departmental bulletin paper

This article explores the relationship between media and politics during the war between Japan and China through articles published in “Style” by Uno Chiyo in 1936 . Uno declared this magazine was going to be “a fun magazine”, and would not cover comprehensive political issues. However, following the outbreak of the Japan-China war in 1937 , war-related articles appeared, but later suppressed. Eventually, Uno decided that the magazine adopt a governmental policy. However, “Style” did not become war time magazine. This article examines the reason for this.

We preliminarily surveyed the influence of COVID-19 on pregnancy, birth, and childcare. We used semi-structured interviews. We used text mining to analyze five participants who experienced pregnancy and childbirth before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study showed the following outcomes: (1) COVID-19 influenced familial support, social support, and birth. (2) Participants found it difficult to ask for support. (3) Participants needed social support for infection prevention at the preparation stage because they also cared for their children. (4) The birth affected the failure to share needs of the family and enhance the awareness of childbirth as a pregnant woman.

A multiple-choice questionnaire was administered to university students to investigate their positive changes during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The data revealed that more than three-fourths of the students felt positive changes in relationships and values. Additionally, approximately half of the students felt positive changes in customs and behavior, while 20%–30% felt positive physical and mental vitality changes. Our findings suggest that it may be necessary for university students to notice their positive changes as being essential for growth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

An online questionnaire was administered to 143 university students to clarify their perception of the elderly and its related factors. Consequently, the elderly that formed the basis of the students’ perception regarding older adults were in the following order: “grandparents” > “the elderly in the community” ≥“the elderly in various media.” Furthermore, the students’ perception of the older adults was related to “frequent contact with grandparents,” “quarrel with grandparents,” “pleasant activity with the elderly in the community,” “training session offered by the elderly in the community,” “experience of being scolded by the elderly in the community,” “contents of various media for respect for the elderly,” and “contents of various media for the care of the elderly.” Our findings suggest that experiences with grandparents and older people in the community and various media may play an essential role in having a more positive perception of the elderly for students.

Based on a paper aimed to document the pioneering use of Blended Learning and Instructional Design published in March 2021, an attempt was made to improve one compulsory subject in the Postgraduate Schools of YPU. The goal of improving the class called ‘Quality of Life (QOL)’ was to show a model to be used at Postgraduate level for mostly adult learners so that they could access the class from their workplaces or homes. The construction of the whole class needed to be reviewed, instead of just utilizing an interactive online ICT tool. This paper also tries to present an idea for a certificate program based on the above QOL class. Yamaguchi Prefectural University promotes four educational principles, including “respect for human nature,” “emphasis on citizens’ perspectives,” “co-existence with the community,” and “response to globalization”. The focus on humanities is crystalized on the teaching subject, QOL, as mentioned above. ‘Quality of Life’ covers the examination of the quality of everyday life in today’s changing world to diverse life stages, and then into every type of lives in nature and around the globe. By placing the QOL class as the core and adding one or two classes, it is assumed that the certificate course could be started by connecting issues in local towns to innovative solutions in wider society.

Despite the various harmful effects caused by tourism, such as over tourism, there are few concrete measures to promote tourism and community development in an integrated manner. The background to this is that in tourism policies, indicators that are biased toward the evaluation of tourism exchange performance are set, and there is a lack of indicators that question the degree of involvement with the local community. On the other hand, in Europe and other countries, they contribute to the development of sustainable local communities by installing unified indicators (“ETIS” and “DIT-ACHIEV”) for advancing projects while considering tourism and regional formation from multiple perspectives. It should be a great example for Japanese local communities. The purpose of this study: Therefore, in this paper, we will analyze the factors that prevent the establishment and spread of indicators in the current situation, and analyze the method of setting indicators with high versatility based on the current situation. To accomplish these ends, the authors of this paper have tried to do questionnaire survey conducted by mail to 212 DMOs nationwide from November to December 2021. The conclusion of this paper: It was found; 1) Japanese DMOs lack the common purpose of "aiming for sustainable tourism", 2) Data collection for KPI is a burden for each DMO, 3) Relationship between DMOs and local residents is still weak, and in the first place, improvement in this point is desired.

Despite the various harmful effects caused by tourism, such as over tourism, there are few concrete measures to promote tourism and community development in an integrated manner. The background to this is that in tourism policies, indicators that are biased toward the evaluation of tourism exchange performance are set, and there is a lack of indicators that question the degree of involvement with the local community. On the other hand, in Europe and other countries, they contribute to the development of sustainable local communities by installing unified indicators (“ETIS” and “DIT-ACHIEV”) for advancing projects while considering tourism and regional formation from multiple perspectives. It should be a great example for Japanese local communities. The purpose of this study: Therefore, in this paper, we will analyze the factors that prevent the establishment and spread of indicators in the current situation, and analyze the method of setting indicators with high versatility based on the current situation. To accomplish these ends, the authors of this paper have tried to do questionnaire survey conducted by mail to 212 DMOs nationwide from November to December 2021. The conclusion of this paper: It was found; 1) Japanese DMOs lack the common purpose of "aiming for sustainable tourism", 2) Data collection for KPI is a burden for each DMO, 3) Relationship between DMOs and local residents is still weak, and in the first place, improvement in this point is desired.

The Ohuchinuri lacquer ware production area, which has a workshop centered on Yamaguchi City, became a designated production area under the National Traditional Industrial Promotion Law in 2001. This paper present the literature and materials to show the 100years succession of Ohuchinuri, which was compiled in the process of application. As a result, the merit of becoming a designated production area shows that the pride of the Ohuchinuri lacquer maker was cultivated and that the Ohuchi doll was selected as the target item. Interacting with lacquer ware specialists, the importance of urushi-e, which is represented by the Sesshu-bon tray of Enryuji Temple in the Edo period, was pointed out. This paper points out the importance of urushi-e as the basic technique of Ouchi lacquer ware.

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From 2007 to 2021, Yamaguchi Prefectural University offered a seminar course called "Seminar in Community Collaboration" as a part of its general education curriculum. In this seminar, students worked together with local residents to solve regional issues. Among these projects, we will introduce the example of working together for 13 years on the local festival "Mori-sama Festival" with residents and high school students under a cooperation agreement with the high school. In addition, we worked together with the students who took the "Seminar in Community Collaboration" to make a proposal to support the survival of the festival after the abolition of the course due to a curriculum revision.

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In this article, we describe an attempt to prepare teaching materials to efficiently process NDB open data. The teaching materials consist of explanations of NDB open data and instructions of data processing using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a programming language that can be used with the spreadsheet software Excel. In addition, the teaching materials allow students to understand the advantages of using VBA by comparing it to working with Excel worksheets. Finally, we asked them to solve VBA-related problems and confirmed their understanding of the teaching materials.

With the full-scale transition to online lectures in 2020 bue to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the sudden widespread use of meeting applications by universities, everyone was thrown into a new world of communication in large groups via video conferencing. This technological leap has created a variety of problems for society, from the very small to the very large, and each problems requires a differen response. This paper focuses on camera usage during interactive online lectures, and aims to present one of the solutions to the issue of whether student cameras need to be on or off during lectures. Because the handling of camera images provoke ethical issues regarding student privacy, this paper also focuses not on solving the ethical issues conceptually, but by providing technical solutions to deal with this problem.

Text mining was used to analyze the TAT story used to determine the presence or absence of uncertainty motivation. Participants were 82 university students. The results show that: (1) Although there were few words specific to the stories judged to have uncertainty motivation, the words "microscope," "medicine," and "life" tended to be used in this story. (2) There were relatively many words that were used only in the stories without uncertainty motivation, such as the words "friend," "early," "end," "I," "fork," "walk," and "home". (3) No clear co-occurrence relationship could be found between the words.

As substances corresponding to annulenes in Y-aromatic compounds, tridentenes were proposed by the authors. In this description, by revision of existing papers, a discussion on the magic number of tridentenes, which corresponds to Hückel’s 4N+2 rule, and arguments regarding typhoon tridentene and cyclone tridentene, which are expected to have stereoselective inclusion forming ability, are presented.

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The onion fly, Delia antiqua (Diptera: Anthomyiidae) spends hot summers and cold winters in the pupal stage. Pupal diapause is determined by the temperature and photoperiod of the larval stage and the temperature of the pupal stage. When the larvae were reared under various photoperiods at 25°C and the pupae were kept at 25°C after pupation, the rate of diapause tended to be slightly lower in photoperiods longer than 13 h in the light period. When the larvae and pupae were kept at 20°C, the rate of diapause was 80% or more in photoperiods with a light period shorter than 13 h. However, the rate of diapause gradually decreased during longer photoperiods, and when the light periods were longer than 16 h, it decreased to approximately 25%. The larvae were reared under light-dark conditions (12 h light: 12 h darkness) (LD 12: 12), 14: 10, 18: 6, and 24: 0 at 30, 25, and 20°C and the pupae were kept in continuous darkness (DD) at 30, 25, 20, and 15°C. When the larvae were reared at 30 and 25°C and the pupae were kept at 25°C, the rate of diapause was 15% or less regardless of the photoperiod. When the pupae were kept at 30 and 20°C, the rate of diapause was 50−75% and almost 100% at 15°C. When the larvae were reared under LD 14: 10, 16: 8, and 24: 0 at 20°C and the pupae were kept at 25°C, the rate of diapause was 15% or less. The rate of diapause the pupal temperature of 30°C was 50−75%, at 20°C was 30−65%, and at 15°C was almost 100%. When the larvae were reared under LD 12: 12 at 20°C, the rate of diapause at pupal temperature of 30°C was 50−75%, at 25°C was approximately 55%, and it was almost 100% at 15°C. When the larvae were reared under LD 12: 12 at 20°C and the pupae were kept for 4 weeks under DD at 20°C after pupation. And the pupae were transferred from 20°C to 7°C and then kept for 10, and 15 weeks at 7°C and then transferred to 25°C. When the pupae were kept for 10 weeks at 7C, adult emergence was concentrated the 11th day (the 109th day after pupation) after transition to 25°C, and on the 10th day (the 143th day). This indicates that diapause was broken by low temperatures (7°C). When pupae were kept under DD at 20°C after pupation, adult emergence started around 50 days after pupation and continued for more than 50 days thereafter. No concentration of emergence was observed even when the temperature was changed to 7°C after the emergence adults. This indicates that diapause was broken at 20°C. The larvae were reared under continuous light at 15°C and the pupae were kept under DD at 7°C after pupation and transferred to 25°C. When the pupae were kept at 7°C for 1 to 20 weeks, the longer the period of 7°C, the shorter the period from the transition to 25°C adult emergence. Adult emergence was concentrated when the 7°C period was 11 weeks or more, and the tendency was more pronounced as the 7°C period increased. When the larvae were reared under LD 12: 12 at 30 and 25°C and the pupae were kept under DD at 30, 25, 20, and 15°C, the rates of diapause were compared in 1981 and 2005. When the rates of diapause when the larvae were reared at 20°C, was compared between 1981, 2005, and 2006. When the larvae were reared at 30 and 25°C, the rate of diapause was lower in 1981 than in 2005, regardless of the temperature of the pupae. However, when the larvae were reared at 20°C, the rate of diapause was higher in 1981 than in 2005 and 2006, regardless of pupal temperature. These results indicated that many years of successive rearing influenced pupal diapause decisions. The most interesting finding was that in many years of successive rearing, the selective pressure for diapause changed with the rearing temperature of the larvae. This elucidation will be clarified by through genetic analysis in the future.

In order to obtain knowledge useful for first-year education and student instruction, the transition of academic performance during 4 years of university was retrospectively investigated for the higher and lower percentiles of grade point average (GPA) at the time of graduation from university. The self-evaluation score of learning outcomes, the PROG test score, and adaptation to university life were examined in the two groups. Furthermore, the relationship between the first-year academic performance and the scholastic ability before enrolling in university was analyzed. Comprehensive scholastic ability in high school fundamentally influenced the academic performance in university evaluated by GPA. Compared with the higher GPA group, the lower GPA group had lower scores on the PROG test and for feelings of selfaffirmation in the first year of university. We consider educational interventions in the pre-enrollment period and the first year of university to be highly important to improve academic performance throughout the 4-year period of university.

The Personal Data Protection Act is a law to balance "protection of individual rights and interests" and "utilization of personal data." It has been revised since its enactment in 2003 in accordance with social conditions and technological progress. The revision in 2020, which was reviewed every three years, was aimed at "protecting the rights and interests of individuals," "strengthening the utilization of data," and "corresponding to AI and big data." The revision in 2021 integrates the three laws of the Personal Data Protection Act, the Personal Data Protection Act of Administrative Agencies, and the Personal Data Protection Act of Incorporated Administrative Agencies into one law. Regarding the protection system, the post-integration law stipulates common rules nationwide, and the entire jurisdiction will be unified by the Personal Information Protection Commission. Under such circumstances, I studied the utilization of medical data.

A topological reference system is a theory that allows the visualization of the effects of a ring structure on the energy stabilization of π-electron conjugated systems. In this study, the original paper was reconfigured to introduce the definition of the topological reference system and practical calculation method.

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The utilization of edible insects is one of the strategies against the global population explosion, food crisis and environmental problems. However, insect foods often have a distinct flavor, and it constricts the generalization of insect foods. Therefore an analysis was conducted with the aim of clarifying the palatable characteristics of insect foodstuffs. When the taste and smell of locust and cricket powders were examined, the characteristics differed depending on the type of insect. Furthermore, we tried to enhance the palatability by adding a certain flavor when making a cookie using insect powder. As a result, it was possible to enhance the palatability evaluation of cookies by adding various flavors.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between healthy life expectancy and lifestyle and other factors by utilizing real-world data such as open data from the National Database on Receipt Information and Specified Health Examination (NDB), which contains data on specified health examinations for approximately 20 million people nationwide. In men, fasting blood glucose of 126 mg/dL or more and financial capability index showed a negative correlation with healthy life expectancy, while sports activity rate and hobby activity rate showed a positive correlation with healthy life expectancy. In women, fasting blood glucose of 126 mg/dL or more and smoking habit showed a negative correlation with healthy life expectancy.

For the purpose of clarifying the relationship between mortality rate of all causes of death and Mortality rate from malignant neoplasms and lifestyle-related factors and other factors by utilizing the open data of the receipt information / specific medical examination information database (NDB), We examined the health issues of Japan and Yamaguchi Prefecture from the perspective of a registered dietitian. In men, "fasting blood glucose level 110 mg / dL or more", "systolic blood pressure 140 mmHg or more", "drinking more than 2 times on drinking days" and the mortality rate of all causes of death showed an association, and "the frequency of drinking alcohol every day", "drinking more than 2 times on drinking days" and mortality rate from malignant neoplasms showed an association. In women, the mortality rate of all causes of death was associated with "diastolic blood pressure of 90 mmHg or more", "smoking habit", and "weight gain / loss in one year is ± 3 kg or more", and "smoking habit" was mortality rate from malignant neoplasms to malignant neoplasms. Mortality was associated.

This study investigated abuse to people with disabilities, considered "abuse to people with disabilities by employees of welfare facilities for people with disabilities" as described in each "Report on the Investigation Results" for the fiscal years 2015-2019, and considered the current situation and problems of abuse to them suggested by these reports. As a result, it became clear that intellectually disabled people are intensively abused, and that people in higher disable support categories and people with behavioral disorders (the terms used in the reports) are being increasingly abused.

This paper clarifies the work undertaken by public assistance caseworkers in Yamaguchi Prefecture by analyzing their weekly work diaries and comparing them with the work stipulated in the Public Assistance Act and the Social Welfare Act. The work of public assistance caseworkers was subdivided into 21 items. When the contents of the work were classified into the four categories of work stipulated in the Social Welfare Act, 44.6% of the work was made up of interviews; 24.5% was investigation; 47.9% was decision-making, and 1% was providing guidance. These findings indicate that public assistance caseworkers conduct interviews with those receiving assistance and with others connected with them, make decisions regarding whether to provide public assistance, and provide guidance according to the situation for the purpose of investigations that form the basis for the proper administration of public assistance. In addition, the ratio of the different aspects of their work indicates that there are only a few guidance tasks related to handling cases of fraud. Public assistance caseworkers have the heavy responsibility of having a high level of decision-making ability in deciding whether to provide public assistance as a physical manifestation of citizens’ right to life, based on the information obtained from investigations related to interviews with those receiving assistance. 　Furthermore, with regard to the discretionary power of public assistance caseworkers in carrying out their work, it was found that although there is no room for discretion in the application of the law in guaranteeing a minimum standard of living, as this is a legally mandated task, they do have discretion in promoting self-reliance because they implement self-reliance support programs that are tailored to the situation on the ground in individual welfare offices. In addition, although there is no room for discretion regarding how to allocate energy when dealing with applications for starting or changing assistance due to the time constraints in the process leading up to making a decision, it was found that discretion was given to caseworkers in cases where they were making visits to households receiving continuing assistance, as these were planned on a yearly and monthly basis and implemented systematically.

In recent years, the importance of the co-creative communication approach has often been highlighted when examining communication in children with congenital deaf-blindness and children with severe and multiple disabilities. This paper describes some episodes of dyadic interactions and triadic interactions in a child with CHARGE syndrome and parents based on romantic science, and interprets it from the perspective of co-creative communication. It was suggested that an approach based on various signs and physical reactions of children with congenital deaf-blindness in actual communication situations is important for the co-creation communication approach.

The purpose of this research is to examine spatial expression in graphic design through the creation of works. We will attempt to expand the expression of graphic design by pursuing the spatiality of the work itself rather than designing for advertisement or packaging.

This article introduced the table of contents of the literary magazine " SHI-EN" .This magazine was published in Yamaguchi City, Yamaguchi Prefecture from September 1938 to May 1942. This article covers the period rom from november december 1928 to September 1932.

Japanese teacher training course for teaching Japanese as a foreign language in Yamaguchi Prefectural University was instituted as one of the qualification licenses with the foundation of the Faculty of Intercultural Studies in April, 1994. Since our establishment we have sent more than 500 graduates out to society. I engaged in the teacher training program as a chief for 28 years, and now, upon retiring in March of 2021, look back on more than a quarter century of this work. During these 28 years, we changed the curriculum three times to meet the needs of the times. 570 students participated in domestic training of the Teaching Japanese as a foreign language course, which was the most important core subject. We conducted this course 26 times without fail. In terms of the overseas training, 195 students were sent as trainees mainly to secondary schools. 125 overseas Japanese assistants were sent to 23 organizations of eight countries, and this constituted the main characteristic of the Japanese teacher training course in Yamaguchi Prefectural University. The reason why we focused on the experience in foreign countries was that we expected our students to make much of the relationship with the people and experience the enjoyment felt through teaching Japanese. As a result, we hoped the people who come to understand Japan and Japanese culture would increase, and that they will further help in building a peaceful world. Finally, we showed there are many graduates, who are now Japanese specialists in The Japan Foundation, Japanese lecturers in university or Japanese teachers in Japanese language schools, with all playing an active role at home and abroad. We also showed a variety of examples of career paths with Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language as one of their life choices.

This study aims to examine the public diplomatic policies of the United States toward Okinawa, Japan, during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration through the lens of his strategy of waging psychological warfare as an inexpensive tool to fight the Cold War. Much research has been expended on the role civilian agencies such as the Department of State played in the U.S. administration of military bases in Okinawa; however, this research focuses on how the Department of Defense, in a rare move, coordinated with civilian agencies to counter anti-U.S. sentiment in Okinawa. Formally institutionalized and militarized at the Executive Office of the President under the National Security Council in coordination with the Pentagon, the U.S. Okinawa policy proved to be a blueprint of public diplomacy and psychological warfare later used for the postwar disposition of conflict areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This study increases understanding of how the U.S. formulates shifting foreign policy aimed toward gaining not only external military control of foreign regions but also the minds of the local populace. Previous studies have pointed to the Eisenhower administration as transforming the president’s organizational apparatus to implement “the war of language.” This case study presents how the Eisenhower administration strengthened the power of the rhetorical presidency through its decisionmaking process with regard to U.S.-occupied Okinawa.

Suo-Oshima Town, Yamaguchi Prefectural University, and Suo-Oshima High School signed an agreement of comprehensive cooperation on April 28, 2021. Professor Mizutani was asked to be the representative researcher to begin the “Suo-Oshima High School Aloha Project 2021.” With this project as the starting point, a joint collaboration was carried out on the promotion of Hawaiian culture through design in Suo-Oshima Town. This paper will investigate the Hawaiian culture promotion plan with particular focus on aloha shirts. In addition, as a practical study of design, it will verify the results of the workshops on making Hawaiian shirts, the fashion show, and the design exchanges which took place online. Finally, future challenges were identified for the purpose of contributing to the branding of Suo-Oshima Town through Hawaiian culture promotion.

In this paper, we examined the photo gravure from the first issue of the magazine SUTAIRU to the first issue of Volume 2. The photo gravure of the magazines in the early days of the first issue contains the direction of handling Western clothing and Japanese clothing in a competitive manner. In addition, it was confirmed that the clothes recommended by SUTAIRU in the opening gravure had a close relationship with the craft design at that time.

The purpose of this study is to visualize the process of moving from anxiety to liberation of English proficiency held by Japanese assistants (hereinafter referred to as JA) dispatched to secondary schools in English speaking countries, and to show the growth and essential role of JA. As a result of analyzing the monthly reports of 16 JAs by paragraph and topic in four stages of their terms abroad, immediately after dispatch, 3 months, 6 months, and just before the end, it turned out that it went from the "English wall", through the stages of "thinking about the ideal way of learning a foreign language", "breaking down the English barrier", and to "releasing the anxiety of English proficiency". By the time the anxiety was released, the importance of the role of "catch-up" for students that JA supports was inferred. JA is a person who can "speak things that teachers cannot speak", and through "catch-up", students can not only catch up with the delay of learning but also teach English to the JA, while the JA can strengthen one’s position as JA and gain motivation for learning English. It can be guessed that a warm, personal relationship between the JA and students, that grows on an equal footing with each other, is established. In intercultural learning, JA and students have a mutually beneficial relationship and can break away from stereotypes of each other, and in a multilingual environment, English is regarded as one of the tools because of the enjoyment and acceptability of language exchange. It was suggested that those are factors that promote the development and growth of JA's English proficiency.

The subject of this study is "Art," which is offered to students in departments and grades as a basic education course. Based on the findings from setting the classroom tasks for practical subjects and the progress of activities during Corona, we will consider how to further implement education that involves practical skills, and examine methods of art and design education that can continue to have practical effects even in a post Corona world.

In the "Japanese Language and Expression" class, students are expected to consolidate cross-disciplinary knowledge by interacting with others and to express their own and their group's judgments in a logically constructed manner. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how report assignments should be designed in the above-mentioned Japanese writing class in order for learners to acquire multiple and comprehensive perspectives. In the class, a type of cooperative learning called the jigsaw method is used. In the jigsaw group, knowledge is exchanged and discussed while coming to terms with each other, and the level of knowledge aggregation is deepened to aggregation, cohesion, and fusion. It is necessary to design the report assignment so that the level of knowledge aggregation can reach the level of fusion, from which new ideas can be generated and developed for the next learning.

Reprinting and Explanatory Notes of "Edo Nikki (The manuscripts of his diary)" written by Yoshitaka Ozu(A merchant of Edo period).

Reprinting Notes of letter to Ozu Keiso(A merchant of Edo period) owned by Motoori Norinaga Memorial Hall. No.5

This study, intended to be published as a series of papers, explores “Discourse under Crisis” in Chinese classical literature. This paper provides an introduction to “Discourse under Crisis” and discusses it in the context of Shijing 詩経. 　“Discourse under Crisis,” within the context of this study, refers to verses and proses produced or utterances spoken under situations of crisis. The subject of discourse, that is, authors of proses and verses or speakers, cannot avoid these situations since they are not given the option to refuse to participate in them. 　The introduction presents the method and framework of reading the discourse in this study through analyzing Confucius’ utterances and Du Fu 杜甫’s poems under their respective situations of crisis. 　In the context of Shijing, this paper classifies songs as follows: songs related to “prison litigation (trial, court),” songs in an environment of “repression and oppression,” songs in “crisis of life,” and songs when exposed to “language of violence” such as calumny; it also discusses various aspects and characteristics of songs as “Discourse under Crisis.”

1）"Muen-muko" and "Ginzaburō" are two different names for the same kyōgen. The Hōreki Namekawa version of the Kyōgen "Muen-muko" is more unique than the other scripts, but it rather diminishes the characteristics of this Kyōgen. This is probably due to the fact that it was created based only on what he had seen and heard of the central flavor of this Kyōgen. 2）The Eyama version of the Kyogen "Ginzaburō" is close to the other scripts, yet has some old-fashioned elements. 3）The Hōreki Namekawa version of "Muen-muko" was resumably created under the influence of the Genroku, Hōei and Shōtoku periods, when rare Noh and Kyōgen performances were popular.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the role of women in the magazine “Houtoku”, published by Houtokukai, which was established by Hanada Nakanosuke. It was formed to promote moral education in Japan, and especially the goal of the “Imperial Rescript on Education”.In the 1910s to 192 0s, a democracy and movement calling for equal rights and liberation of women spread throughout Japan. Articles about women in “Houtoku” always criticized individualism and opposed the right to vote for women. The Magazine’s writers believed that the role of Japanese women was to raise their families, educate their children, and support their husbands. They not only criticized contemporary women but also presented their own “ideal” model for a Japanese woman.

This special issue, Issues Related to Suo Kokufu, consists of the following: Kazumi Tateno’s Traffic around Ancient Suo, Makoto Sato’s Functions and Facilities of Suo Kokufu, Hiroyuki Kanegae’s Kunizonin and Their Duties in Suo Kokufu, Tomoyasu Kato’s Kokushikan in the Kokufu, Shigeru Watanabe’s Suokoku and the Political Arena in Late Antiquity - with a Focus on the Activities of Tamanooya, and Kenji Kurata’s Restoration and Analysis of Historical Landscapes Using GIS Platforms - the Case of Ancient Suo Kokufu. The issue summarizes the results of the five-year joint research project between Yamaguchi Prefectural University and Hofu City titled Comprehensive Research on Suo Kokufu - the Formative Process of City and Hofu. We expect that the findings we present in this special issue will significantly expand the literature findings on and analyses of the latest excavation results.