Kakuta Haruo---Decoding Japan---

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Location: Sakai, Osaka, Japan

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Saturday, January the 26th, 2008

Severely cold morning. As I take the 7:14 train, one train earlier than usual, it feels colder.
As we go "above the empirical," we get allowed to command wider perspective. That consequently enables each one of us not only to see wider views but also to share some parts of views with others, that is, to avoide various kinds of self-centered cognition, including ethnocentric.
I am on the way of cogitating on the way I have handled collaborations with school-outsiders, including organizations. I have done those in 3 kinds of spheres: in international exchanges, in English education, and in career education. The third sphere has been inquired mainly during these 5 years.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Friday, January the 25th, 2008

A cold morning. As I left home later yesterday, today's coldness comes to my bone.
As Kant says: "the reason does not properly give birth to any conception, but only frees the conception of the understanding from the unavoidable limitation of a possible experience, and thus endeavors to raise it above the empirical, though it must still be in connection with it." (p.232, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) The collaboration with scholars might let educational workers free "the conception of the understanding from the unavoidable limitation of a possible experience."

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Thursday, January the 24th, 2008

Hazy winter clouds cover the north-western sky. The shines in the east. The north-west winds are bringing this cold air into Kansai area.
I took an hour off this morining, and did some washing. Should I leave earlier this afternoon to do some cooking?
According to Kabbalah Jewish mysticism, there are seven heavens: the seventh the highest; the first the lowest. The fourth heaven is the middle of the hierarchy.
I can hardly claim that I am in the winning side; while it is sarcastically haughty to claim to be in the losing side.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Wednesday, January the 23rd, 2008

A rainy moring. The cold drops of rain soak everything into its bone.
If the heaven has a hierarchy, how about the hell? Does it have a hierarchy, too? It is, however, very clear that the whole society or the world cannot be called a hierarchy. Its gap is too wide to be called a hierarchy.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Tuesday, January the 22nd, 2008

The dark-cloloured winter clouds are back-up-lighted with bright golden orange sun beams. The contrast gives us winter-like feelings with a little bit of warmth.
The cognition is biassed both biologically and culturally. The biological bias is universal and transcendental; the cultural bias is communal and empirical. The latter bias, as it is aquired a posteriori, could be transformed.
Why so many students try hard not to try hard? That might be the trend of the age. Can we go against the stream? That must be a tough task. Should we go along the stream? Even to the hell? In the ever bipolarizing society, the gap between the heaven and the hell is widening, and we can hardly stay on the thread between them, in the empty hollowness. We are either to keep going to the heaven, or ... down to the hell.

Monday, January the 21st, 2008

The individualism and the communalism are, on the one hand, contradicting each other and, on the other hand, fusing each other in the globalism. The concept 'glocalism' might not be sufficient for the situation. We should research what is happening in people's cognition.
The cognition is biassed both biologically and culturally. The biological bias is universal and transcendental; the cultural bias is communal and empirical.

Sunday, January the 20th, 2008

In a bipolarizing society, each individual needs preparedness. In a bipolarizing world, each nation, as far as they would not get resolved, needs preparedness, too. The problem is how to prepare the preparedness?
We are supposed to participate in gobal and domestic competitions preparedly. The problem is that we are not always facing the same competition. There could be a regime shift of competitions at any time. We should be prepared for the regime shift, too. As we are to live in the ever shifting regimes, as Kant put it: "There does not then exist any rational psychology as a doctrine furnishing any addition to our knowledge of ourselves. It is nothing more than a discipline, which sets impassable limits to speculative reason in this region of thought, to prevent it, on the one hand, from throwing itself into the arms of a soulless materialism, and, on the ohter, from losing itself in the mazes of a baseless spiritualism." (p.224, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) We should be careful enough "to prevent" ourselves, "on the one hand, from throwing" ourselves "into the arms of a soulless materialism, and, on the ohter, from losing" ourselves "in the mazes of a baseless spiritualism."

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Saturday, January the 19th, 2008

The first day of the National Center Test for University Entrance Examination, with those of social sciences and English.
Kant says; "I cannot obtain the least representation of a thinking being by means of external experience, but solely through self-consciousness. Such objects are consequently nothing more than the transference of this consciousness of mine to other things which can only thus be represented as thinking beings." (p.216, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) It is clear that we cannot cognize the consciousness of others themselves. We, in stead, build a representation of another conscious being in our cerebrum neural network "by means of external experience," and we cognize the representation in stead of cognizing the being itself. That is the reason we sometimes over-cognize or under-cognize other conscious beings. However, how can we tell the difference between over-cognizing and under-cognizing? The case is that we cognize conscious beings randomly or as we like, and estimate the proportion of the cognition empirically afterward, or presume it beforehand. Our judge over the standard of cognition itself is random.
It seems the national government has dealt the educational policy and administration as a domestic matter. As the global competition has soared, both governig process and its result cannot be measured by domestic standards only.

Friday, January the 18th, 2008

According to the weather forecast, it will snow a little bit today. So I didn't open the windows of my room this morning. Will it really snow? The sky is very bright, and the sun beams were arrowing like haloes in the east.
It is difficult to tell if I am busy or not.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Thursday, January the 17th, 2008

Thickly piled heavily dark grey clouds shade the rising sun. High above my head, lightly bunched clouds flow Southward. There flies the North wind. In the South, however, The sky colour looks brighter. The spring might be coming in the far South. I like watching winter clouds. Clouds are most beautiful in winter.
We had a teachers' meeting this afternoon. Was it a smooth one? So, so.

Wednesday, January the 16th, 2008

A cloudy morning. The sky is meshed with grey winter clouds.
It seems getting used to the game theory is not enough. Should I get used to the power politics or struggles for power to survive my 50s?
What, then, is the difference between the game-theory politics and the power politics? The game theory might have a branch which can cover the power politics. Yet, players in game theory tend to be rational or reasonable in one sense, they all seek their own interest rationally or reasonably, so their actions could be predictable. In power politics, they aren't. Some of the players aren't seeking their interests. Others might seek them but irrationally or unreasonablly. They are inpredictable.
As we live and work in an out-of-date society and an out-of-fashion organization, people are not individualized enough to act rationally and reasonably.

Tuesday, January the 15th, 2008

The bright orange sun beams through the freezing cold air tell me the spring is coming, although it's far beyond my reach yet.
Who can claim others' help? A person with ethics? Someone with power? Give-and-take? Or just no one? There must be a reverse question: Who should I give my help?
Am I too weak-kneed, or too pushy? I wonder where I can find the equilibrium? Being wondering itself seems to be losing the equilibrium.

Monday, January the 14th, 2008

A cold yet fine morning.
Kant said: "the whole series of conditions subordinated to one another --- a series which is consequently itself unconditioned ---" (p.194/195, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) That implies if a "whole series of conditions" is "subordinated to one another," the series will be "consequently itself unconditioned." That is to say, a certain process of conditioning or reasoning can get automated. Once automated, the process may help the conditioning or reasoning speed up. The fossilized automation, however, can cause obstinacy. Employing spinoffs from colleges is the easiest way to overcome the obstinacy. The help from college scholars is critical.
A teacher of today is under the pressure from ever changing societies to meet ever highflying and ever self-asserting needs. To meet high-flown needs they should renew their core competency, and to meet individual needs they should replace their peripheral techniques. The core competency is what should be developed for the longer time being, and be accompanied with a certain research ability. The peripheral techniques are rather short-range replaceable ones, which should be obtained through learning.
Since teachers graduated from a university, they have a basic research ability. The ability enables them to digest raw spin-offs from universities.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sunday, January the 13th, 2008

"The term principle ... signifies merely a cognition that may be employed as a principle" (p.190, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York). If you employ something as a principle, it will be a principle, and if you don't, it won't. If we employ something as a principle in common, it will be a common principle. If you employ something as a sense, it will be a sense, and if we employ something as a sense in common, it will be a common sense. So there will never be a universal common sense.
As Kant put it: "(R)eason endeavors to subject the great variety of the cognitions of the understanding to the smallest possible number of principles (general conditions), and thus to produce in it the highest unity." (p.193, ibid.) When we think logically, we usually try to "subject the great variety of the cognitions of the understanding to the smallest possible number of principles." The harder we think; the higher unity we can obtain.

Saturday, January the 12th, 2008

I went to Kitano High School of Osaka Prefecture. As my elder daughter said, it was very huge and beautiful. How I found the class? Eh, it was a showcase of his erudition. If you like window-shopping, you will find it interesting.
The labour productivity in school is critical. Does the deadline management work in this field, too?
Hardworking teachers tend to work longer. That is the case. In the deadline management, a time limit is set both on each job, and on a workday.
First, we should divide our work into jobs. Each job will have its own time limit, and will be checked its progress in meetings.
Second, our jobs should be separated into pieces of work. Each piece of work will be allotted to a workday. A workday will have some pieces of various work, which should be finished by the check-out time of the day.
The story is simple, and seems to me to have some reasonability. Yet, my experience suggests that a flexible workday system might be suitable for teaching jobs. If so, each teacher will be supposed to set their own check-out time. Won't that make it too loose again, when it is hard to allot clearly divided pieces of work to each teacher, and to measure its progress appropriately.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Friday, January the 11th, 2008

A cloudy and cold morning. The sky is covered with thick grey clouds. It may rain some time today. The first ten days of the month, the year, has passed. It hints the new year would be a rough one. I wonder whether it is due to the rough situation, or because I have become sensitive delicate to the roughness.
An educational worker today needs core competency and peripheral techniques to survive in ever changing societies. The core competency is what should be developed for the longer time being, something like a life work, and be accompanied with a certain research ability, which they could have acquired in their college days. The ability enables them to digest raw spin-offs from universities, even though they lack the ability to study things from the foundation, or are out of the time to do so.
The peripheral techniques, on the other hand, are rather short-range replaceable ones, which should be obtained through learning.

Thursday, January the 10th, 2008

A fine but cold morning. The vivid tangerine sun is floating up in the sluggishly masked light blue sky. It is fine, at least in one sense. I am taking the 7:31 train again, for 3 months, maybe at least.
On Monday, I was named as an elected member of the steering committee for the coming school year. Will that really come? A man has the internal, " which is ... free from external relations," (p.176, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) so do I. My internal, " which is ... free from external relations" helps me to enjoy equilibrium.

Wednesday, January the 9th, 2008

Another cold morning with the far dimmer sun.
Outsourcing is critical in vitalizing the high school. Otherwise, teachers get exhausted with longer workday. Catering lectures by college professors can provide the source.
As Kanto put it: "in order to represent change as the intuition corresponding to the conception of causality, we require the representation of motion as change in space; in fact, it is through it alone that changes, the possibility of which no pure understanding can perceive, are capable of being intuited." (p.154/155, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) It is problematic how we can cognize the cause/result relation. He says that we can cognize it as the "change in space." It seems he understands the cause/result relation is reality, and that the start and the goal can be perceived as independent situations. We can reconstruct the relation by comparing the two situations, and thus can understand the change. Objects, that is, are dynamic; subjective cognition is stative.
The 3rd term of the 11th graders is the 0th term as the 12th graders. That's well said.

Tuesday, January, the 8th, 2008

In a cold cloudy morning, the tangerine red sun grimly shines through curtain-like grey clouds. Canvassers are delivering handbills, with one of them delivering a speech. The election of the Osaka Prefecture Governor is coming. It is who will decrease its debt that is the problem.
I made a proposal to revive the students' interests in natural sciences. That is, we should open a series of catering lectures by college professors in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. From the viewpoint of public relations, the series should have one theme in common, and, in my idea, the topic should be "fractale."

Monday, January 07, 2008

Monday, January the 7th, 2008

I am taking the 7:41 train in the bitterly cold morning. On the day after tomorrow and therefrom, I have to take the 7:31 train. It must be very cold.
In individualism societies, we have to live basically self-sufficient mental lives.
Can one culture claim to be superior to others? Can one thought claim to be superior to others? I wonder why some people claim to be superior to others.
Some people seem to firmly believe in the progress of history. If it does, why doesn't the world become better place to live in? How many people can claim to be happier than before? The number plainly shows that "the progress" should be an illusion.

Sunday, January the 6th, 2008

I bought chronological tables of the Japanese history and of the world history for my younger daughter, who is interested in the "bakumatsu"-Meiji history. We watched a "bakumatsu" history TV program this evening. Her interest has moved from Shinsen-gumi, via Sakamoto Ryoma, to Japan-Russia War. Now it is heading to "bakumatsu" time again, this time on Takasugi Shinsaku. Anyway, she is walking along Shiba Ryotaro line.

Another Bakumatsu Pilgrimage in Fushimi

Fushimi is located in the southern part of Kyoto City, and known with a famous Merchants' guardian deity, Fushimi Inari Shrine. The number of the visitors to the shrine scores the biggest in Kyoto Prefecture. Additionally, the shrine is only 5 stations north from Chushojima Station, where we got off the Keihan Line on the 4th of January, in the New Year Week. There were relatively few people in the station.
Usually, especially in spring, Chushojima Station is the nearest station to one of the biggest sacred areas for Bakumatsu freaks, Fushimi Port. The port was the biggest river harbor of Kyoto, where freight from Osaka was transshipped from bigger river ships to smaller canal boats to be carried on mainly via Takase-gawa canal into the inner city of Kyoto.
The port was such an important one in medieval days that historically significant incidents happened both at the beginning of Tokugawa Shogunate and at the end of it.
At the dawn of the shogunate, the war between Toyotomi, the West, and Tokugawa, the East, was started with Toyotomi's attack against Fushimi Castle, which was then owned by Tokugawa. Outnumbered samurais in the castle suicidally fought to encourage their main force and allies far east in Kanto. After the end of the war, the burnt-down castle was pulled down and provided some "chi-tenjo" (bloody ceilings) for temples around Kyoto. Even today, you can find some in the northern part of Kyoto, and also find some torn-down wall stones piled in Gokoh-no-miya Shrine in Fushimi.
Some 3 centuries later, at the very end of Tokugawa Shogunate itself, we had another big battle around here, Toba-Fushini Battle, between the West and the East; this time the Imperialism vs. the Shogunate. After the battle, the east forces were totally swept away from Western Japan, but battles were continued in Eastern Japan, to Kanto, to today's Tohoku, and finally to Hakodate in today's Hokkaido.
The East based in Fushimi Bugyosho (the public prosecutors and police office), which had been built by Tokugawa Ieyasu after pulling down Fushimi Castle, and which were actually working as a military post in place of Fushimi Castle. The West based themselves in Gokoh-no-miya Shrine, which was located on the higher ground.
After the Meiji Restoration, the bugyosho area came to be used as an active military base by the Imperial Army and, after the World War II, it was, this time, occupied by the US Army. Its military character came to an end with the end of the militant character of Japan. Now it has apartment houses built by Kyoto City. Although their buildings and walls have a little bit of bugyosho-like taste, they no more remind us of the bloody history of the area than the cell phone straps with historical-figure dolls you can find in souvenir shops in the area.
Toba-Fushimi Battle was the end of a series of epoch-making struggles in Kyoto. The struggles had started with Terada-ya Inn incident. Terada-ya was a port-town inn along Goh-kawa Canal in Fushimi. In the incident, moderate royalists assassinated radical royalists. History repeats itself. The less 2 sects have in common; the more fiercely they fight each other. Sakamoto Ryoma, one of the biggest historical characters at Bakumatsu, the end of Tokugawa Shogunate, narrowly escaped from the assassination.
We walked west to Fushimi Port Park, which was made reclaiming most of the port. The park has a model wharf, and a model "ju-koku bune" (a boat with a carrying capacity of 10 bales of rice). Walking north for a while, we got to the confluence of Takase-gawa Canal and Goh-kawa Canal. If you sail up the former canal, you can get to the center of Kyoto. At the end of the canal, you will even find Omi-ya, where Ryoma was finally assassinated a year and 10 months after the Terada-ya Inn incident. If you sail east along the latter, you get in front of Terada-ya. Those used to be one of his hideouts.
Terada-ya is still run as ryokan, a Japanese style hostel. Actually, my mother in-law once stayed there. When my younger daughter had heard about that, she had exclaimed, "Ii-nah!" (How fancy it is!)
Goh-kawa Canal runs east-west in front of Terada-ya. From just around the corner from the inn, a tiny street runs north-south, whose nickname is Ryoma-dori Street. Against our expectations, it was not so busy. Souvenir shops were not so dense, and sightseers were scarce.
We kept walking toward the eastern hills, one of whose tops used to have Fushimi Castle, to find the Fushimi Bugyosho site.
We walked eastward along Ohte-suji Shopping Mall, and crossed the Keihan Line by Fushimi-Momoyama Station. The mall was busy with the New Year's sale, and the station was surrounded with cram schools. The streets were jammed with cars to pick up and drop off young pupils.
Once Prime Minister Chatchai in Thailand put forward the famous slogan to "convert Indochina from the battle field to the market." Are we pioneers of the idea? Or are we just raising another type of warrior?

"Yonohito-wa ware-wo nani-tomo yuwa-ba ie.
Waga nasu koto-wa ware nomizo shiru."
(Sakamoto Ryoma)
Whatever may others say of me.
It's only I myself who knows where I go.

I wonder if we know where we are going.

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Saturday, January the 5th, 2008

It's too early to be called a morning. I'm waiting for a train in Mozu Station at 6:29. I have to go to Izumi High School by 7:20, and go on to Hashimoto City in Wakayama Prefecture by bus. Of course, it's bitterly cold.

Yesterday, I visited Fushimi with my younger daughter, who is interested in the Bakumatsu history, and my wife.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Thursday, January the 3rd, 2008

Wrote, or made, some replies to annual New Year's greetings this morning. The end of the new year. How many annual routines will I have hereafter?
I have got 52 greeting cards so far. I had more than 100 of them in my days, but I have tried to decrease the number. The less, the better? In other words, I am walking out of my life.
As Kant put it; "(T)he categories are not in themselves cognitions, but mere forms of thought for the construction of cognitions from given intuitions." (p.153, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) We can construct cognitions from given intuitions with categories. As categories are given by the culture we belong to, we can construct different cognitions from the very same intuitions.
The national debt amounts to trillions of yen. Is it OK to pass the accumulated liabilities down to the next generations? We have to think of the way to stop the negative sequence, both financially and culturally. The healthy and sound development of the younger generations is critically essential. Interiorization of extravagance imposes a burden on their development. Exteriorization needs diplomatic efforts of currently active generations. Risk-taking is unavoidable.
To get out of the debt-ridden situation, we have to try to avert current liabilities, and to ward off unreasonable historically "accumulated" ones. That needs a cultural revolution as well as a financial one.

Wednesday, January the 2nd, 2008

Another year has started, and I will have the 10th last year of my full-time working life. I hope my work-study will make some progress.
Today, I started reading "The New Toughness Training for Sports." That means I am reading the copy and that of "Critique of Pure Reason" in parallel. It has worked sometimes to pick up a light reading and a core one at a time.
The Meiji Restoration as a counterrevolution and the high‐degree economic growth after the World War II as the continuation and completion of the Restoration could be a backbone of my life course. I have to go beyond the national socialism. If there can be a liberal democracy, can there be a liberal socialism or a liberal communism?

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Tuesday, January the 1st, 2008

We must go along the third way beyond the conflict in the elder generations, that between the Input-Output theory and the Anti-Input-Output theory. There used to be only 2 parties who were supposed to take part in education; the management and other ranks. Should the third way include and benefit 4 parties; students, their parents, educational workers, and the community they belong to? Are people ever living along community lines, no matter what community they belong to; a commune, a social class, and etc.? Any individual is taking part in the society as a independent player. They are living along the game-theory line.

Monday, December the 31st, 2007

Is the world running along the game theory? If so, as the number of involved players increases, the game gets complicated.
The idea that the change "can take place as the coming into existence of another state ... and consequently the succession of the states" (p.136, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) is a statical view of things, or the world. The world itself is dynamic. We must see it, or things, in the dynamical way. A statical view is only one conception of the dynamically moving, changing, world. How many lesser degrees does a change have? Innumerable! Countless! So the change is an infinite series of "the lesser degrees," (p.137, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) and continuous.

Saturday, December the 29th, 2007

Beyond the Input-Output theory. The management today, or those of the baby-boom generation, have had only the Input-Output theory as their management policy. Other ranks, their counterparts, have had only the Anti-Input-Output theory as their counterpolicy; the less work load, the better. We need the third way.
The third way must benefit 4 parties; students, their parents, educational workers, and the community they belong to. The community might be prescribed both geopolitically and sociologically. In today's Japan, geopolitics implies to have 3 levels; a local community (corresponding to a municipal government), a prefectural society (corresponding to a prefectural government), and a nation (corresponding to a national government). We cannot cope with either a regional society or an international society yet. The term "International Community" is used only to implies the global inner circle with the elite of society.
On Saturday, January the 5th, 2008, I am supposed to go to school by 7:40 in the morning to go to Hashimoto City in Wakayama Prefecture by bus for basketball games. What a start of the year!

Friday, December the 28th, 2007

The last work day of the year, although I have to go to Kaizuka High School for basketball games tomorrow. I wear a suite today, which might help brace myself up.
Bhuto was assassinated. The chain reactions of violence can be seen in the Islam world. The end of transnational wars does not necessarily mean the end of intranational wars.