For example, in “Of Buddhism and Militarism in Northern Thailand: Solving the Puzzle of the Saint Khruubaa Srivichai,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 73 No. 3, August 2014, she says the enforcement of the Military Conscription Act caused young men to escape into Buddhist temples. However she fails to show any concrete cases of young men who escaped into Srivichai’s temple. It seems that she made her own story without knowledge of the concrete facts and evidence.

Moreover, she mistakenly mixed up King Vajiravudh’s royal coronation ceremony (Rachapisek) day and his coronation anniversary (Chatramongkhon) day.

Srivichai did not decorate his wat with illuminations and did not beat a gong on the day of the royal coronation ceremony in spite of the order of the district officer. King Vajiravudh had two coronation ceremonies. The first one took place on 11 November 1910; the second one was held on 2 December 1911. After 1912, the coronation anniversary was celebrated on the 11^th of November ever year during his reign.

Srivichiai’s disobedience of the district officer’s order occurred on Rachapisek day (either in Nov. 1910 or Dec. 1911) as is mentioned in the original Thai statement of Sangha (Thalaengkan Khanasong, Vol. 8 no. 5, 1920). However Bowie understood incorrectly that it occurred on a Chatramongkhon day, that it was on “King Rama Ⅵ’s coronation anniversary” around 1919 (the above mentioned Bowie paper, pp. 716–717). Therefore she says, “Srivichai appears to have first run afoul of officialdom in about 1915; this date corresponds closely with the period in which these two acts [the Ordination Act of 1913 and the enforcement of Militarily Conscription Act in Monthon Phayab in April 1914] were being implemented.” (ibid., p. 714). She completely misunderstood the chronological order of events.

Confrontation between Srivichai and local officialdom had occurred by December 1911 at the latest, not as late as around 1915 as she argued.

In addition she says that the 1902 Sangha Act “was not enforced in Monthon Phayab—as these northern provinces were then called—until 1924.” (ibid., p. 713). However, plenty of evidence exists to support that the Sangha Act was enforced in northern Siam in the 1910s. The official proclamation of enforcement of the Act in northern Siam on 6 September 1924 was made only after the implementation was completed.

In the last part of this paper, I will confirm Khruba Srivichai’s date of death as 21 February 1939 relying on Chinese, Thai and English-language newspaper articles that reported on his demise.

Both Higashi Honganji (Otani) sect and Nishi Honganji sect of Shin Buddhism in Japan started to send their preachers to the interior of south China in the late 1890s. By getting the announcement of permission by local authorities in Fujian province, both sects of preachers hired the local Chinese as directors (董事) to persuade Chinese inhabitants to participate in their sects. Accordingly they succeed in increasing the number of Chinese participants rapidly. However the main purpose of Chinese particpants who were living in unstable and disorder areas, was not faith in Japanese Buddhism, but the expectation of protection by Japanse preachers and Japanese government. They paid large sums of money to Japanese preachers and Chinese directors in order to become members.

In the late year of 1904, Chinese central government started to suppress Japanese Budhhist preachers in the inner south China in the midist of burgeoning Chinese nationalism. Japanese preachers faced difficulties.

Some of them, such as Takeda Ekyo of Otani sect in Amoy (Xiamen), Miyamoto Eiryu of Nishi Honganji sect in Swatow (Shantou) moved to Siam in 1907 in search of overseas Chinese who were immigrants from south China. Siamese Minister of Interior, Prince Damrong declined to write a letter of introduction to local authorities, but allowed Japanese Buddhist propagation by citing the freedom of religion in Siam. Japanese preachers used the same method employed in south China to propagate Japanese Buddhism. They hired the local Chinese dirctors and advertised Japanese protection as saling point to persuade overseas Chinese, who have no one to rely on in Siam. They succeeded to gain a large number of participants and to collect a good amount of cash.

These Japanese activities were known to King Chulalongkorn (Rama Ⅴ) in February 1908. He ordered to extinguish Japanese Buddhist propagation as he was suspicious that the Japanese would gain the support of oversea Chinese contray to Siamese interest. Within one year and half Japanese Buddhist propagation in Siam was exterminated.

In the previous papers of this Journal no. 22(March 2014), no.31(March 2018), and no.41(March 2021), the author discussed the development of bilateral relations between Japan and Vietnam from 2002 to 2013, from 2014 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2017 respectively.

Following them, the First Section of this paper describes the major events in 2018, including President Tran Dai Quang’s state visit to Japan as well as various events commemorating the 45^th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In the Second Section, the author describes the major events in 2019, including PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s visit to Japan to attend the G20 Osaka Summit. In the Third Section, the author describes various contacts between the two nations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The notion of community economies is key to redressing the contraction of ordinary people’s livelihoods under the sway of global capitalism. This study describes how a dairy cooperative in Shingkhar, a mountain village in Bhutan, has been advancing a community economy. It makes net profit while capitalizing on local residents’ practices of exchanging labour and materials for their agricultural and religious activities. The institutions of mutual help, founded on non-market transactions circulating goods and services, have been applied to the cooperative that draws its membership from all households, and distributes its profit in ways that replenish commons in support of the members’ livelihoods. The cooperative also showcases how a community economy is advanced with the support extended by an association of those raised in the locality and residing elsewhere. In this respect, the institutions of mutual help in Shingkhar extend beyond the village boundaries.

This paper discusses the issues and challenges of sustainable development goals (SDGs) under the novel corona virus diseases (COVID-19) pandemic as a crisis of human security. As the pandemic impacts on the progress on SDGs multi-dimensionally, our global society should utilize the goals as our common compass to overcome the global crisis. To achieve ‘Leave no one behind’, the motto underpinning SDGs, it is essential to focus on vulnerable people and states/regions. On the front line, community and local government play critical role for the responses to COVID-19. While SDGs reflect a global agenda, their issues and challenges typically emerge in local context. As the case, agriculture of Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan depends on labour power from abroad because of its aging society. The pandemic highlights ways in which local contexts serve as battlegrounds for global issues, a lesson which could inform global society’s SDG strategy. Namely, localization of SDGs is an essential bottom-up approach to achieve the goals.

This article aims at investigating the significance of the draft provisions on piracy, commonly known as “Matsuda Draft,” submitted by Michikazu Matsuda, a Japanese lawyer-diplomat, to the League of Nations Committee of Experts in 1927, by examining the historic and legal background of the draft and Matsuda’s views on international law.

The Committee of Experts was established by the League in 1924 and consisted of international lawyers from various countries to select topics of international law to be codified. Matsuda Draft, together with the so-called Harvard Draft, is widely known among current scholars as an important precedent of the formulation of the concept of piracy in international law. However, it is still unclear how the draft was drawn up and what kind of historical significance it has for the relationship between Japan and international law in the interwar period. This study compares the original text, which was initially submitted by Matsuda to the Committee, with the final draft, and then clarifies the background to the drafting of this document and its historical significance.

Matsuda Draft was the first official attempt to formulate a definition of piracy. What is more important from the perspective of the history of Japan’s relationship with international law is that a Japanese international lawyer prepared a report on piracy, consolidated the various opinions expressed on it by the experts in the Committee, and reflected them into a draft treaty. This fact provides a basis to reconsider the conventional view that prewar Japan was reluctant or negative about the development of international law.

This research problematizes the arbitrary implementation of Special Permission for Residence (SPR) through the cases of unauthorized migrants married in Japan. Obtaining SPR from the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) is the only way unauthorized migrants can get legal residency in Japan. In the 1990s and early 2000s, unauthorized migrants married with Japanese citizens obtained residency relatively easily. However, the percentage of SPR cases that were successful declined from 93% to 50% from 2004 to 2017. This study asks why the percentage of SPR has decreased by examining how MOJ evaluates marriage life of unauthorized migrants. Drawing on interviews with 12 married (including de facto marriage) unauthorized migrants and one ex-immigration inspector, the author points out that the key reason for decreased SPR granting rate is the ambiguous and shifting criteria MOJ uses to evaluate “stable and mature marriage.” In order to assure themselves of the credibility of the marriage, MOJ arbitrarily includes the presence of children in their recent evaluation. This change affects many unauthorized migrants’ chance of getting SPR, and results in increased economic and personal hardship.

What are the core competencies of international volunteers and how can they be strengthened? This study addresses these questions by examining the fundamental work competencies of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCVs) before, during, and after their service in development cooperation. It explores individual differences in service types and effort as factors related to work competencies. A total of 620 JOCVs (average age=30.32; 62% female), who were employed between 2011 and 2015, answered questionnaire surveys about fundamental work competencies, service types (viz. sectors and group or individual assignment), and volunteer efforts before, during, and after service. The results show that all three kinds of fundamental work competencies (initiative, teamwork, and think strategically) declined in the first year and increased in the final second year. Furthermore, respondents with prior relevant experience or skills preparation before departure, or who made efforts to assimilate to local culture and engage in intercultural exchange during service displayed higher levels of fundamental work competencies upon returning home. Finally, implications of the findings for cultural adaptation and employability of JOCVs as global human resources are also discussed.