Gene regulation involves various cis-regulatory elements that can act at a distance. They may physically interact each other or with their target genes to exert their effects. Such interactions are beginning to be uncovered in the imprinted Igf2/H19 domain.1 The differentially methylated regions (DMRs), containing insulators, silencers and activators, were shown to have physical contacts between them. The interactions were changeable depending on their epigenetic state, presumably enabling Igf2 to move between an active and a silent chromatin domain. The study (...) gives us a novel view on how regulatory elements influence gene expression and how epigenetic modifications modulate their long-range effects. (shrink)

1-2. Sōkō -- 3. Katō Hiroyuki kōen zenshū ; Shizen to rinri ; Kokka no tōchiken ; Sekininron ; Jinsei no shizen to waga kuni no zento.

Liang Qichao was a leading political thinker and publicist. His manifesto, On the New People, was published serially in Japan, where Liang—like many other progressive intellectuals in the late Qing—lived and worked for a decade in order to avoid governmental suppression. The present essay was published in 1902 as part of On the New People. Liang began writing about rights as early as 1896; they came to occupy a prominent place in his theorizing after he arrived in Japan in 1898. (...) He was influenced by the Social Darwinist ideas of Kato Hiroyuki, which can be seen most clearly in Liang's 1899 essay "The Right of the Strongest." Although some of these ideas are still present in the current essay, Liang had by this time developed a more complex position, partly through reading and interpreting the ideas of Rudolph von Jhering , a pioneering German legal theorist whose influence on Liang was significant, as Liang himself declares early in this essay. (shrink)

When Nishida Kitarô wrote Studies of the Good, he was a high school teacher in Kanazawa far from Tokyo, the center of Japanese scholarship. While he was praised for his intellectual effort, there was no substantive agreement about the content of his ideas. Critics disagreed with the way he conceived of reality and of truth as contained in reality. Taken together, I believe that the responses to Nishida's early work give us a window on the state of Japanese philosophy in (...) the early twentieth century. In what follows, I give evidence for the existence of such a debate about the nature of truth and reality. After a sketch of Nishida's position, I outline the positions of two other contemporary thinkers: Katô Hiroyuki and Takahashi Satomi. With respect to Nishida, they offer markedly different takes on the question of universal truth: Katô favors an antireligious, scientific positivism while Takahashi accepts an existentialist notion of radical human finitude, in which human access to any certainty is denied. I conclude that one is confronted with a lively debate by Japanese philosophers inside Japan about the definition of truth and consequently about the nature of reality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 161-181 [Access article in PDF] Translating Liberty in Nineteenth-Century Japan Douglas Howland A concept of liberty was but one element of the Japanese engagement with western political theory after the Perry intrusion of 1853, when United States warships led by Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to negotiate a commercial treaty with the U.S. This scandal, which ultimately led to the Meiji (...) Restoration of 1867, immediately reorganized scholarly priorities among those intellectuals interested in western knowledge and technology. Western learning under the "feudal" Tokugawa regime (1603-1867) was organized as "Dutch studies" because the Dutch were the sole European trading partner of Japan from 1641 to 1854. Dutch studies paid particular attention to European mathematics, astronomy, geography, natural history, and the Dutch language. The Perry intrusion, however, prompted the rise of "western learning": language study quickly expanded to include English, French, and German; and the content of learning emphasized European law and political philosophy. But the concepts that defined this content of western thought did not translate well; they did not fit naturally with existing Japanese concepts. Hence the translation of western political theory necessitated the invention of new terminology with which to engage the new political language. Accordingly, Japanese efforts to translate western political theory must be understood as both problems of language, the creation and circulation of new concepts, as well as problems of action, and the usage of new concepts in debates about the programs and policies to be implemented in a "westernizing" Japan. 1 [End Page 161]The scholars who figure in this essay--Kato Hiroyuki, Tsuda Mamichi, Nishi Amane, Kanda Takahira, Fukuzawa Yukichi, and Nakamura Keiu--were all key figures in the intellectual passage from Tokugawa to Meiji, from Dutch studies to western learning. They began their careers in the Tokugawa institute for Dutch studies; most traveled to Holland, England, or the United States during the 1860s; and after the Meiji Restoration they became intellectual and educational leaders under the new administration. 2 In addition to founding private academies or filling prominent government posts, they created the first literary society, the Meiji Six Society (named after the year of its founding, the sixth year of the Emperor Meiji's reign, 1873), which sponsored public debates, published these proceedings in the Meiji Six Journal, and so hoped to promote enlightenment among the Japanese people. In addition to introducing public debate to Japan, this transitional intelligentsia was involved in the fundamental work of creating the language in which to raise issues of constitutional form or personal freedoms. In their translations of western texts and original texts about western law and political philosophy they created the neologisms to translate western concepts and participated in the standardization of terminology that made western knowledge coherent.The two concepts discussed in this essay, which were among the first to figure prominently in intellectual debates of the early 1870s, were "liberty" and "religion," the pairing of which in the debate over freedom of religion from 1872 to 1874 was crucial in defining a Japanese conception of liberty. Although religious liberty arose in western Europe as a result of the conflict between church and state authorities, the issue in Japan was a direct challenge to the new central government's attempt to decree a national Shinto doctrine in 1868. As the sole case of unanimous support for personal liberty among the transitional intelligentsia, the debate over freedom of religion determined key distinctions between private and public behavior that defined the Japanese conception of "liberty" for the duration of Japan's imperial constitution (to 1945). As a right of individuals, liberty resided in the exclusively private domain of thought, conscience, and religious faith. As a public matter the people's liberty necessarily gave way to government maintenance of public order.In part this essay responds to the work of Japanese philologists who study the translation and standardization of modern Japanese vocabulary. Much of this work is based on dictionaries; a word is said to have become standard as it appears in greater numbers of Japanese-Chinese, Japanese... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kiyozawa Manshi’s Two Theories of Evolution and Their Western InspirationDennis PROOIIntroductionIf one solely were to confine the scope of one’s inquiry into the defining trait of a “Tokyo School of Philosophy” to the years immediately following the founding of Tokyo University in 1877, it would be hard to escape the conclusion that philosophy there at the time was determined almost entirely by the dominant intellectual wind blowing through its (...) lecture halls, namely that of evolutionary theory. Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1916), president of the university from 1890 to 1893, was one of its staunchest advocates, doing much to foster the spread of ideas that would today be typified as “Social-Darwinian.”1 Inoue Enryō (1858–1919), undoubtedly the Meiji period’s most successful public philosopher, came to embrace many Spencerian ideas on evolution under the influence of Toyama Masakazu (1848–1900), a devout Spencerian, during his time as a student there (from 1881 to 1885).2 Ernest F. Fenollosa (1853–1908), an American philosopher who exerted great influence over the university’s young philosophical minds, was working on a synthesis of the Spencerian and Hegelian philosophical systems.3 He had been brought to Tokyo University by the Darwinian zoologist Edward S. Morse (1838–1925), who was himself instrumental in the spread of evolutionary ideas. This quick survey of Tokyo notables serves not only to establish the dominance of evolutionary theory, but also to show how in the context of late nineteenth-century Japan, “evolutionary theory” (shinkaron 進化論) is best understood as an umbrella term that could refer to a wide array of ideas—including, but certainly not limited to, Darwinian, Social-Darwinian, Spencerian, and Hegelian ones, or a mix of these—on the nature of (individual and social) change, development, and progress.Although the impact of 1859’s The Origin of Species made Darwin a figure impossible to ignore, by no means was evolutionary theory [End Page 77] equated with his theory of natural selection. For their ideas of evolution, many looked to Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), regarded by the Victorian English as the philosopher of evolution and whose system of synthetic philosophy presented positivist-leaning Meiji-era Japanese intellectuals with a definitive model of philosophical achievement. Spencer prided himself in having been the first to formulate the principle of evolution, remarking in the revised version of Social Statics (1892) that he had arrived at the general idea as early as 1850, many years before The Origin of Species had appeared in print.4 From Spencer’s point of view, Darwin had done no more than confirm a posteriori for biological organisms what was in fact an a priori law of evolution, established by Spencer in First Principles (1867) both inductively and deductively as the universal tendency of phenomena to pass from “an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity,” a process accompanied by “an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion.”5 Spencer’s nod to the materialist tradition by formulating his conception of evolution in terms of matter in motion in his own self-understanding placed him in the camp of English philosophy, which did not let itself be deluded by the wrong use of language and spurned the invocation of what from its perspective was superfluous metaphysics. The opposing camp of German philosophy—following William Hamilton (1788–1856), derided by Spencer as “absolute theorisers”—made abundant use of such metaphysics to defend a teleological understanding of evolution—the kind of understanding Darwin (with his emphasis on the non-teleological character of natural selection) and Spencer (with his focus on matter in motion) attempted to render obsolete.6Under the influence of Fenollosa, many students of philosophy at Tokyo University became attracted to the alternative German teleological model of evolution, the history of which via the German Romantics goes back to Leibniz’s attempt to reintroduce into physics the idea of final causes after these in that domain had been eliminated by Descartes.7 Descartes, to begin with, was the one to revolutionize natural philosophy by reducing the physical world to one of matter in motion ruled by efficient causation, imagining, much like Spencer two centuries later, that such a minimalist view of... (shrink)

Ogyû Sorai was one of the greatest philosophers of early modern Japan. This volume, a monumental work of scholarship, offers for the first time in any Western language unabridged and fully annotated translations of Sorai’s masterpieces. The Bendô and Benmei are works of political philosophy that define the theoretical foundation for a leadership exercising total power, the best remedy, in Sorai’s view, for a regime in crisis. The translations are based on the 1740 woodblock edition, the first major edition of (...) these seminal texts published during the Tokugawa period. In his commentary, John Tucker situates the Bendô and Benmei in relation to Neo-Confucianism via what is known as "philosophical lexicography." This genre, which links Sorai’s thinking with Neo-Confucianism, is traced to the early-thirteenth-century Song dynasty text the Xingli ziyi by Chen Beixi. Although Sorai was an unrelenting critic the Neo-Confucian formulations of the great Song synthesizer Zhu Xi, his thinking remained, due to its genre, methodology, and conceptual repertory, essentially a radical revision of Neo-Confucian discourse. Tucker’s introduction also examines the reception of Sorai’s two Ben during the remainder of the Tokugawa, calling attention to radical tendencies in later developments of Sorai’s thought as well as to the increasingly scathing critiques of his "Chinese" approach to philosophy, language, and politics. Finally, it traces the vicissitudes of the two Ben in modern Japanese intellectual history and their role in the formation of the ideas of Meiji intellectuals such as Nishi Amane and Kato Hiroyuki. As before, however, Sorai came under attack—this time for his supposed irreverence toward the throne, the Japanese people, and the imperial nation-state. Though an unpopular philosophy in early twentieth-century Japan, in the postwar years Sorai’s thought was interpreted as an important modernizing force. While it critiques such ideologically grounded attempts to cast Sorai’s Bendô and Benmei as theoretical contributions to political modernization, Tucker’s study nevertheless acknowledges that Sorai’s masterworks, in their concern for language analysis as the way to solve philosophical problems, share significant common ground with the analytic approach to philosophy pioneered by various twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophers. (shrink)

Ogyû Sorai was one of the greatest philosophers of early modern Japan. This volume, a monumental work of scholarship, offers for the first time in any Western language unabridged and fully annotated translations of Sorai’s masterpieces. The Bendô and Benmei are works of political philosophy that define the theoretical foundation for a leadership exercising total power, the best remedy, in Sorai’s view, for a regime in crisis. The translations are based on the 1740 woodblock edition, the first major edition of (...) these seminal texts published during the Tokugawa period. In his commentary, John Tucker situates the Bendô and Benmei in relation to Neo-Confucianism via what is known as "philosophical lexicography." This genre, which links Sorai’s thinking with Neo-Confucianism, is traced to the early-thirteenth-century Song dynasty text the Xingli ziyi by Chen Beixi. Although Sorai was an unrelenting critic the Neo-Confucian formulations of the great Song synthesizer Zhu Xi, his thinking remained, due to its genre, methodology, and conceptual repertory, essentially a radical revision of Neo-Confucian discourse. Tucker’s introduction also examines the reception of Sorai’s two Ben during the remainder of the Tokugawa, calling attention to radical tendencies in later developments of Sorai’s thought as well as to the increasingly scathing critiques of his "Chinese" approach to philosophy, language, and politics. Finally, it traces the vicissitudes of the two Ben in modern Japanese intellectual history and their role in the formation of the ideas of Meiji intellectuals such as Nishi Amane and Kato Hiroyuki. As before, however, Sorai came under attack—this time for his supposed irreverence toward the throne, the Japanese people, and the imperial nation-state. Though an unpopular philosophy in early twentieth-century Japan, in the postwar years Sorai’s thought was interpreted as an important modernizing force. While it critiques such ideologically grounded attempts to cast Sorai’s Bendô and Benmei as theoretical contributions to political modernization, Tucker’s study nevertheless acknowledges that Sorai’s masterworks, in their concern for language analysis as the way to solve philosophical problems, share significant common ground with the analytic approach to philosophy pioneered by various twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophers. (shrink)

エンジニアの「知」は21世紀を拓けるか。モノを「つくる」とは、どういうことか。技術者の心に由来する「知」のありように迫る。技術における「知」の現代性を確認する。.

This collection of classic works from the mid-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries was originally published under the auspices of the Royal Asiastic Society. Spanning over 100 years in oriental scholarship, primary texts include work by Frederic Rosen, W.F. Thompson, C. Edward Sachau, R.A. Nicholson, W.H.T. Gairdner, W.M. Miller, James Robson, and many others.

科学が自然を破壊した今、人間は人工的に反人工的な自然を保持するべく努力しなければなりません。科学技術は、この逆説に耐え抜かねばならないのでしょう。.

Previous research found that application of eyeshadow on the upper eyelids induces overestimation of eye size. The present study examined whether this eyeshadow illusion is dependent on or independent of viewpoint. We created a three-dimensional model of a female face and manipulated the presence/absence of eyeshadow and face orientation around the axis of yaw (Experiment 1) or pitch (Experiment 2) rotation. Using the staircase method, we measured perceived eye size for each face stimulus. Results showed that the eyeshadow illusion occurred (...) regardless of face orientation around axes of both yaw and pitch rotations. Crucially, the illusion’s magnitude did not vary across face orientations; lack of interaction between the illusion’s magnitude and face orientation was confirmed by small values of Bayes factors. These findings ruled out the hypothesis that eyeshadow serves as a depth cue and leads to overestimation of eye size due to size-distance scaling. Alternatively, the present findings suggest that the eyeshadow illusion can be well explained by the assimilation between the eyes and eyeshadow, which also facilitates assimilation between the eyes and eyebrows. Practical implications and the present findings’ generalizability are also discussed. (shrink)

We study the dynamics of a vortex in superfluid He4. This is carried out by deriving the effective Lagrangian for the center of the vortex by starting with the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau formalism. From the resultant equation of motion for a vortex, we arrive at a novel aspect for the Magnus force which has long been known in fluid dynamics. This force has a geometric origin and is expected to occur in other form of condensates such as vortex excitations for quantum (...) Hall fluids or ferromagnets. We also consider the force of non geometric origin, the pinning force coming from the impurity. (shrink)

Kyosei, a traditional Japanese concept, has been applied to a variety subjects, from biology to business. It has more recently become synonymous with the concepts of corporate responsibility, ethical decision making, stakeholder maximization, and responsible reciprocity. The purpose of this paper is to trace kyosei's modern business application back to ancient Confucian thought. The ideals associated with Confucianism were instrumental in the creation of Japanese business codes of ethics during the early part of the seventeenth century. A short history of (...) this period is presented to provide a contextual framework for understanding these codes. A specific code of ethics, called the shuchu kiyaku, is presented for the first time in English and shown to have direct roots in Confucian writings. Statements from modern company codes and from modern Japanese and American businessmen are presented to reflect the philosophy of business embodied in that ancient code of ethics. (shrink)

In this paper, we would present an overview of the recent studies on the role of diagram in mathematics. Traditionally, mathematicians and philosophers had thought that diagram should not be used in mathematical proofs, because relying on diagram would cause to various types of fallacies. But recently, some logicians and philosophers try to show that diagram has a legitimate place in proving mathematical theorems. We would review such trends of studies and provide some perspective from viewpoint of philosophy of mathematics.

Actomyosin (actin‐myosin II complex)‐mediated contractile forces are central to the generation of multifaceted uni‐ and multi‐cellular material properties and dynamics such as cell division, migration, and tissue morphogenesis. In the present article, we summarize our recent researches addressing molecular mechanisms that ensure actomyosin‐mediated directional cell–cell junction remodeling, either shortening or extension, driving cell rearrangement for epithelial morphogenesis. Genetic perturbation clarified two points concerning cell–cell junction remodeling: an inhibitory mechanism against negative feedback in which actomyosin contractile forces, which are well known (...) to induce cell–cell junction shortening, can concomitantly alter actin dynamics, oppositely leading to perturbation of the shortening; and tricellular junctions as a point that organizes extension of new cell–cell junctions after shortening. These findings highlight the notion that cells develop underpinning mechanisms to transform the multi‐tasking property of actomyosin contractile forces into specific and proper cellular dynamics in space and time. (shrink)